The last thing you can afford is for anyone to have a big ego and think they are better than everyone else.
You need to avoid situations where any one person feels they have the only solution to a problem and are not open to advice, or keep everything to themselves in case others see a weakness or fault with their decision.
My advice has always been to employ people who can go beyond their personal issues and focus on the right thing to do for the business.
The last thing you need in business is for someone to make decisions purely on what is good for them at the possible expense of finding the right solution for the business as a whole.
You can only have meaningful conversations if individuals can fully contribute without feeling that others are judging them.
If you are lucky, you will have some employees who are unbelievably good. They are super productive, get on with everyone and never ask for more than they deserve.
Then one day they announce they are leaving – going back to school or moving interstate with their new spouse. You are devastated because you know how rare they are.
Then there are the great salespeople who close more than their fair share of deals. However, you discover that they have been putting in false expense claims or overpromising on sales. You have no choice but to fire them.
In both cases, you have lost someone who will be missed because of their outstanding contribution to the business. But the reality is that this will happen over and over again.
What we have to ensure is that we never lock ourselves into one person so much that the business cannot continue without them.
If you have been around for a while, you will have seen the next big thing come and go, leaving a lot of disappointed entrepreneurs in its wake.
Whether it is the secret to selling, recruiting, manufacturing, supply chain management or corporate strategy, there will always be the great breakthrough, usually based on a limited study but great penmanship.
For years now, I have been researching the principles of high-growth ventures. Almost without exception, I have come back to old and tried fundamentals. Why? Because they make sense.
They have wide applicability and they have strong validity over many decades. That is not to say that we don’t get useful insights through new techniques and processes, but they are never the whole story.
We still need a solid business model with good people who can execute on the business strategy.
As the boss, you set the limits for behavior. Whatever you tolerate or overlook becomes the boundary line for employee behavior.
Basically, you need to set a line over which people only cross if they wish to put their employment at risk.
Where you have someone who does cross that line, you must, as a matter of discipline and policy, come down on them hard and, in most cases, terminate their employment.
I would apply this policy to cheating, fraud, misappropriation of company resources, misrepresentation, bullying and any form of discrimination or harassment.
Someone who undermines the goodwill of the business, who creates disharmony or puts the business at risk, in my mind, has no place in the business.
We have all heard the saying that the culture of an organisation comes from its leaders. That is certainly the case in every organisation I have belonged to.
The values of the leader determine the acceptable culture in the rest of the organisation. That being the case, you need to be especially sensitive to what you say and do.
Your behavior and decisions will convey meaning to the rest of the organisation about what you value and what they need to do if they want to be successful in your organisation.
Organisational culture grows over time from the shared experiences of those who work within it. While there may be stated values, the real ones are those which come from practice.
You need to show what you value by how you act yourself and in the decisions you take. What comes from the top permeates to the bottom.
Dr Tom McKaskill is a global serial entrepreneur, educator, author and angel investor. He is an authority on how entrepreneurs start, develop and harvest their ventures. Recently retired from the Richard Pratt Chair in Entrepreneurship at the Australian Graduate School of Entrepreneurship, Dr. McKaskill is the author of 20 books about entrepreneurialism.
