The Challenge with Unique Humans

For me, and for discussions with many other Founders of businesses we are a great descriptor for ‘Unique Humans’.  

What is a Unique Human?

We have the business idea, we have the passion, and we can work with the everyday ambiguity of what the business does and how it gets delivered. We make those quick business decisions based on intuition or ‘gut feel’ which moves the business forward. All this information inside our head makes us a ‘Unique Human’ within the business, somebody who cannot be replicated.

As the business begins to grow, early employees also follow the same path, they learn on the job, acquire knowledge, and become unique in their role. Our businesses become highly dependent on these ‘Unique Humans’ to operate.

The positive is that this generally delivers a great experience for our customer. They get to engage with employees competent in their role and the ability to deal with ambiguity. The employee experience is also generally positive. They are engaged, feel highly valued, and have a direct influence on the business.

But here’s the challenge… Unique Humans do not scale.

Why don’t Unique Humans scale?

At some point the businesses will plateau. There must be a reset on how the business is going to scale.

I have been through some painful learning and concluded scaling a business requires a proactive approach to strategy. Scaling will generally require more employees, let’s call them ‘New Humans’. New Humans have not got the time luxury of the foundations years to acquire the ‘tribal knowledge’ in the business. The New Humans need to be able to have clarity in what is expected of them to be successful. The business needs them to be successful in a very short time frame.  

The design of a Scaling Strategy needs to include two significant 'Human' changes. Without addressing these changes, growth out of the plateau will be inhibited. So, it’s key to consider the Human’s impact to the core business and the organ rejection of New Humans.  

Impact to the current Core business  

You need to plan the impact on the employee experience of Unique Humans in a Scaling Strategy. The business is not broken in their eyes, ‘this is the way we do things around here and it works, I am happy, and the customer is happy, I do not want to change’. To enable the business to scale you may be needing them to let go of some of the things that they value the most in working for you. Your risk is this group turning from being the enablers in the business to becoming the disrupters.

Organ rejection of New Humans

The expectation is that scaling generally means you need more employees. These New Humans need to hit the ground running. There are two common problems that occur within the first six months and these problems may mean you remain on the Plateau for longer than expected:

1. The existing Unique Humans reject the New Humans as they “cannot do the job as they do not understand what is needed in the role”. The business accepts this and exits the New Humans and starts the process again looking for other New Humans who may, but will unlikely, do better.
   

2. The New Humans quickly realise for themselves there is no clear path for them to succeed. They do not possess the ‘tribal knowledge’, so leave for a more rewarding employee experience elsewhere.  

It is possible to prevent the failing on both outcomes by the leadership proactively focussing on a strategy that addresses how to scale. Rather than a generic mantra about the need to grow, without a concrete strategy on how.

A strategy to scale

A strategy to address scaling requires effort. It requires a business to move from a reactive environment. This is where the humans in the business today are expected to work with ambiguity and agility. The move is to a proactive environment. This is where humans know the Scaling strategy i.e. the destination of the train and the points of change on the way that will get them to the destination.

The most important aspect is the inclusion of the hugely valuable Unique Humans in the Scaling Strategy process. They can see where their value is now, and importantly where their value will be in the future, they remain engaged. But also, if the destination is not where they want to go, they can get off the train in a controlled way without being a disrupter in the business.

Our New Humans also know the destination when they choose to join. They may also bring additional knowledge and experience that can support the scaling process. Whilst all the processes to scale may not be in place, the engaged New Humans understand what the business is trying to achieve.

If your business is in that plateau, there is a path to achieve scalable growth. However, it needs to be done with a business change mindset. Remember, it is unlikely to be achieved by following the same path that got your business to that current plateau in the first place.