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: I hired him as President thinking he would transform my company. He was experienced, had worked for Indian and MNCs and we got along well. He was the highest paid executive in my company at Rs 45 Lakh plus incentives. Unfortunately, I didn't see any impact on sales or margins and I had to ask him to leave", said the founder-CEO of the startup. "How long did he stay in your company?" I asked the founder-CEO. The COO was asked to go after 4 months.
On further probing, the founder CEO explained, "I think 3-4 months is sufficient time to see results in sales. I want to see execution and quickly, not ideas and plans. He just spent time meeting customers, spent money hiring a company to train employees, wanted clearance to hire some more people and wanted to build a plan that he would then execute. Arrey bhai, what's there to plan about when we know our customers and market and know exactly how much we can do? Instead of "doing", he was wasting time and money in planning! Apparently, he couldn't work without a plan in place. I couldn't understand what his problem was - after all, we've been in business for a few years and are profitable and we never worried about planning-shanning. I think I made a mistake in bringing him on board. I think getting these high-fliers into a young and small company is not appropriate since they want all kinds of resources and time to execute. We cannot afford such luxuries."
"I was excited to join the company to help it grow to 10X its current size. I really liked what they had done so far and I enjoyed good chemistry with the CEO. I was impressed by his knowledge and vision for his company. To grow at the desired pace would've required us to expand practice areas, enter newer geographies, build relationships with very senior executives, develop a brand, leverage technology and become a process driven organization. We would've needed to have strong operations and performance metrics. We would've needed to make investments in people, marketing, sales, and technology. But, the quality of the people around me left much to be desired. Many of them had poor communication and interpersonal skills. Learning to listen to customers problems didn't seem important. While there was this intention to grow ten times, the details of how that was...
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