A VC in Vacationland

Since the renewed interest in airport security post the recent London incident, I have been traveling more than usual.  Almost every time I go through airport security in recent weeks, I have been "chosen" for a more detailed search.  Like most of you, I accept this as a necessary evil in today’s travel world.  But it did get me thinking about why I was being chosen so much. 

The cynic in me says they choose me because I look easy to search and will not hassle them.  Which is true. All my stuff is in order.  I do not have any liquids, etc. in my luggage.  After thirty years of global travel and 4 million miles in various airline seats, I am invariably polite to security, immigration and customs people.  Why?  They hold your fate in their hands.  Give them any trouble and they can easily arrange for you to miss your flights. They may be treating me as a potential terrorist, which irritates me, but I need to do things the right way to escape their clutches, not do the easy thing which would be to lose my temper.

So what does this all have to do with managing startups?  I often see employees take the "easy" way to solve problems.  While OK in some situations, the behavior can be deadly in startups.  You often have only one chance for success and if the employees do just OK, you may lose the crucial deal to a competitor, miss the critical product release deadline, or irritate the helpful partner by not fully cooperating in a sales process.

Establishing a culture that focuses on doing the right, rather than the easy thing is a necessary condition for success. I recently attended the Procuri Empower user conference in Atlanta.  Procuri employees do things the right way, not the easy way. They have a set of very satisfied partners and customers as a result.  The conference was one of the best I have ever attended, primarily because all the Procuri people involved were working very hard to make everything "right" to maximize the value of the customer and partner experiences.

So, how do you make sure your employees are doing things the right way and not the easy way?

First, set the standards. Be sure that your team and its leaders know what is expected and that they have the resources to perform to those standards.

Second, under promise and over deliver.  Exceeding expectations of clients, partners and employees is an excellent way to make sure that things are done the right way and that everyone will be happy. Well, most of the time, anyway…

Finally, reward right way behavior. Make sure you single out those employees that consistently do things the right way, reward them with short and long term compensation and make sure the rest of the employees know why these people are being rewarded.

Now if we can only get the TSA to do things the right way and not the easy way….