CEO Essentials,  Team Building

Recognizing When You Need to Change Up Your Team

October 31, 2020 /

Are you unconsciously suffering from a role fit problem in your team?  First recognizing and then addressing the issue is critical to startup success.

One time I got to spend a few hours mingling with other entrepreneurial CEOs around campfires, sharing some of our stories. This is one of the ways we help teach each other how to lead our companies better. It also reminded me of one of the tough challenges we face as company leaders: discerning the difference between a normal onboarding learning curve on the way to becoming a productive contributor and the struggling that occurs when a hiring mistake has been made, and there is not a good fit between the new hire and the role that needs to be filled.

Misfit Story #1

There was a moment when a young CEO mentioned she heard me share my Accuri journey in one of her MBA classes a few years ago. I commented that, while I have made a tradition of sharing that tale with the same slide deck annually, I have never told the story the same way twice. She laughed and said she knew that feeling because when she is selling her company’s newly launched platform, she never tells the story the same way twice. Then she shared that her pattern of modulating the story to fit the sales situation is causing endless frustration for her newly hired sales lead. She shared, “my salesperson wants me to give him a script because he never knows what I am going to say.” The young CEO commented that her salesperson could get calls set up, but could not close, so she was increasingly taking over that role to maintain sales growth. Then she commented that she planned to give her salesperson another month to try to get the sales playbook figured out.  As I listened to the CEO discuss her sale lead challenges, alarm bells went off in my head – and I asked if she knew the “boiled frog” analogy?

The Boiled Frog Problem
When a frog is dropped into a pot of boiling water, it will leap out to save itself.  When a frog is placed into a pot of cool water which is then heated to boiling, the frog will not jump.  The same thing happens to startup leaders and managers.

When trying to help a new team member come up to speed, sometimes the manager is like a boiled frog. In this case, it was happening to the young CEO.  With great hope, she had hired a previously successful salesperson. Still, she was finding that she was having to take on more and more of the sales closing herself and was feeling progressively more guilty when she couldn’t figure out how to package her customer problem-solving skills into a prescribed script.  She was doing everything she could to try to make her salesperson successful, but progress just was not happening. Instead of a lead salesperson taking increasing responsibility for closing sales, the CEO was pouring more and more of her time and energy into doing the job she had hired a sales lead for.  After four months of heating water, she was now a boiling frog. The other experienced CEOs around the fire affirmed that indeed she had a problem that is often so much easier to recognize from a distance than when in the water yourself.

Misfit Story #2

After explaining the boiled frog problem’s essence, I told her one of my own boiled frog experiences. Over a decade ago, I needed to reschedule our Board meeting, so I started writing emails to begin the process of sorting out ten difficult schedules. Suddenly I stopped myself. What was I doing? I had an administrative assistant who should tackle such problems. Then I realized that I did not trust her to do the rescheduling job – and I finally recognized that I had become a boiled frog. When the realization dawned, I reflected over the prior months and realized that I had been steadily reducing the work scope that I gave her to the point that now I realized I had practically taken over her job. It happened gradually, a step at a time, until my expectations had shifted far from where they should have been.  I wish I could say that was the only time I was a boiled frog. Unfortunately, while I am getting quicker at recognizing the signs, it is a common trap for my peers and me. And it is something I have to watch for in my leaders and then coach them through recognizing the effect just as I did with the young CEO by the campfire.

Signs that You Are a Boiling Frog

  • When a complex technical product salesperson asks for a rote script rather than applying good social skills and problem-solving to navigate a prospect’s needs and objections, you have a role fit problem.

  • When an executive administrative assistant cannot reschedule a meeting, you have a role fit problem.

  • When a lead engineer cannot identify the right problem to solve and determine potential solution paths to pursue, you have a role fit problem.

  • When a manufacturing head repeatedly overinvests by an order of magnitude in component inventory that must be scrapped, you have a role fit problem.

  • When a designer cannot synthesize the user’s needs and generate relevant alternative designs that address the critical aspects of the problem you are solving, you have a role fit problem.

The challenge with these situations is that they creep up on you.  You start with hope and invest in good onboarding. Then, you compromise your expectations little by little as you try to help your team member become successful.  Helping and setting someone up for success is legitimate; however, good team additions will soon carry their weight and ultimately make impressive contributions. Suppose that does not happen, and you find that you are progressively lowering your standards or putting compensating mechanisms in place. In that case, you can easily and unknowingly slip into the trap of becoming a boiled frog. Then one day, something happens, and you suddenly step back and recognize that it has gone too far. If you can catch yourself, that is great.

Boiled Frog Problems Are Easier to Spot from A Distance

Also, I have found that when I cultivate a mutual accountability relationship with another CEO (as I have with several CEOs over the years), you can have a safe space to discuss your pressing frustrations.  I cannot tell you the number of times my fellow CEOs and I have described our people problems with one another over coffee. Then there comes a point when the listener looks the other in the eye and asks something like, “Exactly why are you tolerating that?” And the lightbulb goes off, and we realize we have a boiled frog problem.  

Accountability relationships with other CEOs are valuable because our peers understand the scope of the problems I am solving. Talking those problems through can help me recognize when I have slipped into tolerating something I should not. They help me realize that I have become the boiled frog – and I do the same for them.

Watch out for the signs that you have been compromising on a role fit problem, and be sure to address it. That could mean providing clear, time-limited performance feedback if you haven’t already, transitioning them to a role that is a better fit within your startup if you have one, or releasing your team member to find a better fit elsewhere. Your team will thank you for handling it directly since everyone suffers when someone gets in a position that is not a good fit.

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