The Next Level: The Unsung Heroes of Fast-Growth Companies

The Next Level

Avoiding the pitfalls of fast growth.

Academia and media tend to focus on leaders. As a result, they often miss the importance of the unsung heroes in disruptive, fast-growth companies who make sure the disruption is carried all the way through the company.

This person has a similar skill set to an unsung hero in health care during combat — the head nurse, a person serious enough to give urgent orders, soft enough to hold a soldier’s hand in pain, and strong enough to wake up the next day and do it all again. Most people don’t even know this role exists in fast growth, but don’t try to grow without one. Who is this person? A No. 2 Who Can Do.

Often, the No. 2 is the smartest person in the room, talks the least, gets the most done and does not have a big ego. Like head nurses, as long as the No. 2’s can keep the company alive and going, they are just fine letting others shine. Really good No. 2’s don’t care about titles, offices or who goes to lunch with whom. In fact, all of this stuff runs contrary to what a real No. 2 can do.

A true No. 2 Who Can Do must go up, down and across your organization and have “walking around” rights in your company and customer environments. Titles can help you go to the top but can also prevent you from going down the organization to fix the root causes of problems.

At my company, STI Knowledge, I had a great No. 2, Gary Volino, who went up and down and across the company every day. He came to work with us when we had 48 employees, and he really had two jobs: fix problems on the inside and protect revenue on the outside. We called him the “Mad Italian” because he worked so hard and was so funny. He was 5-foot-7 and had done stand-up comedy at night when he was a consultant at Price Waterhouse. He was funny but also very real.

I asked him once why he had so many chief executive friends. “I am a small-frame guy,” he said. “I don’t think they find me intimidating.” He and I worked together for seven years and never had a cross word, and he never had an official title. I cannot even recall where he sat, but I do know this: Without Gary we might well have been just another company that started fast and then hit dead man’s curve — where the growth stalls and the company falls.

Because too many companies hit that curve somewhere between 50 and 500 employees, I will lay out some prerequisites for hiring No. 2’s. They have to be able to knock down doors day after day, perhaps even literally. Once, having flown back from New York, I had arrived at the office late in the afternoon with a skip in my step and a pretty big smile. We had just won an account with Ralph Lauren, having beaten out all of the big guys.

As I was walking tall around the office, I saw Gary coming down the hall with a sense of urgency, calm but concerned. Welcome to the N.F.L. — Not For Long — which is the length of any celebration at a fast-growth company. I asked Gary what was wrong. He said that when our controller left the company, he had locked the payroll checks in the safe. These were the payroll checks we have to send overnight to our remote employees, including the new hires on site at Ralph Lauren. When a premier company takes a chance on an insurgent company like ours, you cannot have your employees saying, “Our paychecks are late.”

I said, “Break the safe.” Gary said, “He locked the safe in the storage room with the iron door, and we have five minutes if we are going to get the checks on the FedEx jet.” So the “Mad Italian” broke down the iron door, and everyone was paid. No. 2’s don’t second-guess — they do. Of course, a No. 2 like Gary patches up a lot more things than he breaks down: system shortfalls, skill shortcomings, hurt feelings, customer expectations, sales revenue, and strategies of swinging for the fences. I don’t think I ever asked him to work on a problem. A good No. 2 finds problems and solves them, usually without drama. When things were tense, Gary would say something funny to make everyone laugh. Humor can solve more problems in fast-growth companies than anything, other than revenue.

A true No. 2 does not necessarily think he should be the second-highest paid person in the company but does want to be a significant equity holder. Gary was the second-largest equity holder at STI, but he never asked me if that was the case. He asked for a certain amount and I agreed. The subject was never discussed again.

So how do you find such people? You don’t. They find you. If you go out there and tell the world that you are looking for a No. 2, you wind up with a show horse instead of a work horse. You are also telling your people that you are putting up a wall between you and them. Most often, good No. 2’s emerge from an existing leadership pool. Or, occasionally, they will find you and say, “I want to work with you.”

They are even good at picking No. 1’s.

Cliff Oxford is the founder of the Oxford Center for Entrepreneurs. You can follow him on Twitter.

Article source: http://boss.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/05/29/the-unsung-heros-of-fast-growth-companies/?partner=rss&emc=rss