1. Assembling the Team: Acquiring and Utilizing Essential Human Resources
Entrepreneurship 5
Assembling the Team: Acquiring and Utilizing Essential Human Resources

2. “Union may be strength, but it is mere blind brute strength unless wisely directed.”
--Samuel Butler, 1882

3. Human Resources Knowledge Skills Talents Abilities
Of co-founders and early employees are key to success

4. The Appeal of Similarity
Similarity leads to liking
Almost any kind of similarity will do—similarity with respect to attitudes and values, demographic factors, interests, etc.
Such effects are both strong and general

5. The Value of Complementarity
Avoids redundancy.
Provides a wider range of information, skills, aptitudes, and abilities.
The whole is greater than the sum of its parts.

6. Don’t yield to the temptation to work solely with people whose background, training, and experience is highly similar to your own. Doing so will be easy and pleasant in many ways, but it will not provide the rich foundation of human resources the new venture needs.

7. Know Thyself
We are often unaware of at least some of the factors that affect our behavior.
We do not gain knowledge of our major traits, abilities, or attitudes directly, through reflection.
We gradually gain insight into ourselves through our relations with other persons.

8. Your Personal Inventory
Knowledge base
Specific skills
Motives
Commitment
Personal attributes

9. Big Five Dimensions of Personality
Conscientiousness
Extraversion-Introversion
Agreeableness
Emotional stability
Openness to experience

10. Similarity or Complementarity?
A balanced approach
Focus primarily on complementarity with respect to knowledge, skills and experience
Bring similarity into the picture with respect to personal characteristics and motives

11. “He who knows others is clever; he who knows himself has discernment.”
--Lao-Tzu

12. Impression Management
Self-enhancement—efforts to increase appeal to others
Other-enhancement—efforts to make the target person feel good

13. Self-Enhancement Tactics
Boost physical appearance
Appear highly skilled
Describe self in positive terms

14. Other-Enhancement Tactics
Flattery
Expressing agreement
Showing high degree of interest
Doing small favors
Asking for advice or feedback
Using nonverbal signals
Intimidation

15. Due Diligence
Failing to recognize impression management techniques can lead entrepreneurs to make poor choices as they assemble their initial team.
Don’t accept information or appearance without checking it out.

16. Deception Microexpressions Interchannel discrepancies
Nonverbal aspects of speech
Eye contact
Exaggerated facial expressions

17. Founding Team Relationships
Three factors are crucial in developing strong working relationships among the team:
Clear initial assignment of roles
Careful attention to perceived fairness
Effective communication

18. Roles
The set of behaviors that individuals occupying specific positions within a group are expected to perform, and the authority or jurisdiction they will wield.
Divide responsibilities and authority following the principle of complementarity.

19. Self-Serving Bias
The tendency to attribute successful outcomes largely to internal causes, but unsuccessful ones largely to external causes
Often leads people to conclude that they have not been treated fairly

20. Perceived Unfairness Self-serving bias Harmful effects on working
relationships
Feelings of
perceived
unfairness

21. Effective Communication
Constructive
Is considerate
Doesn’t threaten
Is timely
Doesn’t blame
Is specific
Offers concrete suggestions for improvement
Destructive
Is harsh
Contains threats
Is not timely
Blames
Is not specific
Offers no concrete ideas for improvement

22. Expanding Human Resources
Social networking allows entrepreneurs to:
Acquire human resources quickly
Know people directly or indirectly before hiring
Integrate new employees more easily into a loose structure

23. Is Bigger Better?
On balance, the benefits of increasing the number of employees outweigh the costs.
New ventures that start with more employees have a greater chance of surviving.
Profitability is positively related to size.

24. Temporary Employees Advantages Reduced fixed costs Flexibility
Secure specialized knowledge
Disadvantages
Lack commitment and motivation
Carry information to competitors

25. Temporary or Permanent?
Flexibility and speed of
acquiring new sets
of knowledge
Temporary
employees
Commitment and
retention
Permanent
employees