Leadership Archives - Yolanda Lau

Updated on March 22, 2024

Fast Start: 9 Tips to Onboard Yourself at Your New Job

Starting a new job can be exciting, but also overwhelming. There’s so much to learn and do, and you want to make a good impression from day one. While many companies have formal onboarding processes to help integrate new hires, the reality is that these programs are often lacking, especially in smaller or rapidly growing organizations.

Whether you’re coming onboard as an employee, on-demand consultant, or fractional executive, you can take charge and ensure a smooth transition by onboarding yourself.

Here’s how:

1. Do your research

Before your first day, learn as much as you can about your new company. Learn about their mission, values, culture, products, services, and industry. Familiarize yourself with their social media accounts, blog, and website. This will give you a head start on understanding the company’s priorities and how you can contribute. Look up your new employer in the news – find out if there have been any recent developments about the company.

2. Take charge of the process

Don’t wait for information to fall into your lap – go out and proactively seek what you need to start contributing meaningfully. Ask questions to understand priorities, gather essential resources, and identify quick wins you can achieve in your first 30-60-90 days. Taking control shows initiative and positions you to have an immediate positive impact. No one is more invested in your success than you are.

3. Develop your own perspective

As a fresh set of eyes, one of the most valuable things you bring to the table is a new perspective. Observe, analyze, and form your own opinions about the organization – what’s working well, what could be improved, key opportunities and challenges. Don’t be afraid to respectfully share your thoughts, hunches and ideas, even if they diverge from the status quo. Fresh viewpoints, grounded in curiosity and good faith, can spark productive discussions.

4. Dive in and add value

New hires often get bombarded with information – documents, decks, demos, org charts. Don’t get bogged down. Do make time to absorb the material, but look for ways to add value immediately, even in small ways. High-performing teams expect you to quickly translate knowledge into action. Volunteer for projects, share relevant articles, offer to take meeting notes. Active engagement shows you’re there to contribute, not just learn.

5. Identify priorities and early wins

While there’s a lot to learn, focus on the most critical areas first – certain information will be more important than others, depending on upcoming projects and decisions. Identify knowledge gaps and areas where your skills can have the biggest impact. What knowledge gaps need to be filled most urgently? Where can your skills move the needle? Aim for some early quick wins to build credibility and momentum. Having a prioritized learning plan creates structure and accelerates your ability to make meaningful contributions.

6. Embrace a leadership mindset

Even as a new hire, approach your role with a leadership mindset. Imagine yourself running meetings, making decisions, and driving projects forward. This proactive attitude empowers you to shape your experience and contribute more from the beginning.

7. Understand decision-making frameworks

Understand how decisions are made at your new company. What are the key metrics, priorities and frameworks used? Knowing how and when important decisions get made allows you to focus your onboarding on the most relevant information and stakeholders.

8. Build key relationships

Relationships are key. Invest time in getting to know your manager, colleagues, and collaborators. Schedule one-on-one meetings, ask about their roles, and seek feedback. Building strong connections helps you navigate the organization, feel included, and collaborate more effectively. Growing your network internally provides a web of support as you get up to speed.

9. Embrace continuous learning

Learning is continuous. Embrace an attitude of constant growth. Ask questions, seek feedback, and be open to new ideas. Adopt a mindset of humility and curiosity. A commitment to lifelong learning keeps you nimble and adaptable as the company evolves.

By following these nine strategies, you’ll take control of your onboarding and quickly become a valuable asset. You’ll demonstrate the very qualities that make you a great fit for the long haul – initiative, curiosity, humility, and a willingness to take action. By proactively onboarding yourself, you’ll gain a running start, become a high-value team member faster, and showcase the skills that make you a perfect fit for the company’s culture.

Yolanda Lau is an experienced entrepreneurship consultant, advisor, and Forbes Contributor. She is also an educator, speaker, writer, and non-profit fundraiser.

Since 2010, she has been focused on preparing knowledge workers, educators, and students for the future of work.

Learn more about Yolanda here.

Updated on February 24, 2024

Tips For Scaling Customer Success

By Yolanda Lau

If you’re building a startup, you’re probably wondering how to start and scale customer success (CS). While the first step is to hire the right first customer success lead, the next step is scaling customer success to increase the impact and turn CS into a profit center that increases revenue. Here are my top tips to help you scale customer success at your startup. Hopefully, your first CS hire has already created a culture of operational excellence and started accelerating your one-to-many strategy, as most of my tips for scaling customer success rely heavily on customer success ops.

Meet customers where they are.

Scaling customer success means you’ll need to make it more effective and efficient. At Liquid, we’ve found that it’s imperative to meet customers where they are and where they prefer to engage. While some customers enjoy talking to a customer success manager, others prefer to get help on their own online. Some users prefer emailing, while others like chat. Some prefer personalized meetings, while others find more value in attending group office hours or webinars. Offering one-to-many experiences increases CS productivity — but more importantly, offering a multitude of options allows your customers to get help in ways that they perceive to be most valuable and efficient. Add new initiatives prudently; do so only when you have confidence that it fills a need. In addition, you should be analyzing the metrics of each new initiative to assess effectiveness. Experiment and iterate.

Build a knowledge base.

At Liquid, we recently released a customer-facing knowledge base (KB) based on customer requests for a dedicated help center to help themselves and to direct their additional users to train themselves up. Since its launch, KB usage has grown rapidly while also decreasing the volume of communications from customers. To be clear, our KB doesn’t prevent users from contacting humans — it simply helps users help themselves before asking for help.

When building out your KB, start with the most complex features and sticking points — get feedback from CSMs and support staff about what needs to be covered. As new support requests come in, support staff should create new KB articles. Similarly, as new features get released, work with your product team to add new KB articles at each release. Always include images and videos to be inclusive of different learning preferences. Don’t wait to put out your KB; in my experience, it’s better to put out a 60% completed solution and iterate and add to it.

Lastly, look at KB metrics to gather additional insight. For example, what are people clicking on? This might give you insight into problem areas. Who is looking? A customer with lots of KB views might need extra attention; a customer with a sudden drop in views might be at risk of churning out. What are people searching for? Repeat searches might mean your product team needs to resolve some underlying issues.

Create (and automate) repeatable systems and processes.

Scaling customer success also means dealing with an increasing number of customers. To manage volume, you need repeatable systems and processes. Operationalizing processes by creating playbooks and other documentation helps your team provide consistent service quickly and efficiently. When done properly, this also allows you to provide pooled CS where customers are not assigned a single CSM but instead get help from whoever is available. Start working on this early and iterate often.

As you work on this, also segment your customers and determine how your approach will differ for each segment. For some companies, it may make sense to segment by account value but for others, segmenting by behavior may be more suitable. Growth potential should also be considered in segmentation, along with other factors specific to your industry, company and product.

Another way to improve the efficiency of your CS department is to take your repeatable processes and systems one step further and automate where possible. Be strategic in your use of automation. At Liquid, we use Zapier to automate a few customer success emails and have a few other automations to provide more value to our customers at scale.

Separate customer support and customer success.

While customer success is meant to be proactive, customer support or customer service is reactive by nature. When the same team members manage both support/service and success, the most urgent requests (typically service requests) get worked on first. Unfortunately, this means the proactive work — of managing customer health and actively reaching out to customers who may be at risk of churning — sometimes falls lower down the list. In addition, the skills needed for customer service are different from those for customer success. From my experience, companies achieve better results when separating the reactive customer service team from the proactive customer success team early on.

Know when to grow your customer success team.

Dave Blake, CEO of Client Success, has some great tips on when to add additional staff to your customer success team. Specifically, he recommends looking at three factors:

• Annual Contract Value (ACV) Target Per CSM: Each CSM should be handling about $2 million in ACV.

• Product Complexity: The more complex your product, the fewer accounts each CSM can handle.

• Volume Of Customers Per CSM: Each CSM can generally only create meaningful relationships with about 50 customers (sometimes a bit more if automation is used).

Assess these factors against your own product to determine when it’s time to grow your customer success team. I’ve found that about 30 customers is the sweet spot — with automation required to manage more than that.

Scaling customer success will allow you to deliver more value to your customers, keep them happy and ultimately get them to grow their business with you. Whether you start with operationalizing processes, adding automations, building out a knowledge base, or separating customer service from customer success, be sure to meet customers where they are. Deliver more value in their preferred channels and your customers will eagerly turn into advocates, referring new customers.

This article was originally published in Forbes.

Yolanda Lau is an experienced entrepreneurship consultant, advisor, and Forbes Contributor. She is also an educator, speaker, writer, and non-profit fundraiser.

Since 2010, she has been focused on preparing knowledge workers, educators, and students for the future of work.

Learn more about Yolanda here.

Updated on February 24, 2024

How To Give Feedback To Freelancers, Contractors, And Remote Workers

By Yolanda Lau

Communication is key to building strong working relationships, whether with employees or with freelancers. While most organizations have built-in methods and procedures for giving feedback to employees, such as regular 1:1 meetings, I’ve found that many companies lack processes for giving feedback to freelancers, contractors, or other members of their virtual talent bench. Given that working with freelancers tends to be temporary, it’s too easy to skip over providing feedback to your liquid workforce.

Understand When To Give Feedback

During each project, review the scope of work frequently to make sure milestones are met. If your freelancers or consultants are falling flat, say so. Most freelancers crave feedback, as they know feedback helps them improve their work product and increases the likelihood of a successful outcome for both parties. If they’re providing valuable contributions, be sure to thank them.

At the end of each project, spend some time going over what went well during the engagement and also what could have been improved. These retrospective meetings help ensure future engagements run smoothly.

Whenever possible, critique in private and praise in public. No one likes to be publicly called out for failures or mistakes. Critique publicly, and you’re likely to be met with defensiveness. This should go without saying, but if you’re in a bad mood, give yourself some time to clear your head — when giving feedback while upset, your tone will likely make more of an impact than the actual content of the message.

Set Expectations

The first step in giving feedback to your freelancers, contractors, and other remote workers is setting expectations. Make sure you’ve got a clear scope of work with detailed milestones and timelines. The scope should be detailed enough so that all parties understand what is expected and when items are due.

Once you’re ready to give feedback, Daniel Coyle, author of several books on talent, suggests starting each feedback conversation with one magical 19-word phrase: “I’m giving you these comments because I have very high expectations, and I know that you can reach them.”

This statement helps your freelancers, contractors, and virtual talent bench — and even your employees — feel valued and connected to your business.

Skip The Compliment Sandwich

In my career advising startup founders and small business owners, I’ve known all too many managers whose preferred method of providing feedback was the compliment sandwich. This is when you sandwich a negative piece of feedback between two positive pieces. The idea is that you don’t want to get anyone down and that focusing on the positive helps blunt the negative.

I’ve found that the feedback sandwich both undermines the constructive (negative) feedback being conveyed while also making people suspicious of positive feedback. Instead, follow these steps to give clear, concise, specific, and constructive feedback after asking for permission.

Ask For Permission

Before you start with Coyle’s magical 19 words, ask for permission to have a feedback conversation. This can, and should, be as simple as asking a question like: Do you have 20 minutes to talk about X? If the answer is yes, then you can move on to those magical 19 words. If the answer is no, then ask when a good time to talk about X is and schedule a time on the calendar. Asking for permission allows the person to prepare mentally for receiving feedback, making the conversation more likely to lead to actionable results.

Start With Statements, Then Ask Questions

Start by stating what you observed, what impact it did or could have, and then ask questions. Try to be objective and refrain from judging or inferring what happened, giving the freelancer, consultant, or contractor time and space to explain. For example: I noticed X, and that could have impacted Y, and I was hoping you could give me your thoughts. This framing can help you uncover additional issues that you may have overlooked. In addition, asking questions can encourage self-reflection — allowing the freelancer, consultant, or contractor to come up with creative solutions for addressing your concerns. Make sure you listen to what they have to say.

Be Specific And Clear

Be specific with your critique as well as your praise. The more specific your feedback, the more likely it is to be actionable and useful. Aim for concise clarity — using too many words to blunt the emotional impact of negative feedback will make your message fuzzy. Be intentional with your words and tone. Avoid overgeneralizing, being judgmental, or making assumptions about intent. When providing negative feedback, make sure the conversation ends with clearly defined next steps for improvement — this is what separates criticism from constructive feedback.

Don’t shy away from giving negative feedback, but strive to give positive feedback more often. Increasing the ratio of positive to negative feedback creates a culture where feedback is valued, not feared. When giving positive feedback, do so with explicit information about what was done well — this helps to reinforce positive behavior. In contrast, vague positive feedback simply makes the receiver feel good.

Ask For Feedback

If you don’t ask for feedback, you’re unlikely to get it. Don’t forget to also ask for feedback from your freelancers, consultants, and independent contractors. Being external to your organization gives them a valuable vantage point. Their outside perspective can help them notice things that employees might miss. In addition, working with many clients means that your liquid workforce may have gleaned insights from working with similar organizations. Prioritize asking for feedback, as this builds the relationships you have with your virtual talent bench. When they start to see you as a partner — and not just a client — they’ll be more likely to make time for your projects.

Create A Culture Of Feedback

Providing candid, thoughtful, and positive feedback is essential to building strong relationships. Plus, having two-way feedback loops builds trust. Creating a culture of feedback generates a high-performing culture, boosting your team’s performance.

Start taking your relationships with freelancers, contractors, and remote workers to the next level.

This article was originally published in Forbes.

Yolanda Lau is an experienced entrepreneurship consultant, advisor, and Forbes Contributor. She is also an educator, speaker, writer, and non-profit fundraiser.

Since 2010, she has been focused on preparing knowledge workers, educators, and students for the future of work.

Learn more about Yolanda here.

Updated on February 24, 2024

Hiring Your Startup’s First Customer Success Lead

Customer success (CS) is one of the most critical functions of a startup, especially a business-to-business (B2B) software-as-a-service (SaaS) startup. Your startup’s success depends on educating and keeping customers — exactly what CS professionals are equipped to do. Moreover, when your CS team does its job well, customers turn into advocates, each referring new customers to your business.

If you have the budget, you’ll want to hire someone who has scaled CS at a company similar to yours (in terms of product, sales model, implementation strategy, expansion strategy, etc), from your company’s stage all the way through the initial public offering (IPO). In truth, it’s easier to find a needle in a haystack than to find this mythical ideal hire.

Instead, let’s focus on finding you the best first customer success hire for your startup, starting with the basics.

Generalists: At early-stage startups, you need a jack-of-all-trades who can do whatever is needed, whenever it’s needed. You need someone adaptable and resilient to put out fires while thinking strategically and working proactively. You need someone who can build relationships with customers while also analyzing customer data and trends, turn customer thoughts into focused feedback for the product, scale support, and much more. As your CS department grows, you’ll want folks to specialize: dedicated onboarding specialists, expansion specialists, customer success managers (CSMs) for different customer segments, etc. But at an early-stage startup, hire a generalist.

Coachable, Lifelong Learners: When you work in customer success, you’re constantly learning on your feet. You’ve got to be naturally curious about customers and your product. At an early-stage startup, you must experiment and try different tactics, particularly while working toward finding product-market fit. In addition to hiring for lifelong learners, I recommend hiring for coachability to ensure you hire someone who can grow with your company.

Emotional Intelligence: Every successful CS leader I’ve known exhibits strong emotional intelligence; this is no surprise, given how important it is for CS to have empathy and be able to control their emotions and read customers’ emotions. Since CS often manages angry customers, I also recommend hiring for mindfulness. The ability to stay intentionally focused without passing judgment helps ensure appropriate reactions to defuse charged situations.

Leadership: Your first CS hire won’t be your last. Hire someone who can lead your future CS department — a leader with grace and compassion. Speaking of leading a department, you’ll need your CS lead to have a documentation-first mindset to take what they do, turn it into scaleable processes and teach that to others.

Now that we’ve established the overall traits, let’s go over some factors to keep in mind as you hire your first CS lead.

Product

How complicated is your product? Is specialized knowledge required to understand your product? At Liquid, I’ve found that while no specific expertise is necessary, experience with how businesses contract with freelancers and vendors makes the steep product learning curve much more manageable.

Market

Do your customers speak their own lingo? For example, many of our customers are finance leaders, so it’s beneficial to hire folks knowledgeable about accounting as it pertains to working with contractors and vendors. However, since operations leaders also use our product, finance and bookkeeping expertise are purely optional. Additionally, since many of our customers are agencies or social enterprises, it’d be helpful to hire folks with backgrounds in those industries.

Sales And Pricing Model

Very expensive products with a high-touch sales model will probably require high-touch customer success. “Freemium” products relying on product-led growth, self-service education, and low-touch sales will likely require someone who can more quickly operationalize and scale CS.

Implementation Strategy

How complicated is your product implementation? How quickly do customers see value? Is onboarding straightforward and the same for everyone, or does it vary depending on the specific needs/circumstances of each customer? If it varies, you’ll need someone who asks the right questions to craft customized onboarding/implementation plans for customers. In this case, look for past experience in consulting (or a consultative mindset).

At Liquid, we’ve found that implementation can differ quite a bit between customers depending on a variety of factors — including whether the main users have finance or operations backgrounds, whether they use work orders, how much they care about compliance, whether they are moving from existing tools versus hiring their first freelancer, how many vendors they have, and whether they think of their vendors as a virtual talent bench — but not so much so that custom onboarding plans are needed for each customer. In our case, CS needs to provide high-touch customized onboarding when appropriate, while also operationalizing, scaling, and improving onboarding in general.

Expansion Strategy

What does expansion mean to your company? Is it about selling more licenses? Selling on professional services? Upselling on additional features or higher-level plans? Different expansion strategies require different skill sets. No matter what the expansion strategy, I recommend hiring someone data-savvy enough to segment customers appropriately to identify and pursue potential expansion opportunities.

Company Structure

Who will your first CS hire report to? While I recommend having a customer success lead report to the CEO, I’ve also seen a CS lead report to the chief operating officer (COO), head of sales, and even the chief of staff. No matter how you decide to structure your organization, be intentional about this. Where CS sits in your company says a lot to your employees (and to your customers) about how you view your customers. Choose thoughtfully.

Don’t Delay Hiring Your First Customer Success Lead

As I said at the start, customer success is one of the most important pieces to building a successful company. It’s never too early to hire your first CS lead.

And once your CS lead has created repeatable processes and you’re ready to scale, empower that person to hire a team. I’ve found that non-traditional backgrounds like hospitality, retail, and education lay an excellent foundation of soft skills for CS excellence. If you have the time and resources to train someone (and a product that doesn’t require subject matter expertise), you’re likely to get excellent value hiring folks new to the technology industry.

Are you ready to start building your customer success department?

This article was originally published in Forbes.

Yolanda Lau is an entrepreneurship and small business consultant and a co-founder and partner of Lau Labs. She loves to read. Since 2010, she has been focused on “solving” the “problem” of ambitious, educated, talented women and men “opting out” of the traditional workforce for personal reasons. In 2015, she joined forces with two other MIT alumnae to start FlexTeam — a mission-based micro-consulting firm that matches talented mid-career women with meaningful, challenging, temporally flexible, remote project-based work opportunities. FlexTeam’s clients are businesses of all sizes across all industries and sectors and their most requested projects are market research / analysis, competitor research, financial models / analysis, and business strategy. FlexTeam is also the team behind Liquid.

Updated on February 24, 2024

Best Practices For Manager/Employee 1:1 Meetings

By Yolanda Lau

As more companies switch to remote work, it becomes ever more critical to intentionally connect with our co-workers and employees. While we are all trying to clear our calendars, scheduling weekly one-to-one meetings with every direct report continues to be essential. Even when working with the freelancers and contractors who comprise the liquid workforce, I have found that one-to-one meetings are crucial to a successful working relationship. Consistently great one-to-one meetings are the secret to improving team performance, morale, and company culture.

Emotionally intelligent managers know that people need to feel cared for and valued — people are happiest when they are learning, working on challenging projects, given room to make decisions, and encouraged to use their judgment to do their job. Your goal in one-to-one meetings is to discover how your direct reports are feeling and growing so that you can improve how you coach/mentor/sponsor/support them.

Managers should have a weekly one-to-one scheduled with each direct report. It is understandable if it needs to be rescheduled in a specific week, or if it doesn’t happen from time to time. But in my experience, managers should aim to have one-to-one meetings at least three out of every four weeks. It’s important to have regular check-ins to prevent larger issues from festering, allow for immediate and regular feedback and promote open communication.

Structure And Prompts

Start your one-to-ones with open-ended questions to help you understand how employees are doing, what is on their minds and how you might be able to help.

Check in on the employee’s current progress. Are there big or small successes to celebrate? How is progress tracking versus goals? What resources does the employee need? Ongoing reviews of progress ensure that nothing on a performance review comes as a surprise.

Every few weeks, be sure to dedicate some time to discuss long-term goals and ambitions. For example, ask employees what they view as the next step in their career path and how they see themselves in their roles. This helps you develop your people so that you can promote from within.

Here are some questions you may want to incorporate into your one-to-one agendas. These questions can help you understand how employees are motivated by their work, self-assess their skills, and view their control over their work.

1. Prompts To Understand Purpose/Relatedness

What are you most proud of?
Where do you see your job linked to our company’s goals?
When have your contributions to our company’s overall goals inspired you?
What can I do to make you feel that your work is meaningful and crucial to our company’s overall goals?
What feedback is the most meaningful/impactful that you have received?
What challenges/barriers are you facing, and how can I help remove them?
What part of your daily activities do you feel wastes your time?

2. Prompts To Grow Mastery/Competence

What is something you learned this week?
If you reflect on one piece of work product, where are you most proud of that work?
What is something you will do differently next time?
If you were to critique a recent project you completed, what grade would you give yourself? Why?
Are you celebrating the things you did well?
Are you avoiding anything you didn’t do well?
How can you become even better at…?
What can I, as a leader, do to help you to become even better?

3. Prompts To Support Autonomy

Do you have enough space to perform?
Are you able to make decisions that help use your experience and move your work forward?
Are you able to use your experience/expertise to help the company make good decisions?
Do you have the right level of influence to feel you are having an impact/adding value?
Are there things we should change so you feel like you have more ownership of your work?
What types of decisions do you feel comfortable making yourself? When do you hesitate to decide on your own?

As you start to wrap up your one-to-ones, make sure to ask questions that confirm any discussed actions and identify follow-ups for the next meeting. For example:

What are you committing to between now and the next time we meet?
What can I help you with between now and the next time we meet?
Is there anything we didn’t cover that you’d like to discuss next time?

As a manager, it’s your job to create environments and conditions that put employees where their intrinsic motivations are and let them be productive. Committing to regular weekly one-to-one meetings — with employees as well as freelancers — will help you develop your workforce and support their success. Investing this time in discussions with your employees will not only enable them to achieve their goals but is also essential for you to be successful as a leader and manager of people.

This article was originally published in Forbes.

Yolanda Lau is an experienced entrepreneurship consultant, advisor, and Forbes Contributor. She is also an educator, speaker, writer, and non-profit fundraiser.

Since 2010, she has been focused on preparing knowledge workers, educators, and students for the future of work.

Learn more about Yolanda here.

Updated on February 24, 2024

Professional Development Tips For Startup Founders

By Yolanda Lau

I’ve spent my career advising startup founders and founding companies myself. When you work in a big corporate structure, there are many structured professional development opportunities. When you’re a founder, you have to create your own professional development opportunities and prioritize those against building your company.

Here are my tips for professional development for startup founders.

Join a community of peer founders.

Entrepreneurship can be lonely. Finding and joining a program for founders at your stage is a straightforward way to find peer founders. Two organizations that I can personally recommend starting with are All Raise and On Deck, which run programs for founders at various stages. All Raise runs a seed bootcamp and a post-seed to Series A program, and On Deck runs a founder fellowship and a scale fellowship. (Full disclosure: I am an inaugural member of All Raise’s Visionary Voices Speaker Bureau and am an inaugural fellow in On Deck’s Fintech Fellowship and in On Deck’s Customer Success Fellowship.)

Connect with founders who are one to two funding stages ahead.

It always helps to know what’s coming and to get advice from those more experienced than you. These founders know and understand what you are dealing with and can provide a fresh but experienced perspective.

Once you get further ahead, be sure to return the favor and connect with founders who are one to two funding stages behind you. Personally, I love the energy of new founders. I find it energizing to mentor and advise new founders. In addition, the experience of advising other entrepreneurs can help you be more reflective of your own experiences, helping you learn more quickly.

Ask for feedback.

Ask for feedback frequently, and be specific when asking for feedback. I’ve found that frequent feedback has not only helped me continually learn and grow as an entrepreneur, but has also helped me generate new ideas to move my business forward. If someone gives you vague feedback, ask for specifics on what was good or what could be improved. Even when you get specific feedback, ask clarifying questions so you can be sure to leave with actionable insights. Always thank people for their time and feedback, and follow up with your progress if and when appropriate.

Get a mentor or coach.

Yes, I said a coach. Don’t be afraid of coaching. When we were kids, we all had coaches and mentors — experienced advisors to help us along the way. As a founder (or any adult navigating their career), a coach can be invaluable. Coaches can help you improve your leadership skills, increase your productivity, unlock new opportunities and help you set achievable goals and deliver results. Not sure how to find a coach or mentor? Ask your peer founders or founders a few stages ahead of you for some recommendations. However you find your coach, make sure you find someone you connect with and trust. Without trust, coaching won’t get you anywhere.

Delegate, delegate, delegate.

Don’t hire quickly. In fact, I recommend doing each job function before hiring. But once you understand the work that needs to be done, delegate it as quickly as you can. Hire employees if the work calls for someone internal, but also be open to building a virtual talent bench. Using a liquid workforce ensures that companies can tap into the right expertise and skill sets as needed for any time frame. Engaging on-demand advisors and consultants is an efficient way for startups to grow their teams and scale their businesses without increasing their headcount.

Grow your network.

When you’re busy building your startup, it can be too easy to get deep into the weeds. As a founder, your role should be strategic. Yes, you should dig in when needed, but you should be focusing on the overall vision. Building a network of fellow founders, industry experts, investors, mentors, coaches and advisors will help you accomplish your extraordinary vision. Network with other founders in your industry, regardless of stage. Network with investors in your industry, even if you aren’t fundraising — and in fact, especially when you aren’t fundraising.

Build a “personal board of advisors.”

No one is exactly like you, and no one has built a startup precisely like yours. So there isn’t a single person out there who can advise you on all aspects of your startup. You’ll have to find and build a group of mentors and advisors who can help you with various issues. The right mentors are people who believe in you and are willing to provide honest, candid feedback.

Get a COO.

As soon as you can, get yourself out of the business of running the day-to-day operations and hire a COO. You need a COO who will not only have strong organizational, analytical, and project management skills but will also be your partner in growing your business. Trust and good communication are essential building blocks to the success of your relationship. The right COO will help you run your company’s operations while helping you take it to the next level.

Invest in your development.

As a founder, it’s easy to put off spending time networking or investing in your personal development. After all, there’s always a new fire to fight or an opportunity to tackle every day. Personal development time can be a low priority compared to the day-to-day requirements of running and growing your business. But this personal investment is critical to your success as a founder and entrepreneur. Prioritize and carve out time to focus on your personal development — invest in yourself as a leader, and it will help you in ways that you won’t anticipate.

This article was originally published in Forbes.

Yolanda Lau is an experienced entrepreneurship consultant, advisor, and Forbes Contributor. She is also an educator, speaker, writer, and non-profit fundraiser.

Since 2010, she has been focused on preparing knowledge workers, educators, and students for the future of work.

Learn more about Yolanda here.

Updated on February 24, 2024

Time For HR To Manage The On-Demand Workforce

By Yolanda Lau

In many companies, freelancers are often the “hidden” workforce. The human resources (HR) team is not always involved in the hiring and management of freelancers. But as organizations shift to being project-based versus role-based, HR must take the lead in managing the on-demand workforce. We must rethink the role of HR in enabling the future of work.

I find there are five key areas that HR leaders should first focus on as they take the lead on managing the on-demand workforce.

Establish Hiring Practices

The HR team has the best expertise for hiring and engaging freelancers. Your recruiting resources are experts at sourcing and assessing talent — managers should be leveraging these recruiters to find the best freelance talent.

And just as your company has defined practices for hiring employees, hiring practices also must be defined for engaging freelancers and independent contractors. It’s just as critical when working with freelancers.

Set the minimum standards for what needs to be completed before a freelancer can be engaged for the first time. For example, specify that at least two interviewers should speak to the freelancer to assess qualifications and fit. Always require background and reference checks. Decide whether a non-disclosure agreement (NDA) is mandatory or define the conditions that trigger this requirement. Establish benchmarks for hourly rate ranges for the types of freelancers your company will most frequently engage.

Provide Internal Training

The HR department should also provide training for managers on best practices for working with freelancers and independent contractors. This training is important for boosting project success rates and ensuring that managers understand compliance requirements.

When working with freelancers and independent contractors, managers need to be aware of local, state, and federal regulations regarding engaging freelancers. For example, the IRS considers the behavioral control, financial control, and relationship of the parties when evaluating worker classification. Understanding the regulations is critical to ensure workers are not misclassified as freelancers instead of employees, which exposes your company to legal penalties and liabilities.

Standardize The Onboarding Process

It’s a best practice for companies to have standardized onboarding processes for their employees. The HR team should establish a standard onboarding process for freelancers and independent contractors. This process will be distinct from the employee onboarding process and reflect the different needs and requirements related to freelancers.

For example, rather than collecting a W-2 during onboarding, your company will need to collect a W-9 from U.S. freelancers or a W-8 from foreign freelancers. Your onboarding process should include all the essential documents for a freelance engagement, like an executed contract, NDA, etc. Onboarding should also include the critical “welcome” elements, such as information on any tools that the freelancer will need to access.

Standardizing the freelancer onboarding process ensures that all the essential documents are completed for every engagement and saves your company significant time.

Set Performance Evaluation Guidelines

Establishing performance evaluation processes and standards is a key element of any HR team’s responsibilities. Performance evaluations with on-demand workers are both similar and different from evaluating employees.

Performance assessments should be done on a project-by-project basis and should include a recommendation as to whether the worker should be considered for future projects. In addition to the project evaluations, the skill sets of each worker should also be tracked. Insights into skill sets help hiring managers source the best fit for upcoming projects from already vetted on-demand talent.

Determine Supporting Tools And Systems

Many companies manage their freelance engagements through a hodgepodge of tools. For example, some companies manage freelancers entirely manually, tracking information in various spreadsheets. Manual management of freelancers can become time-consuming and is prone to errors. And with an assortment of tools, it’s hard to have complete visibility of all freelancer and independent contractor activity and expenses.

The human resources team should take the lead on defining the central tool or system for the company, making it easy for finance, legal, HR, and line managers to collaborate and have complete visibility of on-demand workforce engagements. Freelance and vendor management systems, like the solutions my company offers, provide the integrated capabilities critical for on-demand workforce management.

With a central tool or system, you can more readily develop an external talent bench to support your company. An on-demand talent bench can help your company be much more agile as well as digitally ready.

Leading The Development Of The On-Demand Workforce

HR should be leading the sourcing and development of all talent, not just internal talent. HR leaders have the expertise and the right skills and resources on their teams to develop an on-demand workforce successfully. A blended talent strategy will supplement and complement internal teams. It’s time for HR to lead the transition to the future of work.

This article was originally published in Forbes.

Interested in the Future of Work? Join the Work of the Future #FutureOfWork Facebook Group.

Yolanda Lau is an experienced entrepreneurship consultant, advisor, and Forbes Contributor. She is also an educator, speaker, writer, and non-profit fundraiser.

Since 2010, she has been focused on preparing knowledge workers, educators, and students for the future of work.

Learn more about Yolanda here.

FlexTeam is a mission-based micro-consulting firm, co-founded by Yolanda Lau in 2015, that matches talented mid-career women with meaningful, challenging, temporally flexible, remote project-based work opportunities. FlexTeam’s clients are businesses of all sizes across all industries and sectors. FlexTeam’s most requested projects are competitor / market research, financial models, and investor decks. FlexTeam is also the team behind Liquid.

Updated on February 24, 2024

Remote Work: Creating A Documentation-First Culture

By Yolanda Lau

Before the pandemic, the growth of remote work was already a significant workforce trend as part of the future of work — remote work options increased threefold from 1996 to 2016. After the experiences of the last year, this trend has only accelerated. My current team is fully remote (with a mix of employees, independent contractors, agencies, and freelancers), and I’ve learned that one of the keys to success with remote workforce management is documentation. Whether your company is considering an entirely remote workforce or a hybrid workforce, it’s critical to be a documentation-first company.

Benefits Of A Remote Or Hybrid Workforce

Hiring remote workers, including freelancers or independent contractors, has many different benefits for your firm. One of these benefits is cost savings, with a reduction in onsite operations costs. Even more importantly, your company has access to a much larger talent pool with the removal of geographic obstacles to hiring. And remote workers can be even more productive than onsite workers. A study published in Harvard Business Review found that work-from-anywhere arrangements were even more productive than traditional work-from-home policies. And in a recent PwC survey of U.S. executives, 83% of employers reported that their companies found success with shifting to remote work.

Remote work arrangements benefit the company and the worker — increasing the attractiveness of working for your company not only for potential new hires but also for retaining existing employees. A Gallup survey found that 54% of office workers would leave their current job for one that offers flexible work.

Challenges Of A Remote Or Hybrid Workforce

But engaging a remote workforce does also create challenges. Managing benefits can become more complicated for your HR team, and communication can be a critical issue with the potential for not enough communication and/or remote employees feeling left out or excluded. Plus, building and maintaining your company culture takes more thought and dedicated effort and programs with a dispersed workforce. One of the ways to overcome these challenges is with a documentation mindset.

Going Beyond Onboarding

It’s common for companies to have a standardized onboarding process to complete and collect all the necessary forms, like W-2s for employees or W-9s for freelancers. A digital onboarding process makes it easy to assemble and organize all the required forms quickly. But when you have remote workers, it’s critical to go beyond the documents and deliver a comprehensive onboarding experience. After all, a 2018 survey found that 93% of employers concur that a good onboarding experience is critical to retaining workers.

You need a documentation-first mindset when engaging a remote workforce. Think about how you translate an onsite onboarding experience to a digital experience. How do you bring your company’s culture to life? How do you make your company’s resources and tools easily accessible and understood? What training do you need to provide?

Preparing and regularly updating documentation in advance is critical to success as you scale your remote workforce. This shouldn’t be an ad hoc exercise, but rather something that your company regularly dedicates time to create, maintain, and improve.

Increasing Knowledge Sharing

With my remote team, I’ve found that documenting our processes and best practices is essential to our success in working well together, regardless of location. Fostering knowledge sharing through “living” documents increases our ability to collaborate effectively and for employees and freelancers to quickly help with new projects or contribute impactful ideas. And one of the most important areas to document is related to communication.

Make sure that your employees and contractors have a dedicated place for communication. For example, we’ve defined Slack channels for a variety of topics and projects, as well as for sharing FAQs. We also have documented details like tips for communication styles, expectations for communication content and frequency for project updates, who to connect with for different types of questions, and more. Effective, two-way communication is even more essential when working with a remote team.

Plus, with a documentation-first approach, it’s much easier to shift to a project-based work model. Moving from a role-based to a project-based organization increases the speed and agility of your business. This type of organization is only effective with robust processes and communication.

Embrace The Remote Workforce

It’s time to embrace new models of work and grow your remote workforce. Hiring remote employees, freelancers and contractors strengthens your talent pool and helps make your company more agile. With a documentation-first mindset, your company can smoothly transition to a remote or hybrid workforce. And that mindset will also help you take a more agile and project-based approach to plan and execute initiatives. Get ready to thrive in the future of work by becoming a documentation-first company and growing your remote team.

This article was originally published in Forbes.

Interested in the Future of Work? Join the Work of the Future #FutureOfWork Facebook Group.

Yolanda Lau is an experienced entrepreneurship consultant, advisor, and Forbes Contributor. She is also an educator, speaker, writer, and non-profit fundraiser.

Since 2010, she has been focused on preparing knowledge workers, educators, and students for the future of work.

Learn more about Yolanda here.

Updated on February 24, 2024

Eight Practices Of Successful COOs

By Yolanda Lau

Being the chief operating officer or head of operations is hard work. In many organizations, from tech startups to social enterprises, the COO is the director of “getting everything done.” While COOs need to have strong organizational, analytical and project-management skills to solve problems strategically and create procedures, there’s much more to the job.

Whether you’re a new COO or an experienced VP of operations looking to level up your game, you’ve come to the right place.

The following are eight things successful operations leaders do:

1. Build COO-CEO partnership and alignment.

The COO role is unique at every company and depends on company specifics and the CEO’s needs. Align with the CEO early and often on what you can take off their plate. This might be a mix of company-wide alignment and planning, owning departments or teams and taking on special projects or initiatives. Never forget that the CEO and COO are partners in growing the business together.

In some ways, the COO role is a lot like the chief of staff role — you are a sounding board and thinking partner. Like any meaningful relationship, trust, empathy, and communication are foundational. Building and maintaining trust requires maintaining confidentiality when needed, being transparent with the CEO, and thinking through situations and problems using the lens of what is best for the organization and the CEO. Always own up to any mistakes made and lead with grace and compassion.

2. Develop relationships.

Yes, you need to be intelligent, perceptive, and organized, but operations is also about knowing the right people and getting them together to get stuff done quickly and efficiently. One COO I know told me that the biggest value-add this past year has been running workshops to help people decide what their priorities are — not the analytical bits she was hired for.

Make time to put yourself in other people’s shoes. Adapting your style to what others need allows you to develop more robust relationships with your team and colleagues. Be willing to shift how you talk and act, depending on what is appropriate for that specific person in that particular conversation.

Put the work into understanding the power dynamics and politics in your company. In every organization, there are people who are not necessarily senior in role or title but who are very well respected. These are people you don’t want to overlook — you want them on your side.

3. Develop adaptability, flexibility, and resiliency.

Just as soft skills like resilience and adaptability are essential for the future of work, these same skills are needed to be a high-performing COO. Adaptability fosters creative thinking, which is critical for planning and executing strategic initiatives. Flexibility enables you to quickly pivot to any opportunity or challenge, while resiliency helps you overcome those challenges.

4. Prepare, prepare, prepare.

As a COO or director of operations, your time is limited. Preparation is invaluable. Have a clear plan of what you need to get out of each discussion before going in. Prep your presentations and workshops with as much detail as is practical. The more work you put into clearly understanding what you need out of each meeting or event, the more likely you will get it. And the more efficient you are with each meeting, the more people will know you appreciate their time and, in turn, will appreciate you.

5. Develop a data-driven mindset.

For COOs, a data-driven mindset is essential for tackling day-to-day and strategic decision-making. Successful COOs rely on data and metrics as critical inputs when determining recommendations and decisions. But being data-driven doesn’t mean using any and all data. You need to know which data matters, why, and for what purposes, while being mindful of any data limitations. A data-driven mindset requires open thinking, not rigid thinking — data can yield unexpected possibilities and opportunities but can also leave questions unanswered.

6. Keep it simple.

Don’t overcomplicate things. You may be tempted to demonstrate your intelligence by using fancy words or phrasing things in a complex manner. Instead, make it a point to create simplicity and clarity with straightforward questions, clear reports, simple explanations, easy-to-follow presentations, and uncomplicated plans. The more you can distill complex concepts into something easy to understand, the better. While your work is complex, present it so that anyone can follow along — which will make work more efficient. Simplicity breeds speed, scalability, and success.

7. Build your team.

Like any leadership role, as COO, you’re only as good as your team. But as the future of work evolves, how you build, grow and adapt that team is changing. A 2020 HBS and BCG study surveying business executives found that 90% expect that talent platforms will be critical for their competitive advantage. As COO, you need to draw on the right skills and expertise at the right time — on-demand freelancers and consultants can add and supplement the skills and expertise of your team to accelerate strategic initiatives and ensure success.

8. Don’t forget the strategy.

There is never a lack of high-priority things to get done. It can be too easy to get down into the weeds and neglect the high-level strategy. Spend some time each week thinking about the largest obstacles to the company delivering on its goals — like needing more output from a particular team. While you might not be able to address everything immediately, make sure you’re making significant progress each quarter and over the course of a year.

Take operations leadership to the next level.

Following these eight practices can help you achieve success as COO, regardless of industry. Evaluate to what extent you’ve already adopted these practices and what you can do to continue to improve in each area. You’re no longer just the COO — you are the critical partner in helping to grow and evolve your business.

This article was originally published in Forbes.

Yolanda Lau is an experienced entrepreneurship consultant, advisor, and Forbes Contributor. She is also an educator, speaker, writer, and non-profit fundraiser.

Since 2010, she has been focused on preparing knowledge workers, educators, and students for the future of work.

Learn more about Yolanda here.

Updated on February 24, 2024

Nine Tips For Leading With Grace And Compassion

By Yolanda Lau

With many companies forecasting a sharp decrease in revenue and profits due to these uncertain times, CEOs and other leaders are under significant pressure. Not only do they have to lead themselves through these challenging times, but they are also responsible for managing and guiding their organizations and executives — and their respective teams — to succeed in stressful times. Leaders must cultivate and promote healthy and resilient mindsets on the current crisis and future crises to come.

By cultivating the following habits and behaviors, CEOs, executives and heads of HR can lead with grace and compassion to create a productive and mindful work atmosphere while positioning their companies for sustainable long-term growth and success.

1. Embrace self-awareness and self-compassion.

Start by being aware that the events of the world have affected you, and give yourself compassion for how you have reacted. Working 80-hour weeks is not sustainable for you or for your team. Deciding to furlough and/or lay off employees is emotionally draining, especially when these are people whom you’ve worked with for a long time who have become like family. Acknowledge your feelings and give yourself the gift of grace. Be kind to yourself. Practicing self-compassion is the first step to compassionate leadership.

2. Develop a gratitude practice.

I believe gratitude makes for more effective leadership. Developing an attitude of gratitude gives leaders the focus needed to quickly pivot in stressful environments and challenging situations, such as those we are all experiencing today. When you pause to practice gratitude, you give your mind, emotions and even your body a moment to recalibrate and become more resilient. This helps clear your mind of distractions, allowing you to more clearly focus on the present and uncover hidden opportunities. In addition, practicing gratitude can contribute to a more positive work environment, allowing your team to work more effectively.

3. Practice and hone emotional intelligence.

Develop your emotional intelligence and encourage your executives to bring their emotions to work. In turn, your executives will encourage their respective teams to fine-tune their emotional intelligence. As a leader, you must manage how you present your emotions while also encouraging the spreading of emotions that can spur higher productivity, increased job satisfaction and better financial performance.

4. Embrace curiosity, open-mindedness and innovation.

Encouraging diversity of thought is critical, especially during a crisis. Being curious allows you to explore challenges and find innovative solutions and opportunities. Encourage teams to think outside the box and be open-minded. This allows you to identify and quickly address new opportunities being created as a result of this crisis. More importantly, this lays a strong foundation for agile growth, positioning your company for future success.

5. Promote mindfulness.

Like emotional intelligence, mindfulness at work starts from compassionate leadership and trickles down through the organization. Learn to be mindful and present in all of your interactions, encouraging your teams to do the same. Leading with mindfulness can help improve overall productivity, decrease stress, lead to increased innovation and create a healthier workplace for all.

6. Practice active, compassionate listening.

Practice active, compassionate listening, especially with your team and direct reports. Listen attentively when your employees speak, taking care to defer judgment. Ask pertinent, open-ended questions and paraphrase when appropriate to show your genuine desire to come to a mutually beneficial understanding. Active listening can build strong relationships and help employees feel less isolated. While many of us are working remotely and decreasing our social interactions, many of us need to feel more connected to others. In addition, during challenging times, it’s more important than ever to insist on regular one-to-one meetings.

7. Encourage asking for help.

There’s a looming mental health crisis coming as a result of these uncertain times. Everyone needs help right now, but it can be challenging for high achievers to ask for help. Start by checking in with employees. Find out how they are doing and encourage them to ask for what they need. Encourage departments to engage a liquid workforce, especially if you have enacted a hiring freeze due to budgetary concerns. Getting your team the on-demand help that they need can help increase productivity and morale.

8. Focus on the present, while keeping an eye on the future.

The goal isn’t to predict the future, but to bolster your company to be better prepared for whatever may come. Make the changes you need to position your company to weather future challenges while staying present and mindful. This too shall pass, just as many other challenges before it has. Focus on positioning your company to become agile so that you can quickly adapt and pivot as the future becomes more clear.

9. Commit to leading with grace and compassion.

You may not feel comfortable demonstrating vulnerabilities, but leaders need to be aware that your team is always modeling the behavior they see. Your employees are looking to you and other leadership to understand what is appropriate. If you appear to be close-minded or insist on doing it all yourself, executives and employees will follow suit. Ineffective leadership can very quickly negatively impact productivity, morale and eventually the bottom line.

However, leaders who are compassionate, mindful and emotionally intelligent active listeners are better equipped to lead their companies through uncertainty and are well-positioned for post-crisis growth and success. When you commit yourself to lead with grace and compassion, you give yourself and your organization the mindset and tools to succeed during any circumstances.

This article was originally published in Forbes.

Yolanda Lau is an experienced entrepreneurship consultant, advisor, and Forbes Contributor. She is also an educator, speaker, writer, and non-profit fundraiser.

Since 2010, she has been focused on preparing knowledge workers, educators, and students for the future of work.

Learn more about Yolanda here.