Managing Your Team
Virtual CEO Summit Recap
WITH ARUP ROY BURMAN AND MEENA SANKARAN
Managing Your Team with Arup Roy Burman, Founder & CEO of Elemeno Health and Meena Sankaran, Founder & CEO of KETOS
Our second topic during our Virtual ONE WORLD CEO Summit was, “Managing Your Team,” which was broken up into two parts. The first part, which focused on “Attracting and Retaining Talent,” was led by Arup Roy-Burman, Founder and CEO of Elemeno Health, an online platform designed to empower medical staff.
Key Takeaways, Insights, and Resources for Attracting Talent as a Mission Driven Founder:
Attract talent by leading with your mission; ensure that all employees are both drawn to and support your mission
People that can wear different hats at the early stages of the company are crucial but as the company grows, people will need to be more specialized
Find employees through personal networks, maintain relationships with individuals that you can hire in the future, test out if individuals fit the culture and have the skills
“Try before you buy:” bring someone in as an independent contractor for a project, test out their work style, and then hire them full time if they’re a good fit
Diversity, in ethnicity, sexuality, gender, background, and age, fuels the strength of a company
Increase diversity by working through diverse hiring channels: affinity groups, facebook, LinkedIn
Create a company culture that is welcome to a diverse workforce
Retain talent by recognizing everyone’s contributions and celebrating successes
Resources:
Inclusive Hiring: Why it’s hard, why it’s important, and how you can start making a difference.
Join the Movement! (Elemeno Health recruiting video)
Paired Sourcing (Recruiting tool to help companies find ideal candidates)
Upwork (freelancing marketplace, test people out to see if their skills are real and it is a good fit.)
Handshake (recruiting, also for students)
LeaderSpring Center in Oakland (Creating Equity + Transformation in Leadership)
Gather (Make virtual interactions more human)
Angel List (Remote job & Startup job search)
YC community
For the second portion of the topic, the conversation shifted to “Building a Great Culture,” which was led by Meena Sankaran, Founder and CEO of KETOS, a water intelligence system designed to enhance water quality and efficiency.
Key Takeaways, Insights, and Resources for Building a Great Culture as a CEO:
Setting the tone from a people point: What is the culture you want to create and how do you want relationships between and with employees to fuel that
Being intentional about building the culture: company & team values are the most important you set up. #1 value is humility, respect, employee empowerment, failing faster
Creating culture KETOS is a collaborative process with the first 10 hires, then have it involved in the recruiting process. Pulling in team members and advisors in helping to find new employees. Making it everyone’s job to find great talent to build the company
1:1 quarterly sit-downs every team member (team nearly 60), continue building trust while the team is growing. This fosters transparency and loyalty
Not being Culture Mediator: ensuring that your team is carrying the torch the same way you would. Funnel feedback to department leaders. Build it from ground up and not top down
Creating intentional steps connecting with people and their family: celebrating KETOS babies & weddings. Acknowledging the extended KETOS families and ecosystem
Have an inspiration wall for employees: employees bring quotes. Creating a new bee profile and joining it with the whole company (top 3 things he’s doing, family etc.)
Resources:
Management Innovation eXchange (Gary Hamel of LSE, talk on creating culture)
THE NEXT GENERATION OF STARTUPS IS REMOTE (YCombinator)
The Mosaic Project (Mosaic does anti-bias training with teams)
Fast Company: Culture Eats Strategy for Lunch
Remote Teams Can Have Great Culture. These 6 Strategies Will Make It Happen.