On 5 October, Sparkly had the opportunity to run a workshop at Studio Minds in Tartu as part of Entrepreneurship Week. Thank you to Jaanika Muru, one of the main organisers, for giving us this opportunity!
Most of the participants were micro and small business owners, so we talked about who you are as an entrepreneur, what your strengths are, and how to choose your first employee or co-founder. Which qualities actually matter? How do you decide whether someone is right for you and your business?
The hour and a half flew by. The best part came at the end, when we summed up the workshop and people shared what they would take away. Some recognised why things had gone wrong before. Others saw what they could do differently from now on.
For me, the most important thing in workshops like this is the realisation that people are different. Something that comes naturally to you may require a daily effort from someone else. And the reverse is also true.
Ability and skill are not the same thing
When hiring, we talk a lot about skills. Can someone sell, do marketing, work with spreadsheets or serve customers? What have they studied, and where have they worked before?
But what is their natural capacity for this work? What kind of work suits them? Which tasks let them use their strengths, and which ones require them to keep pushing themselves?
Someone may have learned to do something well. They can manage it. But do they want to do it day after day? And what does it cost them to keep managing it?
I believe it makes sense to build your life and your business around strengths. Understand what comes naturally to you, then learn the skills you need to use those strengths well. For work that calls for different strengths, find people who complement you.
As an entrepreneur, you do not have to be the best at everything. You do need to understand what the business needs and who will do the work.
Are you looking for someone who complements you, or simply someone to help?
The search for a first employee often starts when you can no longer keep up. There is too much to do. So you list all the work you no longer want to do or cannot manage, and start looking for someone to take it over.
But take another look at that list. Is it really one person's job?
On one hand, you want this person to be outgoing, find new customers and take the initiative. On the other, you want them to keep the details in order, enjoy repetitive tasks and check everything thoroughly. It would also be helpful if they could do some marketing and come up with new ideas when needed.
Some people enjoy that variety. But we cannot assume it suits everyone who has the skills to do those tasks.
A job advertisement can end up calling for several different personality profiles at once. We are looking for one person, but we have assembled the expectations from the strengths of several people.
Then we wonder why we cannot find the right candidate. Or why the person we hired is excellent at some things but struggles with others.
Part of the problem may have arisen before hiring even began, when we put the job together.
The same question matters even more when choosing a co-founder. Do they complement you where the business needs it? How will you divide responsibility? If you both love coming up with ideas and starting new things, who will make sure those things get finished?
Getting along well matters. But for a business to work, the necessary work also has to get done.
What happens to the potential we do not use?
There is another side to this: we hire a versatile person but use only a small part of what they can do.
They could contribute more. They may have good ideas, different strengths and a desire to take on more responsibility. But we have assigned them to one task and may not even know what else they could do.
That is when someone may start to feel that their potential is neither noticed nor valued.
At the same time, being versatile does not mean that a person should be given every leftover task in the business. The question is which abilities they want to use and how those abilities fit the needs of the business.
To find out, we need to get to know the person. A CV alone is not enough.
You cannot see this information just by looking at someone
Looking at a person does not tell us what kind of work will suit them in the long run. We cannot see which strengths have gone unused or why a particular task drains them disproportionately.
The person may not yet be able to put it into words either. They know that work goes well in some situations, while in others they constantly have to force themselves. But why?
That is why we need to explore these things deliberately. Ask questions, compare a person's preferences with the actual work and, where possible, try things out in practice.
Otherwise, we make decisions using the information that is easiest to see: previous experience, learned skills and how someone presents themselves in an interview. Some of the information that matters for fit remains hidden.
That is one way hiring mistakes happen. A person may be capable and skilled, but the work, the division of responsibilities or the relationship with their manager may prevent them from using those strengths well. Both sides become dissatisfied.
At the end of the Tartu workshop, it was good to hear participants connect these ideas with their own experiences. Why a particular collaboration had not worked. Why they themselves had struggled with certain tasks. What they would look at differently when choosing the next person.
This is what matters to Sparkly: learning to notice differences between people earlier and take them into account. Already when we divide work, design a role or choose a co-founder.
In a small business, every person has a significant impact. When we understand our own strengths and the kind of support we need, we have a better chance of finding someone alongside whom we can both achieve more.
And someone who can feel good doing that work.
Mikk Orglaan, Sparkly.hr CEO