Getting a Team Right At Your Startup w/ Dipti Shah | UNARIC

00:00
Dipti Shah
Biggest mistake people make is they'll hire skills over culture fit. Lead by example. That's first and foremost transparent, clear, set your boundaries.

00:09
Amardeep Parmar
That's Dipti Shah, global people leader who sits on the board of trustees with both mind and dyslexia sparks.

00:17
Dipti Shah
Morale was really low and engagement was also really low within a three year period. Transformed it to becoming one of the best places to work for. Retention rates were 85, 86% and all of those things. Those engagement pieces played a part in a successful private equity sale.

00:35
Amardeep Parmar
She's had vast experience in building great cultures. For fast growing companies.

00:41
Dipti Shah
Being scrappy doesn't always mean not having structure at all.

00:43
Amardeep Parmar
So many founders struggle with finding the right people and growing and managing their team. Are you one of them?

00:49
Dipti Shah
Individuals equally should take responsibility for their own development and staying ahead of the game.

00:54
Amardeep Parmar
If you're struggling to build and manage your team, keep listening. You've had so much experience with managing people and hiring lots of people too. What's one of the biggest mistakes people make when they're hiring for their first employees?

01:12
Dipti Shah
I think particularly in startups and founder led businesses, the biggest mistake people make is they'll hire skills over culture fit. You know, when you're starting a company, you know it, there's a science to it. And that team that you recruit is your crew essentially. And you need a good culture fit of people who are adaptable and flexible.

01:33
Amardeep Parmar
How can people work out that culture fit?

01:36
Dipti Shah
And through probing questions. I mean, you know your business, you know your personality and style and you know what you're looking for essentially. And you know when you're at that startup founder stage, there's a lot of grafting to be done. So what you're testing for are skills or people that can be adaptable, can think slightly out the box, a little bit fun, you know, to go off script.

01:59
Amardeep Parmar
And obviously communication is such a big part of that, right? Especially when somebody joins. How can people work on making sure they've got good communication with their team?

02:07
Dipti Shah
Lead by example. That's first and foremost transparent, clear, set your boundaries. You know, that whole piece about relationship building is so key that you understand the dynamic of how people work.

02:20
Amardeep Parmar
And how do you manage that? Like in terms of, say for example, when you're at a corporate, they might have very strict timelines. Okay, you have a review at this time, you have a review at that time. In a startup it can be a bit more chaotic. What systems you think work well or how can people think about what systems to use?

02:34
Dipti Shah
I think that comes down to having a transparent conversation. Be it go for a coffee, do a regular check in call, just see how you are. That question of how are you getting on? Do you need help? How can I help you? All of those things break down the barriers to build that communication relationship. Because when you know, when you're from a founder's perspective, you're building, you're grafting, you want to get to the end quicker, you've almost got what that next phase of growth looks like, trying to get there, and you're trying to get there as quickly as you can. But it's about adapting and understanding the people that you work with.

03:12
Amardeep Parmar
I think founders are terrible at hiring at the right time as well because so many they worry about, okay, it's better if I just do it myself. And when they then hire, they may be higher late than they should and then sometimes micromanage more than they should do as well. So if you're an early stage founder who's, it's your baby, right, and you're hiring now somebody to help you out, how can you try to not be that micromanager and how can you manage those relationships are better?

03:37
Dipti Shah
Empower, empower the people that you work with. So you know the people that you're hiring that person for a specific need, be it people, for example, to oversee some of the people aspects and from a strategic perspective, but also transaction perspective. So you need to empower that person to go and do what they need to do and deliver what they need to do without having to micromanage. And that person is going to be part of your team during that next phase.

04:04
Amardeep Parmar
And looking at that as well. So it's one of the emotional responses, right of okay, I need to make sure it's being done my way. How much leverage can you give or how much leeway do you give? If somebody isn't doing it the right way and you don't want to micromanage them, does that mean you let them go or do you just willing to accept things in a different way?

04:22
Dipti Shah
As a leader, I think it's important to coach and that comes from that open, transparent conversations, you know, getting to know the person that you're working with, understand how they tick, where they work, and setting out those clear expectations and goals right from the very beginning and addressing any sort of problems early on in doing that.

04:42
Amardeep Parmar
One of the biggest challenges, well, early stage company is that there's gonna be so many pivots, things are gonna change completely. I was mentioning earlier about a couple of companies I invested in when I first invested them and two years later doing something completely different. And then that can make it really difficult for hiring too because how do you hire somebody who can go with you on that journey and be there for the future as well rather than just what you need right now?

05:04
Dipti Shah
Yeah, so that's a really interesting question, but I think it's quite key to the founder led startup environment because you're looking for that flexibility, you're looking for that adaptability, somebody who's going to grow with the business and adapt and there's, you know, the world is so turbulent, the world of AI is so turbulent at the moment. Everyone needs to have that growth, learning mindset. So again, it comes back to that cultural fit. Can you work with that person? Will they integrate with the team? Do they understand what you're trying to achieve and be a grafter?

05:38
Amardeep Parmar
You mentioned there about AI as well and now a lot in the news you're seeing about, okay, you can build a billion dollar company, one person, and obviously it's not quite that easy. But how has this affected the way you're looking at things and the way that people you're working with are looking at things in terms of that hiring piece? Because do you see people, are people delaying the decisions to hire because they're thinking maybe I can use AI or I think a lot of people are just very confused right now about do I hire, do I use AI, what do I do, how do you think about those challenges?

06:05
Dipti Shah
Me personally, I, there's lots of mixed views out there. People think it's an opportunity to reduce the number of hires. Some people view it as to drive efficiency. From my perspective, AI is great, a great tool, particularly in the startup environment to add value. And I think, you know, whoever is hired and the founders should be thinking with that 10x mentality that if they can increase value using AI, it releases them to do other things.

06:35
Amardeep Parmar
Have you got any examples you see this working at the moment with companies you're working with?

06:39
Dipti Shah
I'm in the recruitment area particularly, you know, in the HR arena. There's a lot of transactional, just listive, governance, admin, you know, there are so many AI tools that can, you know, quickly do predictives and including on the reporting side as well, rather than having 10,000 dashboards and AI is streamlining that and making it much more quicker to make decisions.

07:06
Amardeep Parmar
And it was even the best intentional. You hire people and things go wrong or there's a bit of conflict. What process do you go through with that in order to resolve the conflict as best you can?

07:19
Dipti Shah
I strongly believe in open transplant conversations right from the beginning to address any niggles to understand what exactly is going on. And that comes from relationship building, communications. And I think there's an acceptance in there as well that if things are not working out as should be, it's okay to have that conversation. And in some ways it's called kind leadership.

07:41
Amardeep Parmar
And I know that people worry about that too. Right. Is that they hire somebody who they kind of think isn't right, but then they're very scared to let them go because it's that personal connection. And I think especially early stage founders, they almost have done this in the past. You try to be everybody's best friend and then it makes it much harder to then let people go. What kind of steps can people put in first or when? How do you know when it's the right time to let somebody go versus whether to coach them?

08:07
Dipti Shah
I think if those clear expectations are set right from the beginning and you see this quite a lot in the founder arena where there are a lot of the high of the dumpling networks of people. And so this conflict comes up quite often where you're giving somebody a chance, you're giving them an opportunity, but then they take it for granted almost sometimes and they don't deliver what they need to do. So that's where those clear expectations have to actually be set from the beginning and those regular check ins to do a simple are we on track? Are we off track? And if we're off track, why are we off track? What are you doing to get yourself back on track? And so then it just eases the way to have the conversation.

08:48
Dipti Shah
Okay, things are not working out, you might want to look elsewhere or we might, your skills are suited somewhere else. And I think you know those entry and exit conversations on how you make people feel is the journey and.

09:03
Amardeep Parmar
Looking at that too. So when somebody joins, when you're at a corporate, right, you know, okay, I'm gonna start as an associate, then I'm gonna senior associate after two years or three years, then it's manager, then whatever it is, you can join a company, say one of the big four or bank, you know, this is my pathway. Right. Because if you're a startup, you don't even know if the company's gonna exist in two years time.

09:22
Dipti Shah
No.

09:23
Amardeep Parmar
And that can be really scary for a lot of people. And I think especially when you look at the kind of people of Asian background as well, you have so many doing well, in corporate careers who maybe could really thrive in the start of the world, but it's just that fear of like, hey, if I move here, then what's going to happen? How can you attract people who are maybe very, doing very well in the corporate space to come into the startup world and be able to give them some kind of reassurance or give them some kind of a pathway.

09:50
Dipti Shah
I don't even know if it's about pathways anymore in today's world because even the large companies are seeing that the whole world of an arena of learning and development is changing where, you know, in time to come you're not going to have job titles probably it's a lot of it's about that skill and exposure to learning. So in my previous organisation it was a global martech business and quite lean structured, but the exposure to learning horizontally was incredible. And it's about having that, you know, I would encourage people to have recognised potential, obviously do your due diligence whether you see yourself as a fit, but approach it with a growth mindset in terms of the skills and development you may learn holistically.

10:41
Amardeep Parmar
Hello. Hello. Quick interruption to let you know a bit more about BAE HQ. We're the community for high growth Asian heritage entrepreneurs, operators and investors in the UK. You can join us totally free at thebaehq.com/join. There. You'll get our CEO structure in your inbox every week, which is content, events and opportunities. You can also get access to our free startup Fundamentals course by joining. Let's get back to the show. And I guess that was a big challenge right. Now I look at it where when I heard you serve a job back in the day is that you had different courses, that company would pay for you to go on things like that. Whereas now because of AI and all the stuff that's available online, it's where does that responsibility lay?

11:28
Amardeep Parmar
Because I think before people always looked at employer to be sending them learning material, whereas now is it the owner's more than the employee to make sure that you're keeping ahead of the curve, to make sure you're selling value to the company or how should we think about that?

11:40
Dipti Shah
I mean, I think the employer always has a responsibility and that is to provide an infrastructure, whatever it might look like for learning and development and growth. But individuals equally should take responsibility for their own development and staying ahead of the game. And you know, with technology nowadays there's no excuse really, because it's just available, you know, even if it's, you know, you get these apps now that can compress a book into, you know, flashcards, you know, so there's no excuse really.

12:11
Amardeep Parmar
We mentioned earlier as well about leading by example. How can people be the kind of person that somebody wants to work for?

12:18
Dipti Shah
I think that's an internal question. I would want, I would ask myself, somebody would I want to work for that company? If I, if I was that company, what would I want it to look like? And what does good leadership look like to me? And that's trust, that's leading by empathy, that's celebrating wins, giving recognition to the people. And I think I want to take people on that journey and I'll hope other founders felt the same.

12:48
Amardeep Parmar
And yeah, looking at that too. So you've been about celebrating wins there. And one of the big challenges of a startup, I know we do ourselves right, is that so much changes all the time and we don't necessarily put in enough time to really celebrate the wins because there's always new problems, there's no stability sometimes. So I think we look to the Q1 numbers and we need to still actually do them properly. But we know that we did pretty well in quarter one in terms of, I think it was more than half. We said 1,800 people attended our events in the first quarter. Right. Which is more than half of the whole of 2024. But at the same time, as I see that number and then I continue to my next problem.

13:23
Amardeep Parmar
When you're in that environment, which is so fast paced, how do you make the time to make sure that you are appreciating those wins and giving the team the recognition they deserve?

13:33
Dipti Shah
I think it's an important point to remember is it's to slow down, to speed up and to look around you, engage what's actually going on. Giving people recognition is such a simple thing, from a thank you to saying well done, going out for dinner, sending a nice gesture. I think when you're startup, it's scrappy, can be very scrappy. And more often than not there's more problems and success crisis and certainly in the beginning. And so therefore motivating the people around you know, those people that are key part of your team is really important and you know, things that I personally love, that I've learned and seen from founders that I've worked with, is a smile, winning people with a smile.

14:17
Dipti Shah
You know, I worked with one founder in my previous place who would rock in about 11 o'clock, but the first thing he would do was walk around everybody's desk and say hello and Say, how are you? That was so motivating in itself and encouraging that the founders made the time to actually stop by your desk and to say hello. And it's simple, things like that. Oh, well done. I saw that, you know, those are giving recognition to those small achievements and obviously as well.

14:47
Amardeep Parmar
So you're leading huge teams during very uncertain times in the past. And what things did you do to try and keep people motivated and to keep the spirits high? Even when maybe you're seeing global economic shocks or you're seeing all these different things happening and obviously people are going to be seeing the news getting scared, but you obviously still want them to be feeling like they're supported and having them achieve at the best and perform at their best.

15:10
Dipti Shah
Whatever size business you are. The key thing that I've learned and I've worked in multi size, multi sector businesses is to listen to your people and you know, take on board their feedback to close that feedback loop and try and address those. Obviously some things, you know, may be easier to address than others, some might not be so realistic, but the key point is to listen and to put in place demonstratable actions.

15:38
Amardeep Parmar
And you obviously watching different size organisations too, what do you think has been the biggest difference between you looking at startups versus you looking at the large organisations? What things could people at the startup level learn from your experience at a much bigger level?

15:52
Dipti Shah
Being scrappy doesn't always mean not having structure at all. I think is the thing. People ultimately do look for some levels of structure in order to build and scale. And so when you set up that initial team, that team is your core of your flexibility and adaptability and then you start building around it. And so, and when you're building, you scale in mind. So therefore your structured processes come with it.

16:18
Amardeep Parmar
And I know now with like the building out career and of the things you've done so far, what are some of the moments you've been proudest of in terms of where you've been able to manage people really well and especially through hard times that you want to just like really appreciate?

16:30
Dipti Shah
One of the things that I am really proud of is so my last business I joined just before COVID kicked in, it was a global business, morale was really low and engagement was also really low within a three year period transformed it to becoming one of the best places to work for in the UK and in some countries globally, retention rates were 85, 86%. And all of those things, those engagement pieces played a part in a successful private equity sale.

17:03
Amardeep Parmar
And was you looking at the results of that of people saying this is one of the best places to work. What were the key things they were saying that they really loved about that environment?

17:10
Dipti Shah
The listening piece was key. That tram, you know, that was transformational actually in terms of the initiatives that were put in place. Communication, management of people. And so that wall. And one of the things I did was I took away hefty annual appraisals to make it more of a conversation which was more real life and more appropriate to the environment which was fast paced.

17:33
Amardeep Parmar
And obviously looking forwards now. Right, so you're working with different organisations, you're doing really interesting things. What are some things that you're most excited about in terms of how cultures are changing, attitudes are changing?

17:44
Dipti Shah
It's a continuous learning journey and just continuously adapting from a personal growth perspective and the world of work. I think the generations and what different generations want is so varied and just trying to provide an ecosystem that tailors to all. You've got some people that like to go into the office, some people like hybrid, some people don't want to do either are, you know, and just trying to find or find, make, create an environment that drives performance.

18:15
Amardeep Parmar
I guess that's one of the big debates of recent times too is that you see some large organisations now telling people to go back to the office. Have you found that situation yourself when you've been trying to manage? Sometimes some people want to be remote, some people want to be hybrid, some people in the office. How can you juggle that and try and work out as a founder, especially when it's in the early stages. So for example we have our founder associate, we say she got off from in most days because then she can sit with us and learn. And that's one of the things I think I struggle with is like if you're early stage or you're.

18:43
Amardeep Parmar
You haven't got much work experience, I feel like it's a lot harder to learn than not in person being able to see all the little nuances. Have you managed that? Especially when times were you couldn't work in person?

18:54
Dipti Shah
And try and do as much touch, many touch points as possible, you know, remotely and through teams. And I, you know, I agree with your point. Quite often always encouraged graduates first time job people to come in and even whatever level you are actually those first few weeks of in person learning, really get to grips with the business then understand the values, directions and you know, encourage as many collaborative opportunities as possible.

19:25
Amardeep Parmar
Yeah. So thanks so much for sharing your advice toda. We move to a Quick fire of questions. So first one is who are three Asians in Britain you think are doing incredible work and you'd love to shout them out?

19:37
Dipti Shah
So I'm a big fan of Tej Levani. Some of you might know him as from Dragonstone. He's also the CEO of Vitabiotics, but in his early days he'd won a Young Entrepreneurs Award and so I quite like following his journey, particularly on LinkedIn and seeing what he's doing. And he's also been supporting his wife with her own little business in beautyfect, which is great as well. A second one who has now passed, Bhavesh Patel. He was a personal friend, family friend of ours who started from nothing to having a gift shop in Charing Cross from which he grew a wedding event service called Mystic Events which is now one of the chosen providers for many Asian weddings in the UK. He was very well known for DJing at parties in that day. So shout out to him.

20:38
Dipti Shah
And his legacy continues with his team at the moment, which I also quite passionate about following and encourage everybody to follow because it's just what I like about his story actually is that even though now he's passed at a young age, his team of following through his legacy. So my third entrepreneur is a female Asian founder, Ruby McGregor Smith. It's a mouthful of her name, she was a former CEO of the Mighty Group, but she was the first Asian female of a FTSE 250 company. So if you haven't come across her before, check her out and if you.

21:12
Amardeep Parmar
Want to find out more about you and what you're up to, where should they go to?

21:14
Dipti Shah
So who? My LinkedIn profile. So following successful private equity sale of my last place, I took a moment to pause and reset and I'm ready to take on my next opportunity which I'll be joining a SaaS tech high growth company in the next few weeks. So watch this space.

21:33
Amardeep Parmar
And if people want to be able to listen right now, could help you. What can they do?

21:36
Dipti Shah
I'm always on the lookout for new talent, always looking to learn from other founders and entrepreneurs out there and build a network of people. And I'm also quite interested to learn about angel investment.

21:51
Amardeep Parmar
So great to have you on today. Have you got any final words?

21:54
Dipti Shah
Managing people is an art and a science.

21:58
Amardeep Parmar
Thank you for watching. Don't forget to subscribe. See you next time. 

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