I had a conversation recently with someone who is building a venture firm from the ground up and after telling me a bit about what she did and ultimately wanted to do she finally said, “Hey, can I ask you a question?”

“Of course,” I answered.

“You guys aren’t big, but manage more money than I do and have a bigger team, and that’s where I think I’m heading next, so my question is: How do I get there? And more specifically, who is my next hire?”

“Because right now,” she went on, “I lead everything. I’m sourcing, negotiating, diligence, operations, finance, compliance, investor relations, accounting, you get the point…”

And I did.

When it comes to building an organization and figuring out who should be in what role, I find it helpful to keep four lists. List one is what needs to get done, rank-ordered. List two is what different people are actually doing, in order of time spent doing it. List three is what the people in your organization are good at. And list four is what those people like to do. 

You can see where I’m going with this. In an ideal world, the four lists are nearly identical. But if they’re not, it stands to reason that what you should be hiring for and who you should be hiring are driven by items that are on list one, but not lists two, three, and four. And while keeping these lists can be complicated at large organizations, in the case of the woman building the venture capital firm, making them and seeing where they differ should hopefully be a pretty fast and illuminating exercise since it’s such a small shop. 

Of course, hiring is a luxury, particularly at small organizations, and so if you work at one you may have to wear more hats than you care to for longer than feels ideal. But that doesn’t mean not actively knowing which hats you ultimately want and should wear. Because if you don’t do that, you’ll never wear them.

Have a great weekend.

-Tim

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