Phani Nagarjuna wants people who share his vision at Nuevora

Phani Nagarjuna understands the approach that most business leaders take when they need to fill a position in their business. But the rules are a little bit different when you’re an entrepreneur trying to build a business from the ground up.
“The most crucial piece of the puzzle with a startup is putting together the early team,” says Nagarjuna, founder and CEO at Nuevora. “If you’re right out of the gate and you don’t have the right team, it will have a cascading effect. The early team members you pick need to be based on trust, loyalty and fit, and less on competence.”
In this era of collaboration and a stronger focus on workplace culture, the idea of finding employees who share your beliefs is not a new concept. But when you’re in startup mode, it becomes even more critical that you find people who believe in what you’re trying to accomplish.
“If there is alignment and trust, it makes it much easier to embark on a journey, go out in the marketplace and add to the team, produce a product or design a service and then go off and convince customers to buy what you’re selling,” he says.
If the person has some admirable qualities, but doesn’t believe in your mission and vision, it’s going to be a tough road ahead.
“You need to take the candidate out in social environments, in professional environments and in structured and unstructured environments and with other members of your team,” Nagarjuna says. “Then you realize whether there is a good fit.”
Nuevora is looking to change the way business analytics are delivered and help clients take advantage of new technologies and tools that can help them grow. The company has identified an upcoming gap in the availability of analytic talent and is working hard to meet that looming need.
Nagarjuna has about 45 employees currently and hopes to expand to about 150 employees by year’s end.
One of the keys to doing so, in addition to finding the right people, will be Nagarjuna’s ability to convey his vision to his existing team and to new employees.
He has developed a series of principles that allow a leader to get his or her people engaged in that company’s vision.
Here are a few of these values, in his own words:

Have a crystal-clear vision

I need to be very clear about what is it that I’m out there to produce or to embark on and introduce into the marketplace.

Challenge the team with the right work

Take that vision and while you communicate it to all the employees, you need to break it down to say, ‘Here’s the work that you need to be doing, here’s what it means and here is how it aligns with the vision.’ You are creating tasks and assigning them and at the same time, you’re showing your team, ‘Hey, if you do this task, this is how it aligns with the vision. This is how it helps us get toward the vision.’

Show how the work aligns with your employees’ career road map

If you continue to do this work, it aligns with the vision, but it also means ABC and D for your career. It puts you on this trajectory in this marketplace. The more you do this, with where the market is headed and your career road map, you will be one of the hottest commodities out there.

Provide the right kind of support, training

Your support and training should help your employees do their tasks better, which puts them on the career road map that they are gunning for and which should support the vision you have.

Recognize performance, make the environment fun

Nothing beats the fact that if you’re honest and truthful and have transparent policies, everyone will start believing in you and see your sincerity and start following you. Make the environment fun, but very focused on the vision and the task at hand. And at the appropriate times, recognize great performance.

Help every employee be impactful to the organization

This is another missing piece. I’ve given the right training and right support and I’ve shown them how to do these tasks and how their career would progress. I’ve shown how what they are doing aligns with the vision.
But what is missing — and this is an important piece for them to feel empowered — how does the task the employee does impact the organization in the immediate term, the short term and the long term?
If you can demonstrate to each employee how what they’re doing will impact the organization, they get a tremendous amount of satisfaction out of how they are impacting the organization’s growth. It gives an opportunity for the CEO to sit across the table with employees and have a conversation about their contributions and what the company can do in order to recognize and reward those employees.

Live in the now

You can have the vision and the long-term plans, but you have to have your finger on the pulse of your market so you’re adapting to what’s happening in the marketplace. What are analytics supposed to do? Help clients live in the now.
Predict the future so they can adapt their organizations based on where consumers and competitors are headed so that they can outsmart and outcompete the competition.