A cutting-edge vision means nothing until it is executed. — It’s very common for startups to have lots of visionary people in the early days because every startup begins as an idea, a dream, a vision. However, a founder’s vision will remain a mental concept until it is realized through action. It’s critical that startups have at least one person…

Are you being creative enough to garner resources? — Founders and their teams often build a startup from the ground up with very few resources. How is it possible to build something so complex when financial capital and staff are scarce? Our research found that startup leaders who are able to garner resources in creative ways when funds are…

What competitive moves will you take to succeed? — When you play chess, you need a strategy. To win, you need to constantly assess your situation and decide the best steps; whether it is to move the queen or lose a pawn to checkmate. The same goes for a startup. Does your startup have a well defined strategy? As…

What will your startup look like in 5 years? 10 years? — Founders often devote their entire focus to building their product while visioning tasks get put on hold. This approach makes sense for founders because to make money, a startup needs a product to sell. Financial resources are key to survival. …

A spiderweb analogy — By Disniel Davila HAPPY HALLOWEEN! Because performance evaluations can be scary and in the spirit of the spooky season, I’ve used the spider web as an analogy for team performance in this blog. The spider web represents the complex orchestration of team performance behaviors. Let me explain further. Spiders can build webs…

What is high-performance? — When people talk about startups they often focus on the lead founder as “the” entrepreneur. This is a misconception. The resources required to grow a startup can quickly exceed a single founder’s capabilities. …

10 Best Practices to Implement Today — By Nikki Blacksmith, Ph.D. Bringing on new employees can make or break a startup. That is why you must build an effective onboarding program. Onboarding can be time-consuming and challenging. Industrial-organizational psychologists, such as myself, have researched onboarding methods for decades. What is onboarding, and why is it important? Onboarding…

Tips for Analyzing the Individual, Team, and Organization — Approximately 75%-90% of startups fail. Common reasons for failure include a lack of product-market fit, poor marketing strategy, and inadequate funding. But those issues don’t manifest out of thin air. A person conceived the product and likely failed to ensure there was a demand in the market. A person overlooked…

Here are 5 tips to help you! — Nikki Blacksmith and Kelly Diouf Growth-stage Startups and scaleups often ask us how to evaluate psychometric assessments for use in their hiring process. It can be difficult to choose the best assessment for your company if you don’t have a background in industrial-organizational psychology or psychometrics. Lucky for you, we…