Skip to Main Content
HBS Online
  • Courses
    Open Courses Mega Menu
    • Business Essentials
      • Credential of Readiness (CORe)
      • Business Analytics
      • Economics for Managers
      • Financial Accounting
    • Leadership & Management
      • Leadership Principles
      • Management Essentials
      • Negotiation Mastery
      • Organizational Leadership
      • Strategy Execution
      • Power and Influence for Positive Impact
      • Leadership, Ethics, and Corporate Accountability
      • Leading Change and Organizational Renewal
      • Dynamic Teaming
      • Transforming Customer Experiences
    • Credential of Leadership, Impact, and Management in Business (CLIMB)
    • Credential of Digital Innovation and Strategy
    • Entrepreneurship & Innovation
      • Entrepreneurship Essentials
      • Disruptive Strategy
      • Negotiation Mastery
      • Design Thinking and Innovation
      • Launching Tech Ventures
      • Winning with Digital Platforms
      • Leading Change and Organizational Renewal
      • Entrepreneurial Marketing
      • Transforming Customer Experiences
    • Strategy
      • Strategy Execution
      • Business Strategy
      • Economics for Managers
      • Disruptive Strategy
      • Global Business
      • Sustainable Business Strategy
    • Marketing
      • Digital Marketing Strategy
      • Creating Brand Value
      • Entrepreneurial Marketing
    • Digital Transformation
      • Winning with Digital Platforms
      • AI Essentials for Business
    • Finance & Accounting
      • Financial Accounting
      • Leading with Finance
      • Alternative Investments
      • Sustainable Investing
      • Strategic Financial Analysis
    • Business in Society
      • Sustainable Business Strategy
      • Global Business
      • Sustainable Investing
      • Power and Influence for Positive Impact
      • Leadership, Ethics, and Corporate Accountability
      • Business and Climate Change
    • All Courses
  • For Organizations
    Open For Organizations Mega Menu
    • Corporate Learning
      Help your employees master essential business concepts, improve effectiveness, and expand leadership capabilities.
    • Academic Solutions
      Integrate HBS Online courses into your curriculum to support programs and create unique educational opportunities.
    • Need Help?
      • Frequently Asked Questions
      • Contact Us
    • Insights
      Open Insights Mega Menu
      • Business Insights Blog
        • Career Development
        • Communication
        • Decision-Making
        • Earning Your MBA
        • Entrepreneurship & Innovation
        • Finance
        • Leadership
        • Management
        • Negotiation
        • Strategy
      • All Topics
      • Learner on computer exploring HBS Online business lessons
        Sample Business Lessons and E-Books

        Gain new insights and knowledge from leading faculty and industry experts.

      • HBS Online Parlor Room podcast logo
        Podcast

        The Parlor Room: Where business concepts come to life. Listen now on your favorite podcast platform.

    • More Info
      Open More Info Mega Menu
      • Learning Experience
        Master real-world business skills with our immersive platform and engaged community.
      • Certificates, Credentials, & Credits
        Learn how completing courses can boost your resume and move your career forward.
      • Learning Tracks
        Take your career to the next level with this specialization.
      • Financing & Policies
        • Employer Reimbursement
        • Payment & Financial Aid
        • Policies
      • Connect
        • Student Stories
        • Community
      • Need Help?
        • Frequently Asked Questions
        • Request Information
        • Support Portal
      • Enroll Now
    Login
    My Courses
    Access your courses and engage with your peers
    My Account
    Manage your account, enrollment, and payments.
    HBS Home
    • About HBS
    • Academic Programs
    • Alumni
    • Faculty & Research
    • Baker Library
    • Giving
    • Harvard Business Review
    • Initiatives
    • News
    • Recruit
    • Map / Directions
    HBS Online
    • Courses
    • Business Essentials
    • Leadership & Management
    • Credential of Leadership, Impact, and Management in Business (CLIMB)
    • Credential of Digital Innovation and Strategy
    • Entrepreneurship & Innovation
    • Strategy
    • Marketing
    • Digital Transformation
    • Finance & Accounting
    • Business in Society
    • For Organizations
    • Insights
    • More Info
    • About
    • Support Portal
    • Media Coverage
    • Founding Donors
    • Leadership Team
    • Careers
    • My Courses
    • My Account
    • Enroll Now
    • …→
    • Harvard Business School→
    • HBS Online→
    • Business Insights→

    Business Insights

    Harvard Business School Online's Business Insights Blog provides the career insights you need to achieve your goals and gain confidence in your business skills.

     
    Filter Results Arrow Down Arrow Up

    Topics

    Topics

    • Accounting
    • Analytics
    • Business Essentials
    • Business in Society
    • Career Development
    • Communication
    • Community
    • ConneXt
    • Decision-Making
    • Digital Transformation
    • Earning Your MBA
    • Entrepreneurship & Innovation
    • Finance
    • For Organizations
    • Leadership
    • Management
    • Marketing
    • Negotiation
    • News & Events
    • Productivity
    • Staff Spotlight
    • Strategy
    • Student Profiles
    • Technology
    • Work-Life Balance

    Courses

    Courses

    • AI Essentials for Business
    • Alternative Investments
    • Business Analytics
    • Business Strategy
    • Business and Climate Change
    • CLIMB
    • CORe
    • Creating Brand Value
    • Credential of Digital Innovation and Strategy
    • Design Thinking and Innovation
    • Digital Marketing Strategy
    • Disruptive Strategy
    • Dynamic Teaming
    • Economics for Managers
    • Entrepreneurial Marketing
    • Entrepreneurship Essentials
    • Financial Accounting
    • Global Business
    • Launching Tech Ventures
    • Leadership Principles
    • Leadership, Ethics, and Corporate Accountability
    • Leading Change and Organizational Renewal
    • Leading with Finance
    • Management Essentials
    • Negotiation Mastery
    • Organizational Leadership
    • Power and Influence for Positive Impact
    • Strategic Financial Analysis
    • Strategy Execution
    • Sustainable Business Strategy
    • Sustainable Investing
    • Transforming Customer Experiences
    • Winning with Digital Platforms
    Subscribe to the Blog
    *
    Please complete this required field.
    Email must be formatted correctly.
    Please complete all required fields.
    RSS feed

    Filters

    Topics

    Topics

    • Accounting
    • Analytics
    • Business Essentials
    • Business in Society
    • Career Development
    • Communication
    • Community
    • ConneXt
    • Decision-Making
    • Digital Transformation
    • Earning Your MBA
    • Entrepreneurship & Innovation
    • Finance
    • For Organizations
    • Leadership
    • Management
    • Marketing
    • Negotiation
    • News & Events
    • Productivity
    • Staff Spotlight
    • Strategy
    • Student Profiles
    • Technology
    • Work-Life Balance

    Courses

    Courses

    • AI Essentials for Business
    • Alternative Investments
    • Business Analytics
    • Business Strategy
    • Business and Climate Change
    • CLIMB
    • CORe
    • Creating Brand Value
    • Credential of Digital Innovation and Strategy
    • Design Thinking and Innovation
    • Digital Marketing Strategy
    • Disruptive Strategy
    • Dynamic Teaming
    • Economics for Managers
    • Entrepreneurial Marketing
    • Entrepreneurship Essentials
    • Financial Accounting
    • Global Business
    • Launching Tech Ventures
    • Leadership Principles
    • Leadership, Ethics, and Corporate Accountability
    • Leading Change and Organizational Renewal
    • Leading with Finance
    • Management Essentials
    • Negotiation Mastery
    • Organizational Leadership
    • Power and Influence for Positive Impact
    • Strategic Financial Analysis
    • Strategy Execution
    • Sustainable Business Strategy
    • Sustainable Investing
    • Transforming Customer Experiences
    • Winning with Digital Platforms
    Subscribe to the Blog
    *
    Please complete this required field.
    Email must be formatted correctly.
    Please complete all required fields.
    RSS feed

    The Most Successful Startups Have Hands-On Founders

    Startup Founder
    • 17 Jul 2018
    Dina Gerdeman Author
    tag
    • Entrepreneurship & Innovation
    • Entrepreneurship Essentials

    Startup founders with a hands-on management style are more likely to retain employees and see their firms thrive, new research shows.

    The results are particularly applicable to knowledge-intensive technology firms, where human talent is the main resource that affects firm performance, the researchers say.

    Founders are usually very busy people—they recruit key employees, raise funds, find a board, develop partnerships, set strategy, and design the organization, to name a few responsibilities. What often falls by the wayside as founders get pulled in all directions, according to the researchers, is intensive mentoring and monitoring of staff.

    “Because many young companies face both technological and market risks, founders may prioritize dealing with these challenges rather than the more mundane aspects of human resource management,” the paper says. “Our findings suggest that … more intensive people management is a worthwhile investment of a founder’s time.”

    Effective human resource management is more than just keeping the paperwork flowing. “You also need to focus on the strategic part of managing people to make sure they are working on the right tasks, that they’re getting the feedback they need, and they’re happy in the firm so they’re less likely to quit,” says Rembrand Koning, an assistant professor in Harvard Business School’s Strategy Unit who was a coauthor of the study.

    Koning’s working paper, released in May, is titled Learning to Manage: A Field Experiment in the Indian Startup Ecosystem. The coauthors were Aaron Chatterji and Sharique Hasan, both of Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business; and Solene M. Delecourt from Stanford’s Graduate School of Business.

    In studying 100 founders of Indian software companies, they found that those who exert more hands-on management—keeping close tabs on workers with regular evaluations, setting expectations, creating shared milestones, and tracking progress toward key goals—run better-performing companies.

    Learning from the network

    If this intensive style doesn’t come naturally to a founder-manager, the good news is it can be learned, Koning says.

    “What’s encouraging about this paper is that we found that hands-on management can be learned over time. This is something we think many firms can improve. And if we can get people to manage better, we think they can keep more employees and be more successful.”

    Through social interactions with other hands-on managers, founders can discover not only why they should use these tactics, but also how exactly to implement them.

    To study how these management skills can be acquired through peer networks, the researchers partnered with the Indian Software Product Industry Roundtable (iSPIRIT), a think tank that promotes the growth of Indian software product companies. The team brought together founders of 100 growth-stage software product companies in India for a three-day executive retreat.

    Prior to the retreat, participants were surveyed to find out how often they engaged in four management practices: providing structured feedback, conducting performance reviews, setting expectations, and establishing shared goals. They then grouped founders into 50 pairs, focusing on the pairs where a high-intensity manager was partnered with a founder who was self-described as more hands off. (A more hands-on manager might use these intensive practices once a week, whereas others might do so once a month or less.)

    During the retreat, the paired founders discussed their business challenges and were told to provide advice about management and strategy to their partners.

    On the final day, the founders completed a list of changes they planned to implement after returning to their companies. Founders paired with intensive managers were more likely to include items related to management practices. Eight months later, founders were surveyed to provide results from changes that had occurred at their companies.

    Hands-on wins in practice

    Founders who received advice from hands-on founders were more likely to adopt a similar leadership approach. The majority of these founders made at least one substantial business change after the retreat. “Founders talked at length about implementing particular action items,” the paper says. “For example, founders discussed hiring a new product manager or reorganizing their team to be more efficient.”

    Founders who adopted a more intensive management style saw positive results: These companies retained a higher percentage of their employees and were less likely to close eight months after the retreat. Founders who got advice from more hands-on managers saw 19.6 percent fewer employees leave their firms, and these startups were roughly 20 percent less likely to fail. Founders who already had a more hands-on management approach were able to increase hiring rates.

    The researchers make it clear in the paper that “we do not assert that ‘more’ management is always better. To the contrary, excessive ‘micro-managing’ could have a negative impact on firm growth.” Effective managers make sure their workers understand corporate goals, then trust them to take charge of key responsibilities and make important decisions.

    It’s easy to confuse hands-on management with micromanaging, Koning says.

    “Startup founders have a really hard time letting go, so they’re the ones doing the customer interviews and trying to hire people. But no one wants to work for a boss who’s doing everything or giving (workers) only the bad parts of the task,” he says.

    Entrepreneurship Essentials | Succeed in the startup world | Learn More

    Companies should invest in peer learning

    Companies often opt for formal training programs or consulting arrangements with instructors who teach entrepreneurs how to manage their companies. But these interventions can be expensive, often don’t work, and at times are impractical for leaders who are working full-time on their businesses, the paper notes.

    Koning hopes the research shows founders that they should seek mentor networks with the goal of picking up intensive management techniques that they can use to more effectively manage and grow their own teams.

    These types of exchanges are often more personalized than formal training programs, because the founders tailor the discussion to a company’s specific situation and share their own experiences. These discussions aren’t likely to happen at networking cocktail parties, so it may take one founder seeking out another for a more in-depth talk, says Koning, whose research examines how businesses depend on the distribution of knowledge, technology, and people across firms.

    “When you think about building an advice network to discuss the strategic direction of your company, it can be fuzzy and hard, so you should think: Given the people I know, who should I be talking to more—and who should I choose to ignore?” Koning says. “It’s a big decision.”

    In fact, it might even determine how well your firm performs.

    This post was originally published on HBS Working Knowledge.

     
    All FAQs

    Top FAQs

    How are HBS Online courses delivered?

    +–

    We offer self-paced programs (with weekly deadlines) on the HBS Online course platform.

    Our platform features short, highly produced videos of HBS faculty and guest business experts, interactive graphs and exercises, cold calls to keep you engaged, and opportunities to contribute to a vibrant online community.

    Are HBS Online programs available in languages other than English?

    +–

    We expect to offer our courses in additional languages in the future but, at this time, HBS Online can only be provided in English.

    All course content is delivered in written English. Closed captioning in English is available for all videos. There are no live interactions during the course that requires the learner to speak English. Coursework must be completed in English.

    Do I need to come to campus to participate in HBS Online programs?

    +–

    No, all of our programs are 100 percent online, and available to participants regardless of their location.

    How do I enroll in a course?

    +–

    Certificate Programs

    HBS Online welcomes committed learners wherever they are—in the world and their careers—irrespective of their professional experience or academic background. To extend the reach of HBS Online, we no longer require an application for our certificate programs. (Applications are still required for our credential programs: CORe and CLIMB.) You can now immediately enroll and start taking the next step in your career.

    All programs require the completion of a brief online enrollment form before payment. If you are new to HBS Online, you will be required to set up an account before enrolling in the program of your choice.

    Our easy online enrollment form is free, and no special documentation is required. All participants must be at least 18 years of age, proficient in English, and committed to learning and engaging with fellow participants throughout the program.

    Updates to your enrollment status will be shown on your account page. HBS Online does not use race, gender, ethnicity, or any protected class as criteria for enrollment for any HBS Online program.

    Credential Programs

    HBS Online's CORe and CLIMB programs require the completion of a brief application. The applications vary slightly, but all ask for some personal background information. You can apply for and enroll in programs here. If you are new to HBS Online, you will be required to set up an account before starting an application for the program of your choice.

    Our easy online application is free, and no special documentation is required. All participants must be at least 18 years of age, proficient in English, and committed to learning and engaging with fellow participants throughout the program.

    Updates to your application and enrollment status will be shown on your account page. We confirm enrollment eligibility within one week of your application for CORe and three weeks for CLIMB. HBS Online does not use race, gender, ethnicity, or any protected class as criteria for admissions for any HBS Online program.

    Does Harvard Business School Online offer an online MBA?

    +–

    No, Harvard Business School Online offers business certificate programs.

    What are my payment options?

    +–

    We accept payments via credit card, wire transfer, Western Union, and (when available) bank loan. Some candidates may qualify for scholarships or financial aid, which will be credited against the Program Fee once eligibility is determined. Please refer to the Payment & Financial Aid page for further information.

    We also allow you to split your payment across 2 separate credit card transactions or send a payment link email to another person on your behalf. If splitting your payment into 2 transactions, a minimum payment of $350 is required for the first transaction.

    In all cases, net Program Fees must be paid in full (in US Dollars) to complete registration.

    What are the policies for refunds and deferrals?

    +–

    After enrolling in a program, you may request a withdrawal with refund (minus a $100 nonrefundable enrollment fee) up until 24 hours after the start of your program. Please review the Program Policies page for more details on refunds and deferrals. If your employer has contracted with HBS Online for participation in a program, or if you elect to enroll in the undergraduate credit option of the Credential of Readiness (CORe) program, note that policies for these options may differ.

     

    Sign up for News & Announcements


    • • Please complete this required field.
    • • Email must be formatted correctly.
    • • Please complete all required fields.

    Subject Areas

    • Business Essentials
    • Leadership & Management
    • Entrepreneurship & Innovation
    • Strategy
    • Marketing
    • Finance & Accounting
    • Business & Society
    • Digital Transformation

    Quick Links

    • FAQs
    • Contact Us
    • Request Info
    • Enroll Now
    • Support Portal

    About

    • About Us
    • Media Coverage
    • Founding Donors
    • Leadership Team
    • Careers @ HBS Online

    Legal

    • Legal
    • Policies
    Harvard Business School
    Copyright © President & Fellows of Harvard College
    • Site Map
    • Trademark Notice
    • Digital Accessibility