Micah Rowland, COO of Fountain joins us today to share a lot of insights about onboarding, coaching and developing employees towards their personal success. Rowland believes that focusing on employee growth will lead to a great culture, which will then define the company’s success.

Building People, Teams and Processes

Micah Rowland is not the typical everyday builder. He used to be a software engineer but at the moment, he builds people, teams and processes as the Chief Operations Officer COO of Fountain.

Fountain is a service-oriented company that helps clients with their hiring and onboarding process. Fountain provides these companies tools such as automated communications for attracting talent, interviews, hiring, and onboarding. Micah has taken multiple companies from 50 to 250 people and $5 million to $30 million in revenue.

Culture is paramount to success

Micah believes that culture is of paramount importance to every organization ⁠—  in terms of achieving the company objectives. Although he believes that without a strategy, a company will not reach success, he also believes that a company with a bad culture will not stay for the long term.

He cites as an example of a company that is not set up to empower people and to help people bring their best to the organization. With this, he believes that the hiring and training process is beneficial in creating a great culture. 

“If you have somebody you hired in your company and they’re not meeting the bar for performance, whatever the bar, there are many things that need to be examined before you make a decision. You need to ask yourself if that person’s manager understands how to onboard, coach and develop that person in their role to help them be successful.” – Micah Rowland

Hire slow, fire fast is a myth

As a true believer of culture himself, Micah shares his opinion about the popular Silicon Valley mentality of “hire slow, fire fast.”

He says that this might hold true to entrepreneurs who believe that “lots of bad apples are scattered throughout the working world.” However, he believes that most of the people, especially those who wind up in the StartUp industry have determination and motivation to do an excellent job. 

“They want to bring to the world a unique set of talents. If someone is not succeeding in their role ⁠—  the hire slow, fire fast is very disruptive not only in cost associated with hiring and replacing people, but it terms of the way it impacts culture.” – Micah Rowland

He believes that managers are in a unique position to help an employee to become successful. Additionally, he cites the importance of the experience of the management, not only with the hiring process but in handling compensation, promotion, and incentives.

Download and listen to Onboarding, Coaching and Developing Employees Towards Success to learn more. Remember to let Micah know you heard about him on Culture Eats Strategy with Jaime Jay!

Connect through the links below:

Website – Fountain

Twitter – Fountain_Inc

Facebook – F...