(BrewDog Founders James Watt and Martin Dickie)

BrewDog’s James Watt, who founded the now global craft brewery along with Martin Dickie, is an outspoken man…A man willing to own his past mistakes like hiring personnel too quickly in the past.

Here’s the deal…

Although BrewDog began as a Scottish garage brewery in 2007, it has grown into an international drinks maker that in addition to brewing, owns a cidery, a distilling operation, now employs over 2,000 team members and has over 100 bars all over the planet.

But in spite of a difficult year marked by a controversial BrewDog documentary and accusations of having fostered a toxic workspace , Watt’s quick to celebrate the company’s many successes. And on January 19, he took to Linkedin and owned up to past mistakes he regretted… Like hiring too many employees well ahead of the curve.

Because we like him (many don’t) and were struck by his unflinching self-appraisal, we are reposting this aspect of his post in full…

Mistake: Hiring Ahead Of The Curve

Running a high growth business is extremely tough: you are constantly treading an insanely tight line in terms of headcount and resource within the business. Hire too few people then the business simply cannot grow. Hire too many people then you cripple the business financially.

From 2015-2018 we got this balance wrong. We made the mistake of hiring ahead of the curve with a vengeance and I further amplified my mistake by allowing the problem to compound itself.

As soon as we hired new senior people, they needed more people in their team. So, we hired even more people. The more bloated our headcount became the more clunky, bureaucratic and slow our operations became.

The intention was right – but the delivery was wrong and it had potentially fatal implications for BrewDog.

It’s also the case that for young entrepreneurial businesses, “trophy hires” might not always be the best strategy. In the end, we had to take action to steady the ship. We introduced a limited voluntary redundancy scheme (which included 6 months’ salary paid at all levels).

Our hiring strategy now is much clearer, and following the changes we announced recently, we have better L&D and career progression tracks in place. [/box]

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Say what you will about James Watt he’s not afraid to acknowledge his mistakes both professional and personal.

And not everybody does that….

(All image credits: BrewDog)

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Want more mistakes?

BREWDOG CEO JAMES WATT ON ‘NOT KNOWING HIS OWN WEAKNESSES

BREWDOG’S JAMES WATT APOLOGIZES FOR INAPPROPRIATE BEHAVIOR 

BREWDOG CEO JAMES WATT ON PAST BEER MISTAKES