Marijuana Business Magazine November December 2018

through friends, family and employees within the organization,” Shaw said. Albarran agrees about finding candidates through LinkedIn and also advocates for the websites Stack Overflow and AngelList. “But, in general, job boards are not the best way to hire,” he said. “By far the best way to hire is to get referrals from existing employees.” He frequently asks his staff, “Who are the top people you’ve worked with, and do you think they’re available?” Employees at his company do a lot of networking, including professional gatherings involving product managers. Pride also likes to draw from her team now that her company has grown to include many employees with a lot of connections. “We’ve asked people on the team: Do you know somebody who fulfills these needs?” she said. About half of Pride’s successful hires have come from staff referrals and the other half from online job postings, she added. HOW TO TRAIN At MariMed, Shaw runs a 90-day tryout phase to make sure the new hire is a good fit. For the product development lead, he’ll take the trainee on a tour of the company’s operating facilities to see products currently under devel- opment, such as edibles or other infused products. “Really bring them into the fold and let them understand the culture behind each brand,” Shaw said. If the new hire can grasp the mes- sage and direction of the company, the training period ends in about four weeks. If they can’t get on board in 90 days, they part ways. Albarran encourages the new hire to feel comfortable sharing ideas from the outset. He said he’s a proponent of the maxim “strong positions, weakly held.” In other words, the new employee should have a clear point of view and defend it with data. But if somebody presents a stronger case, the new hire should feel free to abandon the origi- nal idea and jump onboard. The product development lead will spend lunch and dinner for a few days getting to know everybody on the engineering, support and man- agement teams. “For them to get to know every- body down to their hobbies and inter- ests is valuable, because they need that trust and respect very quickly and early on,” Albarran said. Pride said it’s important for the product design lead to be well-informed about the behavior associated with cannabis consump- tion and trends to monitor how they impact R&D. She wanted more of a generalist and not someone who had worked only in plastics, or only in wood, because they shifted Van der Pop’s strategy based on what they found in the stores that season and what people were buying. “I’ve developed a project- management system of spreadsheets that we review and revise to include suggestions,” she said. “The important thing is to make sure we can both track the system.” HOW TO MANAGE Shaw prefers to offer encourage- ment in the form of verbal positive reinforcement. “We’re pretty good at keeping a happy-go-lucky work environment and getting everyone incentivized to want to do well and buy into the company,” he said. To do that, he pays attention to small successes and those who over- come small obstacles. “Incentivizing through positivity is proven to be very helpful in the work- place,” Shaw said. Albarran tries not to micromanage. “Letting go of our baby to some extent is difficult,” he said of expand- ing the staff. “But we do it because it’s the right thing to do, and we like to hire people who are better at things than we are.” He sets the high-level direction and tries to empower his employees. “They own it,” he said. “And if it works, then great. If it doesn’t work, then we’ll fix it together. We have a certain tolerance for mistakes because we want to move quickly and innovate and generally do good work.” Pride tries to let her team work and checks in regularly. Once a month, Van der Pop's team members across retail, marketing, creative, product and finance review proposed goods to approve or sug- gest further development. Before these meetings, she has thoroughly discussed the briefs to ensure she has “as much information as possible, so the committee is efficient.” ◆ Steve Albarran is CEO and co-founder of Confident Cannabis in Palo Alto, California. 154 • Marijuana Business Magazine • November/December 2018