Tim Smeaton admitted to fellow recruiters that he made mistakes when struggling with the paradox of managing entrepreneurs and the need to build and simplify processes to make them "less people dependent".

The chief operating officer at Hydrogen Group told the audience at Recruiter's Annual Forum in London that he regretted delegating too slowly and not giving talented people enough opportunities.

However, he said that the solution was to focus on your internal framework. "This is a tool that enables you to carry on being entrepreneurial and demonstrates how you can take the business to the next level," said Smeaton.

There were a number of ways of achieving this, he said, including:

• spotting and promoting high performers

• telling all staff what they needed to do to get promoted

• reducing the number of staff reviews, and then only discussing career development in them

• 'avoiding the 'car crash' by asking managers to look six months ahead.

He said that one of Hydrogen's greatest successes in developing its staff had been to send a consultant to Australia to open a branch and make it profitable within a year. Smeaton said that the person concerned had benefited greatly because "we didn't tell him how to do it".

It was also about understanding what makes entrepreneurs tick. "I believe that entrepreneurs are focused on the future. They want to know what the future holds for themselves."