This week's theme is "Building an Unbeatable Management Team", and I feel team building is not only the most challenging, but also the most underrated key activity in business development. There are a lot of misconceptions around team building, and because of the dynamic nature of human relationships, it is the area of your business that can become the most unreliable, at any time, for the oddest of unforeseen reasons. But securing the Right Team can be the golden ticket to success for any business- work those connections!
We always hear, "Build your Dream Team". We imagine our friends, classmates and sometimes even family members, working alongside us to achieve success. But in my experience, the teams that end up being the most successful are comprised of people you may not always agree with, and potentially don't even like. Building the Right Team, means selecting those people who are going to be best for the business, period, regardless of how you personally interact. Whereas thinking about a Dream Team, we tend to select people who we not only like personally, but also who we think will be easy for us to work with. Overriding this natural tendency is imperative to building the Right Team for your business.
Your team should contain members who not only see things differently from you, and maybe even have different visions of success, but who also are not afraid to voice these differences. Surrounding yourself with "yes men" will stunt your growth, but surrounding yourself with articulate and thoughtful individuals will strengthen the robustness of your team. Especially key for start-ups, these people should all possess different skills and capabilities, so as to cover the maximum amount of duties within the smallest payroll.
The internet abounds with tips and tests for how to find the right employee for your company, but most of them focus on superficial aptitudes and mask-able personality traits. However, the article from Entrepreneur.com, entitled "Hiring for Your Start-up" (http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/242472), lists three basic questions that better uncover the traits you will care about in your team long-term: Do they practice? Do they fit the culture? and Have they learned anything?
The explanations for the reasoning behind all of these questions are explained in detail in the article,
but in essence, these questions help you identify individuals that will be committed to the team's goals, will be able to fit in with the existing network of relationships but also offer unique insights, and mature with the company over time. I feel these tips are especially important to student run start-ups who may not be headhunting field experts, but rather finding other entry-level workers to grow beside. I have definitely applied this methodology to the team I have built for my start-up company, Brightwater Technologies, and feel our strength as a team is what has gotten us where we are today. But it has not been easy- there have definitely been conflicts between the management and design departments as well as conflicts within each side. But out of those conflicts came compromises and insights that bettered our product and business model, and we are the better for it.
I would challenge anyone, my classmates included, as you begin to explore your team building plans, to open your mind to the possibilities of who you would include on your team. Don't be shy to recruit those who are different from you or even those you often disagree with, the level of dedication and motivation is really all that maters. Who in your social/academic/professional circle would you "pick last" for your team and why? Is this a valid reason to exclude them? Do they have any skills or insights that could be valuable? I have found this almost "backwards" approach to team building useful in my own projects, and I have doubled my networking connections to boot!
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