Leading Growing Teams

An enterprise grows from a few founders, normally 3-4 people, while establishing the product market fit (identifying the problem, trying to identify the solution and finding product features that really work and building and testing an MVP etc.). Here you have little investment, and you are tinkering, hacking and figuring stuff out. Once you have product market fit and some sort of investment, you enter the high growth phase where things can grow pretty quickly; this is a unique feature of technology enabled start-ups.

All of sudden you will have 25 / 50 people working with you on challenges you may have never been exposed to. Here you will move from a product manager/engineer/developer to a position of a manager. As you grow, you require a whole different skillset from managing a team of equal founders. The more you grow, the more you are managing managers; you delegate a lot more as you grow. As a founder, your aim is to make yourself obsolete at some point. More people who can work at full force means the company is no longer dependent on one person.

The job will become less engineering and more on realising new sales, business developments, new partners, and on the company vision. Where will the company be in 10/20 years? Founders are important as they leave an imprint in the culture. The culture should remain in place many years even after the founder has left.

Building the team

A great team is at the heart of every successful company. Key considerations include:

• Purpose: Aiming to achieve something greater than individual goals.
• Hiring: Identifying the right people is as important as creating confidence in them.
  • Your skills are needed mostly to identify the right person to hire. Also to create confidence
• Motivation: Maintaining enthusiasm and preventing demotivation among employees. Even the most enthusiastic employees can get demotivated
• Culture: An inclusive culture, clear goals, and early establishment of structure and processes can enhance team motivation and retention.
• Communication: Clear decisions and effective communication are crucial, as pivots can have significant impacts.
• Feedback: Regular sessions for employee expectations and feedback help in maintaining focus and alignment.
• Unique Identity: Emphasizing what makes the company unique and engaging in non-work-related activities to foster a sense of community.
• Only negotiate once with co-founders, maintain contact with employees, customers and investors.

Leaders need to balance being generalists in business operations with being specialists capable of assessing the credibility of potential hires.

A diverse team with a mix of skills and perspectives is essential for innovation and growth. Diversity of thought is essential in the creative process. People's skills such as networking, great communication with your team and cofounders are crucial for the good development of a business. When making a team, the entire point is to do something bigger than yourselves. The combination of skills/perspectives from a diverse group is essential.

Assessing New Hires

When looking at potential hires, consider:

• Experience: What existing skills does the team have, and what are the gaps?
• Expertise: Look for industry-specific knowledge and experience.
• Blueprints and Imprints: (industry, organizations). Someone who has worked in several start ups in the growth phase will come with a certain understanding. A whole different base to someone who has been in the banking industry for 40 years for example. These people on the other hand will come with a high level of competency of execution and bring legitimacy and can drive sales. They need a less fluid organizational setting, however.
• Cultural Fit: How will the candidate fit into the existing company culture?
• Growth Mindset: Seek candidates who demonstrate a willingness to learn and adapt.

Hire Talent Smarter Than You. Delegate. Share The Annual Pie.

There are only so many hours in the day. So, to get rich, you need leverage. This includes capital, labor, code, and media. You should delegate and automate as many tasks as you can to robots on the internet with code. But if you do hire labor, Felix Dennis says to make sure they are smarter than you:

"As an owner, or an owner in training, you must always be alert for the telltale signs that here is a candidate for promotion and delegation. They are smart. Perhaps smarter than you are. They work hard and they appear to love the work they do... They want your job. Especially in the early days of your company, delegation and promotion are among your most powerful weapons in getting rich."

If you have trouble delegating, getting rich will be hard for you. Learn to let go and let others excel at what they do best.

Effective Leadership

Good leadership is reflected in the team's morale and productivity. Leaders should inspire and energize their teams, fostering an environment where intelligence is multiplied, and employees are empowered. The transition from a small founding team to a larger group requires a shift from micromanagement to a more strategic and empowering leadership style.

With a team of juniors, if you tend towards micromanaging under immense pressure, you will be very discouraging to the team. This way you become the bottleneck for the company. The key problem when you try to move from a team of 3-4 to a team of 15ish is this. You need to relinquish control. These teams are over-managed and Under-led.

Liz Wiseman's book "Multipliers" contrasts 'diminisher' leaders, who create dependence and slow progress, with 'multiplier' leaders, who provoke and unleash their team's capabilities. Effective leaders encourage growth mindsets, allowing teams to realize their potential without unnecessary intervention.

Cultivate a growth mindset. Don't just simply add more people, as you will just sacrifice agility. Let the team realize they can leap further and do more themselves. This becomes a feedback loop when they try and reach further still. As a leader you don't step in; your job is to ask questions. You don't come in and give all the answers - this is about the leader stepping back, listening and shutting up. Unleash the capabilities that are already there.

How do you make your team feel rewarded to want to learn and to teach others? This is something that should be distilled very early on into the company.It will lead to a different performance:

• Lower turnover
• Higher appetite for learning
• Higher progression within the team
• Personal accountability to fix issues directly
• Groups leading meetings with leaders being guests
• Less employees
• Strong cohesion
• Discourage shit stirrers.

Cultivating & Retaining Talent

Monitor progress and performance reviews of the employees. Create "missions" in the team and reward the team for how many they find and fix as a team, and tie this into performance reviews. In these reviews, it is better if they tell us themselves (with data to back it up) what they have done well, Monthly or quarterly. Do a green, amber & red strategy, with 3 greens meaning a bump in salary.

By cultivating this growth and as the company grows, you have the risk for some employees to move on. Have a personal request, after some good performance reviews. "If you are thinking of leaving please tell me first". Open communication about career aspirations and concerns can help in retaining key talent.

Also, recognizing when and what type of people you need at different stages of your startup's lifecycle is crucial. Reid Hoffman's Blitzscaling finds an analogy in this to sending armed forces to take over a city. You send the marines first, and the marines take the beach. This gives room for the army to be bought in as they have a place to land, and then the army goes and takes over the city. The police are sent last to govern the city. The marine is not a policeman; it is important to understand that there is a life cycle to every start up. The team you need to create the first proof points are not the Harvard Grads. Don't go looking for them as you'll just become broke. Get people who can get you to point B, and then once you're there, get the people you need to get to point C. Phase out your recruiting. You will need to fire some people as an owner. Get used to it. You have to make decisions people may not like. That is the process. The company is the company and sometimes you have to take the decisions that keep the company surviving.

Ultimately, the role of a founder or leader may evolve, and recognizing when it's time when you are no longer the right leader for the company, you will need to step aside for new leadership is a crucial part of ensuring the company's long-term success.