独家优惠奖金 100% 高达 1 BTC + 180 免费旋转

How loyal are you to what you love?

We throw a lot of words around as investment professionals nowadays. We say “people” and “teams” ultimately matter and what most investors consider.

Yet, when we ask founders about building a well-functioning team, we often see blank faces in response.

Not many of them invest time upfront in planning recruitment properly. Making strategic and informed hiring decisions is more based on gut feeling than merit.

Last week, a series of elements I came across culminated in this blog post focused on “team.”

The first was a presentation by one of 212’s partners, Maher, to our portfolio companies.

Thus, here I am, pondering the importance of teams in creating star performances in a business.

In Duckworth’s words, grit is “…doing what you love, but not just falling in love — staying in love.”

Shortly after reading the book, Maher spoke about grit as one of the eight traits of a successful entrepreneur [see my colleague’s post on that].

All at once, a question popped into my head since running a business is certainly not a one-person show: how would you, as a founder, make others you hire care about your business so much that they not only fall in love but are willing to stay in love with and loyal to it?

This question took me to my next stop in my thought process, a podcast in which Stebbings asks Gupta: “When thinking about a team, what do you believe is the single most important question to ask?”

And the rest followed.

Note that key questions and discussions from the Stebbings’ podcast are my inspiration.

When you are building or evaluating your team, one question to ask yourself:

Would you enthusiastically rehire this person if given the chance, knowing everything you know?

The word enthusiastically is significant here because it removes the possibility of vagueness. If the answer to this question is anything other than “absolutely, yes!”, your answer is “no.”

People often underestimate what opportunities and possibilities open if the answer is “yes, I would absolutely enthusiastically rehire this team.”

A good team can be a powerful thing. The founder has the responsibility to bring the right people together to do incredible, over the top things, and do so in a fun way for everyone in the process. Unfortunately, many founders do not consider their team deeply and do not hold it to a high enough standard by asking this simple question.

A very common mistake.

If you had to start over again, knowing what you know now, would you build the same team? If the answer is “no,” then what would you do differently?

This line of questioning should be a routine process. Gupta says that you can improve your team performance by pausing and reflecting every six to 12 months upon how you feel about your team and how your team feels — the highs and lows — and works together. “In start-ups, months are like years,” he says, so speed is essential.

As a founder, the instant you feel like something is not right, you should reflect upon the factors causing the problem and ask yourself: what am I doing or can do to fix it?

Do not ever get caught in the inertia trap!

But, how do you find and acquire the best talent in the initial phase?

It is critically important to seek out the very best talent when building your company to make sure you surround yourself with people who make you and your team better.

Mark Zuckerberg recently shared his #1 hiring rule: “I will only hire someone to work directly for me if I would work for that person.” What does that mean exactly? It means you should hire people who will elevate your business to a completely different level with their leadership and vision. They should be better than you at least in one area and add to your business’ overall culture and performance.

In Gupta’s own words: “you should ask whether these new hires have some sort of superpowers that can complement your weaknesses and whether they are the type of person that you and your team can learn from.”

How to keep up the quality while keeping up the quantity when hiring?

The need to hire the best of the best while hitting key performance targets is often a company’s dilemma.

Gupta says: “some executives simply do not have the bandwidth to think deeply while filling spots in the company. While others feel the pain of not filling a spot because they care about that spot so much that they are only going to put somebody awesome in it.”

The latter is perhaps the right approach as trying to hit targets over hiring the best team might be a real mistake.

Short-term thinking does not help companies scale, and if, as a founder, you want to build something long-lasting, you absolutely need to focus on building the right team.

Each person who represents a part of your business needs to share the same vision with you and drive business growth from inside. Mis-hiring an employee in a company out of a hurry can have a severe impact.

Gupta says: “the moment you put somebody in the seat who is not that great for that role, you suddenly start worrying about whom they are going to hire next and whether that person is going to be the right fit for the role.”

Think about how and why the person you hire will elevate the company to the next level and whether this person will be somebody you and other team members can learn with and from. Take time in making sure that each team member shares a sense of why the team exists and how invested they are in accomplishing your company’s mission.

How do you win the most competitive and sought-after talent in the current market?

Gupta says: “When interviewing someone for a role, try to focus on getting to know what is important to the person in front of you from the first minute. You spend a lot of time at work, and hence the first thing is really to try to get to know the person that you will spend a big chunk of your day with. And by becoming somebody whom they can trust, you earn the right to hopefully be a thought partner to them as they are making the final decision on your employment offer.”

One thing to make sure is that the mission of the company resonates with them. When tough times come, which they undoubtedly will, their adherence and strong ties to the mission will motivate them to keep trying to deliver and build the company.

It should be mentioned that a career choice for somebody is stressful. So, first and foremost, this should be the right decision for the new hire, as well as a sound decision for the company.

If you can find the right people with whom you can form long standing relationships, they will certainly make your start-up journey much more enjoyable.

You got yourself an asset that is beyond valuable — congratulations!

Add a comment

What is your view?

Send

Related posts:

How to Calculate Server Max Requests per Second

One of the important part before creating a new service is called capacity planning. In this process, we calculate how many resources are we are required for the service to able to handle the…

Making Past Normal Growth Curves

Most businesses are faced with normal growth curves which are highly dependent on the growth of the industry, if the industry stalls so do the business, but isn’t this how it is supposed to be? Not…

Von Miller ativou o modo empolgou para 2019?

Durante a semana que se passou, ocorreu o Football Camp do Von Miller. No camp ele integra as crianças de Denver ao futebol americano de forma educativa. Esse evento contou com a presença do armador…