Building Great Products? Build a Great Team first...

What makes a great product?

We all think about this. We look at products we admire and we wonder: how did they do it? Was it amazing leadership? Are the people that work at it, just all insanely talented? While both of those things may be true, they aren't the only reason things are great. Having great leadership and talent are both huge helps, to be certain, but in my experience only one thing can make a great product. Great Teams

So What Makes a Great Team

Think about the amazing teams you've seen or been a part of - the ones who always seem to ship the best products and experience the biggest wins. What made them amazing? It wasn't that they had the exact right number of designers and engineers and product folks. Maybe they did, maybe they didn't. More often, great teams have :

1. People who trust each other. This means designers who care deeply about their engineers' and PMs' thoughts on design, engineers who care about how their architecture impacts the designers, PMs who are comfortable letting their whole team own the product and process, etc. If a team doesn't trust each other, it will manifest in them not sharing their responsibilities.
2. A lot of trust from the company. It's impossible for any team to execute well without this, great or not. Great teams aren't micromanaged. They're given a goal and have the autonomy and support to make it happen.
3. A variety of points of view and thoughtful disagreement. A lot of people think great teams don't argue, when the reality is exactly the opposite. However, even when debating, these teams do so from a place of trust (see above) that everyone is arguing in the best interest of the product. They appreciate each other for what everyone brings to the table.
4. Senior folks who help less-senior people. This could mean a senior engineer mentoring a more junior designer in html/css, a senior designer showing a new product manager how to run a project well, or a product manager teaching a junior engineer to think about more than the code. Again, many people mistake "a group of all senior people" as a recipe for a great team. My experience is that great teams are a mixture of talents and expertise, but the constant is an environment of teaching and learning

Great Teams Are Magical and Unexpected

Clearly, it's hard to predict if a group of people will act Great or not when you're forming a new team. Sometimes all it takes is one person to complete the puzzle and convert an Almost Great team into a Great one, or to take a Great team and drag them down.

However, it's still important to make that your primary motivator when creating and adjusting teams. I mean, supposedly your biggest concern as a manager is setting up people you manage to be successful, right? Getting them onto a team where they'll be valued and produce great work seems like a good place to start.

The most powerful part of having a Great Team is that you can throw nearly anything at them and they'll figure it out. Have a new, important strategic initiative? Most companies try to cobble together "the best" individuals and throw them at the problem. What you find is that now you're dealing with a bunch of people who don't know how to work together yet, in addition to them trying to work on this high-priority thing. Better to throw the problem at a high-functioning team, who already know how to work well together and can concentrate on executing.

Greatness Is Cumulative

The opposite of the cobbled-together dream team scenario. It's real, real tempting for manager folks to see a great team operating at a high-level and discuss splitting the team up amongst the Almost Great and Not Great teams in an attempt to buoy everyone. This is a mistake. A Great Team is a mystical concoction that relies on all its parts. The knowledge of how to work together is incredibly valuable in and of itself. If you break up a Great Team, that's all you're doing: losing a Great Team. Their new teams may not support or challenge them in a way that makes them or their new teams successful.

People and Teams, Not Resources

It's critical to not think about people as pieces that can be shuffled around at will. It's hard to overstate the power and importance of creating an environment that encourages and empowers people to find their best collaborators. Find ways to experiment with new groups of people who you think may work well together and, if they start working amazingly, double down on their success. If your culture is based on hiring and building Great Teams, then your product, your company and everyone who works there will see and feel the benefits