Building Great Teams

Some thoughts on building teams.

Over the last year, I've interviewed lots of VCs and it is notable that when asked what is the one thing that has to click, they surprisingly don’t say the founder(s), but instead the team that founders are able to build around them.

This is just one small data point that tells you how important it is to build a high functioning team and, over the last decade or so, whilst a lot of things have changed others have remained constant.

Culture

Culture is ‘The way we do things around here’. You are never hiring an individual, you are always hiring a member of a team - even they’re the first employee in the door.

You want to make sure that the people you hire, however capable they are, are people that to a greater extent fit the culture of the organisation.

That is not to say that you should hire people that look and think exactly alike, as we know diversity brings a lot of positives to the table.

But you can hire a diverse team that still fit the culture of the org.

Think about whether they share the same values, are driven to achieve the company objectives and are likely to be able to collaborate with other team members.

Some of the worst hires I have made are when I have sacrificed cultural fit on the assumption that skills alone will get things done.

Attitude > Aptitude

Attitude is how someone approaches a challenge (and life!), aptitude is what they know.

You can always teach someone skills but how they approach a challenge, their job or others is innate to that person.

Back in the day, it was the norm to check out a prospective candidate’s educational pedigree, did they go to the right schools or get the right grades.

Today that is becoming meaningless with the ability to learn online and the value of a degree as a point of differentiation decreases as more and more people have access to higher education.

This means that the best people understand that it is their approach to getting things done that will differentiate them.

The caveat to this is for highly technical roles (accountant, engineer etc.) - whilst attitude counts, knowledge of the subject matter is highly relevant.

Complementary Experience

The whole should be greater than the sum of its parts.

You want to ensure that collectively a team can support and drive each other to achieve outsized outcomes.

For example, if you have a lot of blue sky thinkers, you’ll also need a pragmatist, if you have a lot of number crunchers you may also want a creative on board.

I’m a great believer in building on peoples strengths and finding ways to get them doing what they do best, this naturally means there need to be others to fill the gaps.

Avoid Toxicity

Whilst this generally falls under cultural fit, it deserves to be highlighted separately.

Toxic people, however smart, will kill a team. They will not only suck energy, but also time from the team as people get caught up in having to manage the interpersonal damage.

If you see someone with toxic traits (typically manipulative tendencies, self centred behaviour, negativity), run a mile.

Maximise Talent Density

Popularised by Reed Hastings and Netflix, talent density is ensuring your ratio of “great” performers to “adequate” performers is high (and always >1:1).

This is because high performers will drive the whole organisation up and create an environment of excellence.

This may seem harsh, but if your aim is to build a great team and a great business, you cannot have anyone carrying slack.

And whilst not all roles are created equal, how people perform in their role can be measured and you should be quick to identify and remove those that aren’t up to scratch.

Building high performance teams is difficult.

At the early stages of your business especially, when you may not be able to provide market levels of compensation or there isn’t any brand recognition that draws talent to work with you, you will have to constantly be looking out for incredible people.

Nurture the relationships so that whilst they may not join today, they may well come on board in the future.