Building Our Team

When you’re an early-stage startup, you need to learn quickly and build solutions quickly.? I’m also coming to find you need to build your team quickly.?

In previous roles, I would often join a team ‘already in progress’, when my role as team member or team leader would be to quickly suss out the existing ways of working and either adapt or influence change where it’s not getting the outcomes desired.? Whilst this can still be challenging, it’s still easier than the situation when you’re forming a new team, whether as a member or leader.

The first time I had this experience was at 高露洁 , when a group of about 30 of us were plucked from various countries in Europe or further afield (I’d come directly from a role in Mexico) to launch a new way of inventing and developing innovative pan-European product bundles.? The company pulled out the stops to ensure a successful mash-up of backgrounds, skills, ambitions and personalities.? We were brought together for an induction across 3 days at a posh hotel in Monaco. I do miss the budgets of yesteryear…? Formal sessions were organized bringing us through the tenets of effective team performance (think RACI, over-communicating, mutual respect).? We also had plenty of time to mingle over breaks in curriculum, lavish dinners and outings to the casino and Provence.

This induction alongside ongoing guidance for us in building our own processes, not to mention having carefully curated the players in the first place, led to success.? We quickly aligned goals not only amongst ourselves but also with the support teams in regional operations, R&D, procurement and country players and managed to compress the time between ideation and multi-market launch to one-third of what it had been.? Although tears were minimized, the feat did require a whole lot of sweat by all.? My manager would regularly pull out the line when we would say ‘goodbye’ at 7 or 8PM – ‘Oh only working half day then?’ As in twelve hours instead of the full twenty-four.

I’ve also quickly formed from scratch and led teams in my previous startup.? That was especially time-sensitive when opening a new location and needing to staff up from zero to multiple people across 12 hours/7 days, ready-to-serve-the-customers in a busy shopping center on Day 1.? But in a way it was easier because everyone had a similar role – customer service. It was more about quickly educating and getting adherence to the playbook I’d already developed.

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Now with Zonder , it’s a new experience in teambuilding yet again. Granted, so far, we’re a small team, but Govin Murugachandran and I have different backgrounds, skills and practices.?

Over the last few weeks, I’ve become more acutely aware of where I am within the classic stages of building teams: Forming, Storming, Norming and Performing.

Forming

In forming our co-founding partnership, huddled in Zinc ‘s open plan workspace across from Euston station (a subtle way of saying this wasn’t Monaco), we undertook a number of exercises to ensure shared goals, ambitions, and vision.? If you’re looking to do the same, I recommend 50 Questions for co-founders .? We each selected the 10-15 most important to us personally and shared our answers.? As there was overlap (a good sign), we ended up discussing in depth around 20 topics.

Storming

What does storming feel like?? I suppose if you’re someone who loves drama, this might take the shape of political maneuverings, aggressive encounters, gossip or sarcasm.? But for those of us who avoid confrontation and drama, mostly it feels like hard work to come to agreement.? Rather than fuel us (something I suppose drama fans experience), it saps us of energy.? If it’s a regular pattern in team discussions, we may come to anticipate it and suffer twice.? Once in the anticipation and potentially again if it does come to fruition.

This is a stage I’m experiencing in part at the moment.? It’s twice independently been observed that Govin and I were ‘heatedly agreeing’.? Well there’s that; we’re agreeing!? We agree that we agree on our vision and goals.? We tend to disagree on what’s in and what’s out of scope to achieve them and how best to do so and what to broadcast.

The key thing for me to remember is that storming is a common stage in building a strong team.? It does not mean that the team is faulty nor broken.? And I am someone who does not enjoy suffering, and I believe Govin shares this characteristic.? So, we are working hard on working out processes to improve joint decision making.? This involves overtly practicing active listening , planning ahead for important discussions for which we think we may have different ideas how best to proceed and, of course, leaning heavily on Philipp Essl , our team coach.? Philipp is brilliant at separating the content from the process of our sticking points and recommending how we can change our behavio0r to have smoother processes to decision. ?We’ve agreed both to be more explicit when we take (or don’t take) a decision and to build in flexibility for that decision to change following further evidence or reflection.

Norming

Norming involves establishing ways of working.? Processes and attitudes that together make up the view of ‘this is how we do things around here’.? Newcomers will be expected largely to adapt to this, although we will always be open to evaluating suggestions to improve.? I’d like to revisit this stage in a later post as I expect there will be more to say.? For now, we’re building.

Performing

High performance is the goal of most teams.? For me, I’d also include enjoyment.? If the effort requires exhaustion, then I’d still classify it as a rehearsal for the performance.?

This week we’ve had a couple ‘wins’ from a commercial perspective.? I can’t say more here, but I am immensely pleased.? And Govin is cautiously pleased.? Another of our differences, one which we both derive amusement and joke about.

This Week’s:

Lowlight – The slog of commuting to the office all week with dodgy tube service many days.? The fact that this is the worst of my week is a good sign.

Highlight – Hitting a major commercial milestone, as referenced above.

Ask – We’re looking for general practice leaders willing to share with us what would help them the most relative to chronic care.

What are my cohort up to?

A Founder’s Story – Marjo Palanee , is now focusing the spotlight of her blog on under-represented founders and their startups whilst offering her services in building communities on social media. I highly recommend her workshops!

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