How To Build A Resilient Team

I’ve just wrapped up my first quarter as Bolt’s CEO. What I’ve seen in those three months supports what I’ve learned from decades in the tech trenches: Adaptability and resilience are crucial, especially in today’s times. With so much uncertainty in the markets, the team that can shift on a dime will win.?

But how do you build resilience as a leader? How do you get an entire organization to change as times change—and fast? In both small startups and behemoths like Amazon, I’ve had the chance to see the answer up close, both by leading and by watching other leaders. Here are three cornerstone principles in how I think about building adaptable teams:?

1) Empower doers at all levels.

At turbulent moments, time becomes a real factor. In startups, that is particularly true: You can quickly calculate how much runway you have and how long you’ll last, based on current revenue and spending. The difference between survival and failure can often come down to a matter of speed.

Here’s the difficulty: As organizations grow, decisions get bottlenecked at the top. Meetings are held; delays creep in. And all of a sudden, a product release that used to take a few weeks now takes a few months. When you probe about the cause, each person can point to another person holding things up.

Here’s how we solve this conundrum: Celebrate teams and groups that execute, regardless of their position in the hierarchy. An example: In May 2021, Bolt launched SSO Commerce which created a single digital identity for shoppers by uniting a handful of disparate account systems. How did this product come about? Because employees got together, spotted a problem, then created a solution.?

It’s one of our most successful product launches ever, and it wasn’t on a roadmap. Our team simply saw an issue and fixed it.

Individuals can do this as well. I think about Roopak Venkatakrishnan, one of Bolt’s longest-serving engineering managers. When Bolt had no IT team, he drove the process from troubleshooting to equipment procurement, then built the team from scratch. When we had no security team, he owned the PCI compliance process from start to finish. He dives into issues and gets into the weeds—even if the issue is not within his department.

Work should get done with a degree of independence. Despite our scale, not all launches at Bolt are top-down, and that’s important, because it encourages people to be adaptable—and to do things as opposed to waiting for things to be done.

2) Maximize two-way decisions.

Leaders aren’t just making decisions—they are also setting the mood about decision-making at a company.?

When I was at Amazon, we would talk a lot about the difference between one-way door and two-way door decisions. The former were irreversible: There was no way to put the genie back in the bottle after you made a choice. That included, for instance, making a promise to a customer or acquiring a company.

Two-way door decisions were different. These choices came with an undo button. Hiring someone, signing a partnership agreement, or even launching or updating a product—these weren’t permanent. We could roll them back if it came to that.

I’ve found that great organizations strive to limit one-way decisions and maximize the number of two-way decisions. Here’s why: If people feel like every single choice they make at a company could be make-or-break, they’ll be paralyzed. At Bolt, I work to openly communicate how few decisions are truly one-way door choices.

The proportions matter, as does the communications about the difference. Leaders need to point out how many one-way decisions there are, even if it seems obvious. Consider a pertinent example: If you’re about to sign a three-year lease for your company, that can feel like a one-way decision.?

But it’s not. You aren’t buying the building; you are leasing it. If need be, you can even craft lease terms that give you an out. And in the worst possible scenario, you could sublease it even before the three years are up.

Teams clam up if everyone feels like they could break the company just by making a choice. For leaders, especially in tight times, the point is to limit one-way choices and communicate relentlessly about two-way decisions, which helps to create a culture of fearless experimentation.

3) Set ambitious, measurable goals.

Numbers focus the mind—and they focus team energy.?

Last year, we launched a new product. Prior to that launch, we knew we wanted a certain number of merchant partners. If we had just said “We need a lot of merchant partners,” we would have set ourselves up for failure. Instead, we choose a specific number: 100.?

It seemed high, but attainable. By setting a real number, we focused all of Bolt’s resources. This was a clear target, and people knew what they were aiming for.

It can sound almost laughably simple, but too many organizations expend energy in dozens of directions without driving to a common set point. When crises happen, that energy becomes even more diffuse, because anxiety sets in about the future. How will the company survive? Will we hit our revenue targets? Precise goals are a balm for these anxieties, because they build action and accountability.

Importantly, we didn’t mandate how our team would get to the 100. We set a lofty goal and then let people do their best work to meet it. Avoiding rigidity in your process is as vital as building specificity in your goals. (By the way, I’m proud to say we hit that 100 mark, and the product is still growing to this day!)

***

The next several months will be a powerful test of organizational adaptability across sectors: Companies will sink or swim based on how fast they respond to the changes in the market. I have seen a few of these shifts over my career, and it’s why I’m sure that Bolt will succeed.

It’s also why I’m discussing these lessons and would love to hear yours, because I truly believe we can all learn from each other!