How teams stick together and don't fall out

Every remarkably good, or bad thing that has happened to humanity has happened because a few people came together and didn’t fall out. It’s always been the case. From songs to softwares, medicines to movies, companies to countries, fashion to faith…Almost everything around us has an incredible story of a few people coming together, not falling out, and at the end, inspiring people and creating a legacy.

In Sapiens, Yuval Harari goes as far as arguing that the primary reason of the dominance of Human beings on earth is not strength, smartness, or language, but power of persuasion - our ability to inspire other people to join us and cohesively unite in billions. While monkeys make troops, we make religions and countries. It’s amazing.

A great question is - how do we do that? How can we persuade people to leave their cushy lives and join us in hard crusades? It’s not easy to inspire people to start with you and even harder to have them stick in the rough times. Is there a "right way" to do it?

In my journey of starting a company in freshman year of college and reaching multi crore revenues by the time we were graduating, I've tried to inspire a lot of people to work together. Needless to say, the going has always been extremely dynamic, often stressful and mostly uncertain. In these 5+ years, we've pivoted six times to reach our current core business model, built five tech products on its backing, tasting varying degrees of both success and failure. Despite all that, we're not huge, and that hasn't stopped our team from sticking and dreaming together with heads held high. Every entrepreneur knows what a blessing that is. Here's a framework which we've developed by looking inwards (analysing our story) and outwards (by following the #52booksin201X routine): P-P-S-B (Boring acronym, I know).

P - Personality

In the book The Tipping Point, Gladwell outlines “The Law of the Few”, according to which, there are three kinds of people who make things go “viral”: Connectors (social butterflies), Mavens (information mines) and Salesmen (whether it be products, services, ideas, vision, or drugs; they sell).

Though Gladwell was explaining the "Law of the few" behind "viral successes", I think it very much formulizes the right mix of characteristics to build a solid team as well. Historically, almost every team which didn't fall out has shown the perfect triad of these three characteristics to bring and hold people together.

Consider this.

1. I used to sell things like CDs and toys to my friends at school as a ten year old. I could sell alright.
2. I was lucky to have started reading quite early on to know I that needed to be more than just a good sales guy.
3. Despite being an awkward introvert, I was literally shaking hands with everyone as soon as I hit college. It’s like I was injecting myself some solid “connector” steroids. Thankfully, it led to my meeting great folks like Avneesh Khanna, whom I'm still sharing the dream with.

I find this combination every time I read about a successful team:

Paul Allen was the “idea man” - the maven who used to pitch ideas to Bill Gates, mostly for him to turn down. Also, his “connection” with Tim Patterson led to the legendary Q-Dos deal which made Microsoft really happy. But he needed Bill Gates as the other Maven and salesman. For Nike, Phil Knight was the Salesman, Bill Powerman and Jeff Johnson were the Mavens and Connectors. For McDonalds, Ray Kroc was the Connector-Salesman, Harry Sonnenberg and real McDonald brothers were the Mavens who made the business model what it was. There are a lot of similar stories which keep validating the “Law of the Few”. 

P - Purpose

How do we articulate our purpose so people get inspired and excited to join us? One word - MAYA: Most Advanced, Yet Acceptable.

When we started The Testament, our purpose was to brand IP University. We were in MAIT, and it was clear that we weren’t judged as very bright. To make it worse, media did its job. Every time there was a success story from IIT, ET would mention that the guys were from IIT. But if the people weren’t from IIT, you’d not read which college are they from. It’s like media wanted (and still wants) to brand IITs by not branding everyone else. Truth is that 98% of people are never going to be at IITs and we wanted to become a platform which enables people from Tier 2 colleges to brand themselves. It was an “advanced” but acceptably familiar purpose. Heroic, but manageably relatable. It had MAYA.

It becomes difficult to inspire people to invest themselves in your vision when it’s either too progressive, or too boring. 

If we would have started with a plan to colonize Mars, perhaps we wouldn’t have had a team. 99% of Indian startups couldn’t have raised the venture capital money if they didn’t make their model sound like MAYA. Flipkart was Amazon for India, Ola was Uber for India. OYO was AirBnB for India, etc. If you try to sound too unique or new or advanced, you’ll not be able to inspire people simply because they wouldn’t be able to relate to it. At the same time, if you make your stuff too familiar, it would fail to excite people. More on this in Hit Makers. Extraordinary book.

S-Survival

Only having the right mix of personality and purpose doesn't go anywhere, unless you can ensure basic survival for your team (Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs). Sometimes people trade their basic survival needs for the larger goal, but it’s rare. If you find someone like that, hold tight and never let go! That person is a keeper. For the rest of the times, try to manage.

The Testament was designed to be profitable from the first day so we could survive and invest on moonshots. A lot of startups directly aim for external funding and do just fine. Different people have different ways of going about ensuring survival, you’ll have to find out your own.

B-Brotherhood

Despite ensuring survival, people have a habit of falling out; they fail the Marshmallow test:

If you show a six year old a marshmallow, and give him an option of either taking one right away, or take two after finishing homework, there’s 99% chance that he’ll fail to control himself. He'll take one right away.

We all fail our own versions of marshmallow tests, everyday. A lot of times, I might also want to take the easy road. Why would I work hard even in my sleep when I can easily get a job and earn way more money, atleast in the near/mid term? The answer's brotherhood...or sisterhood.

Etymologically, the word company is derived from “where people break bread together”.

The Testament has group lunches. We eat together like a family and have discussions about everything under the sun. We plan to have this as a part of our culture even after we scale up because it works like magic. A lot happens over a cup of coffee, and same goes for lunch. With every conversation, we become more like a pack of wolves, pride of lions, or troop of monkeys. We cultivate a feeling that if we succeed, we succeed together. If we fall, we fall together. And that makes a team, a team.

This isn’t emotional manipulation, it’s just having a life support. It helps you win over the marshmallow test and prepare for bigger victories. Most people think of emotional responsibility as an energy sink. What they fail to acknowledge is that people do much more than what they're capable of when they're responsible for somebody else. Responsibility breeds strength, as much as strength breeds responsibility. Brotherhood captures the true spirit of that cycle.

Foundation stone: Immortality

I believe this is the deepest “why” for all the creationists. It could be thought of as the bedrock beneath an inspiring personality, everlasting purpose, struggle of survival and cultivation of brotherhood.

In Denial of Death, Ernest Becker wrote that people know that they’re going to face death, but want to escape it anyhow. Deep down, everyone wants to escape mortality and leave a legacy. There are broadly three ways of people do it:

1. Religious solution: Where we tie ourselves to a belief of an immortal entity coerced with the narrative of heaven, hell, afterlife and endless soul
2. Romantic solution: Where people try to escape their sense of finiteness by finding “gods” in their personal or material love. Love is their legacy. And it’s carried forward by their offspring who take their name forward
3. Creative Solution: When they create something which outlasts them. It could be a song, software, medicine, movie, company or cult. This is personification of “Built to Last” in the true sense.

A deep look inside will make you realize that everyone wants to be immortal, and if given a choice, would always shoot for the Creative Solution. If you can tie this to your story and genuinely believe in it, your team might have a better chance of sticking together. And lasting forever.