Technology is Easy, People Are Hard
By Scott Hoffpauir, Managing Partner
In previous blogs, we discussed scaling the customer lifecycle and product development. Today, we’re going to discuss the challenges of scaling your team. As a leader, scaling your team means helping them grow to become more productive. It also means formalizing your organization, so that:
Everyone knows their role and responsibilities.
You can clearly communicate your strategy and culture.
Everyone knows the mission.
You can identify additional leaders to manage the team.
Sounds easy, and really, how hard can it be?
If there is one thing I’ve learned over the years, it’s that technology is easy, but people are hard. We often see leaders in smaller companies spend all of their time focusing on go-to-market and products while neglecting their team and culture. When you’re smaller, the impact of this is minimal, but as you grow, the effect becomes exponential. People need to understand the company’s mission, values, and where they fit. As you build out your team, you’re creating relationships. And the most essential aspect of any relationship is trust.
So, how do you build trust? You could read countless leadership books and sound like you know what you’re doing, or you could just use common sense. The first thing you need to do is acknowledge that building trust takes time and hard work. It’s not a one-time thing. You have to put sustained effort into it. As your team gets bigger, you have to increase the amount of time and effort you invest. In fact, in my previous job, I had a leader with staff that was just focused on the team, helping with facilitation and communications.
The second thing you need to focus on is ensuring you have a team that demonstrates competence. Everyone has to be able to perform their job function and add value to the organization. Whether you realize it or not, if you have someone in the group that isn’t competent, your team has already voted that person off the island. If this occurs, you have to act quickly and address the problem.
As the company leader, you also need to make sure that all team leaders are confident and influential in their core areas and are clear communicators, powerful facilitators, skilled negotiators, and effective decision-makers. (And yes, most importantly, you need to make sure you’re all of this too!)
The third thing you need is a team that acts with integrity. This is where you ensure your company culture and values are reflected in the organization. As a leader, you have to model the behavior you seek, and the best way to do this is to use yourself as an example for others to follow. One key to this is humility; make sure it’s not about you, but about the team. Another is delegation, trusting your team means you have to be willing to delegate tasks and accept the consequences.
I’ve always used three simple team rules:
Don’t be a wimp — stand up for what you believe in; you’re a leader for a reason.
Don’t do stupid stuff — understand and believe in why you’re doing something; challenge things if you don’t think it’s the right thing to do.
Do the right thing — people almost always know the right thing to do; they just don’t always do it.
My fourth point for scaling people is that you and the team need to be kind and genuinely care about each other. The group doesn’t have to be friends, but they need to be respectful of each other. There will always be cases where some of your employees are stressed and challenged. You have to build a team that is supportive and accepting of each other during these times.
And as the company leader, honesty is always the best policy. Don’t try to sugar coat things. Be open and honest with your team, and work together to overcome your challenges. That doesn’t mean that the team is a democracy. Sometimes, you’ll be a benevolent leader making decisions based on consensus, and sometimes you’ll have to be a dictator making unpopular decisions.
And lastly, your team has to be dependable and honor commitments. You have to have a culture where you follow through — where you do what you said you were going to do. The team has to be accountable, not only to you, but to each other as well as customers. Everyone has to trust that everyone else is doing their job and delivering their commitments. For example, I used to have issues between engineering and product management. Engineering thought the features they were being asked to do weren’t necessary, and product management thought that engineering took too much time to deliver. I used a simple rule — engineering doesn’t question what they’re asked to do, and product management doesn’t question how long it takes. It worked, and the trust between teams meant that they had more time to focus on their own tasks.
Scaling your team isn’t easy. People aren’t easy. You have to work hard to build a team that trusts each other. You have to take the time to bring your group together. They have to understand and buy into the company vision, mission, values, and culture. As a leader, it’s not your job to be the expert at everything. You need to rely on your team, delegate decision-making, and accept the results — good or bad. You have to trust your team, and they have to trust you. You do that, and you’ll be able to grow the team and scale your business.
