Elements of building a high-quality entrepreneurial team

Building a team, entrepreneurs should indeed avoid the lure of similarity and be guided by the principle of “complementarity: they should seek partners whose knowledge, skills, and talents complement rather overlap with their own. A “DreamTeam” then might consist of an expert in marketing, an expert in finance, an expert in operations, an expert in product design.

Developing a successful team environment has the benefit of improving the organization's qualities and processes, which have the added benefits of leading to cost reduction and improved customer satisfaction.

In the formation of a team, the organization should carefully consider several factors, including design plans, group processes, placement, member participation, and overall team purpose. The below five principles help the entrepreneurs to achieve the most effective performance and long-term goals.

Purpose: Will the team clearly understand why it exists, what it is to do, and how it will know they are successful? The team and management must agree to a written purpose or mission statements so that they are working together in a common direction towards solutions that meet their overall purpose. Team goals and management deadlines should align with their overall purpose and will serve to guide the team performance and help them meet challenges.

Plan: Will the team acknowledge when its project or assignment will be complete and know what it needs to accomplish its tasks? If the team goals are specific to their purpose and the team agrees these are relevant and achievable goals, then the team needs to agree to a timeline for goals and a way to measure how they are doing towards goals. Not only should the team and their management define work deadlines and expected milestones in its goals and schedules, but it should also include necessary training to acquire the team and task-related skills.

Placement: Where will the team members be physically located and how often should the team plan to have meetings? If the team is to be an intact workgroup, this may make some things simpler but the team will need a meeting room for complex problem-solving. If the team is spread over multiple sites, managers will need to consider costs and possible problems the team may have due to culture or time differences, and then determine whether travel for some meetings is required or if any special equipment is needed for members to meet regularly via phone or on-line.

Participation: Who would be the best people to include on the team and how large should the team be in order to accomplish its purpose? Management needs to consider the necessary skill sets, professional attitudes, and process knowledge when selecting team members. In addition, for membership at the formation of team or as team personnel needs to grow, look for a balance between personality types for both task and people focus to be included so the solutions team may design will be more diverse and innovative to achieve team purpose and required work.

Process: How will the team get to where it needs to go in order to accomplish its purpose? The team should develop and agree to their ground rules, any constraints that management may set related to decision-making authority or functional boundaries. Initial team training should include meeting management with a suggested meeting agenda and record-keeping formats, interpersonal communication, problem-solving, and if relevant to the team’s work include process mapping.

CaseStudy

HowSpotifyBalances EmployeeAutonomyAnd Accountability

  Harvard Business Review article

A Swedish company SPOTIFY ( music, video, and podcast streaming company) organized it's more than 2000 achieves autonomy without sacrificing accountability. HOW?

They have unique organizational units:

1.Squad ( No more than 8 people): Basic blocks, they decide what to build, how to build it, and with whom to work to make the product interoperable. 

2. Tribe: The matrix of the squad called tribes. They work-related areas. 

3.Chapter: Tribes comprise of several squads linked through Chapter. The chapter’s role is to facilitate learning and competency development throughout the squads. Chapter leaders work as formal mangers. However, leaders are also a member of squads( Player-Coach Model)

4.Guild: They are lightweight communities of sharing a common interest( Agile, automation, etc.) Can be spread across Tribes and chapters.

This unusual combination of squads, tribes, chapters, and guilds is the organizational infrastructure that underlies Spotify’s operating model. The squad structure achieves autonomy without sacrificing accountability. Every squad owns its features throughout the product life cycle, and the squads have full visibility into their features’ successes and failures.

Spotify encourages innovation without losing the benefits of repeatability. Since squads are the primary centers of innovation, Spotify introduced its chapters as the matrix to connect competencies across squads.

Spotify fosters alignment without excessive control. The central organizational feature that shapes Spotify’s model is the concept of “loosely coupled, tightly aligned squads.” The key belief here is that “alignment enables autonomy — the greater the alignment, the more autonomy you can grant.”