As mentioned previously (see posts about people as the key to success and finding the right co-founders), team success can be broken down into the team design, launch, and process. In this post, we’ll focus on the launch - how you kick things off. Think back to an issue you had within a team... Most likely, this issue was a result of a miscommunication or difference in expectations. Each of you had a specific idea about the way things should be and had difficulty seeing each other’s perspective or reaching a resolution efficiently. This isn’t uncommon. But the root of the issue is almost always the same. Most disagreements come down to a misalignment in expectations, so it’s important to set these clearly up front: know what is important (and not important!) to everyone, how you’ll communicate, when people can make decisions without checking in, whether you’ll work together in the same room or separately, etc.… This may seem like overkill, and many teams agree, but then regret down the line when they didn't have these conversations early on. Here are some suggested tips of discussions to have in the first few meetings that may help reduce misalignment friction:
- What are our personal goals for the startup? - What part of our plan are we each unwilling to change? 6. Establish and agree to your team norms: Here are a few things to consider: - When will you meet? Is there a set time each week? What days and times work best for everyone and how does the team feel about meeting in the evening or on weekends? - Will you work together in a room or have focused meetings then disperse to work? - How will you communicate between meetings? Email? Text? GroupMe? - How will you track progress? Will you use a task tracker such as Trello or have some other kind of list to keep track? - How will you make decisions? Will this vary by topic? What happens in a stalemate? - How will the team deal with conflict? What are the first steps to take to ensure understanding, then is there someone to whom you can escalate if needed? - Other preferences of working styles? Mornings? Late nights? Breaks? - Importance of punctuality, attentiveness, attendance, etc? This process cannot avoid all issues, but the more these discussions are had at the outset, the more likely you are to overcome them than for them to cause the downfall of your company. So as uncomfortable as some of them might be, they are better to have openly early than when more is at stake. I can say this from experience, but I also know that even after having been told some of the above, I still disregarded it. Everyone believes they will be different for some reason or another. But ultimately, you need to prepare for the worst while planning for the best. And since team issues are the biggest downfall of startups, make this preparation part of your toolkit.
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