We like to attribute
magic-like qualities to most startups. Collectively, we marvel at their ability
to focus on a single, potentially world-changing product. We praise the
inclusiveness and camaraderie of their employees. Their ability to move quickly
is the envy of every major corporation.
What is often overlooked
is that these qualities exist not solely because of the greatness of the
startup team, but are in part made easier by the team’s size. There is a “Law
of Small Teams” at play: the smaller you are, the fewer natural barriers to
moving quickly and effectively towards your goals. So the real proving ground
for any team is when you can no longer sit elbow-to-elbow around a single
table.
When your team is small,
your biggest barriers tend to be external in nature: needing more funding,
press, or market traction. Internally, though, you can turn on a dime. Yet as
you grow, keeping your team aligned and coordinated becomes increasingly
challenging. The single best tool you have in keeping your growing team agile
is building a culture of effective communication.
For example, you might
start to hear a phrase I’ve grown to detest: “I can’t start that yet, since I
need this person to finish their part first.” These internal dependencies will
be your death by a thousand paper cuts: it is possible to wake up one day to
find your entire team moving glacially slow, with everyone waiting on someone
else. Yet when teams internally communicate their dependencies and roadblocks,
you can collectively work to eliminate them, allowing the teams to work in
parallel. This awareness that communication brings is the first step to
breaking these bottlenecks and recapturing that small team agility, even when
you’re larger.
It is possible to wake up
one day to find your entire team moving glacially slow, with everyone waiting
on someone else.
I’ve been an early part
of two rapidly growing teams and businesses – first at TED, now at Behance –
and witnessed first hand how communication allowed us to scale. Here are a few
of the lessons I’ve learned.
Leverage technology, but
don’t force it.
Our engineering team at
Behance convinced the rest of us to use a group chat program (such as Campfire
or Hipchat), and we can no longer imagine life with out it. The ability to have
asynchronous, recorded interactions among an entire team – and to split off
into deeper dives through private chat – is the single best way we’ve found to
keep everyone aware of what is happening.
Mix and match the
technology that best works for you, whether it is an instant messenger client,
texting, Skype, or even the generous use of post-it notes. But be wary of
dictating the tech your teams use: broad adoption is more important than any
specific feature set. Better to build off what your team naturally gravitates
toward instead of forcing the implementation of the “perfect” solution.
Favor in-person
conversations, not email.
We can all become too
reliant on communication by text. My colleagues Zach and Jackie coined the word
“FaceMail” for the age-old act of walking over to your colleague’s desk and
starting a conversation. A few minutes of face-to-face conversation eliminates
days of email threads.
But there is in important
pre-requisite to this form of communication: be interruptible. If you are too
busy to listen to your team, don’t expect them to make the time to listen to
each other. Yes, you might occasionally lose the deep focus you had when you
are interrupted. But an in-person conversation alleviates one of the greatest
drains on company resources – a lack of clarity – so it generally is a worthy
tradeoff. And there are a lot of strategies for ensuring you still have that
much-needed time to focus, such as blocking off a few hours a day to camp out
in the quieter parts of your office.
Hold all-hands meetings.
Being able to have an
entire team’s simultaneous attention is the norm in a small team, but becomes
increasingly difficult as you grow. You have to actively build it into your
calendar. At Behance, we started a weekly all-hands with each team presenting
(and each team rotating who presents to the group). These can and should be
standing meetings (where everyone literally stands) that only last around 15
minutes allowing deeper discussions to take place offline.
When it stops working, stop
doing it.
The single worst reason
to continue doing something is because you did it before. When a system or
process of communication starts to show signs of strain, ask what it was
originally designed to solve and whether that problem still exists. If the
problem no longer exists, scrap the process. If it does, refactor to make it
work again. For example, our all-hands meeting was originally a monthly
sit-down, with every team member speaking. When that showed signs of strain, we
added the new weekly format.
The single worst reason
to continue doing something is because you did it before.
***
Most people assume that
communication inherent in small teams will continue naturally as you grow. Hey,
we’re talking all day – isn’t that enough? But it’s a skill set that has to be
cultivated and optimized throughout your team. Fail to prioritize it and your
growing team will increasingly stand in the way of their own success. But build
it into your culture and your small team can turn into the foundation of a
great company
courtesy: www.99u.com
x-)
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