What I Learned Building Teams and Programs

Throughout my career, I designed and built many teams and programs inside a company. Successfully, if I might testify about myself...

I was the first salesperson in a new business unit, and once I proved the business case, I built a team around it. Later, I designed and lead a portfolio of innovation initiatives within a large industrial corporation. From both cases, and others, I have takeaways and guidelines that I would recommend thinking about in the early stages of building not only a standalone startup but any practice inside a bigger organization.

1. Don't think scale right now. You are early on, and things will change a million times down the road. There is no point in trying to foresee the future; resources are limited so you better focus on the present.

   
   

2. Experience things yourself. The more you'll be a "one man show", the better it will serve you later on. For example, if this is a sales team you are building, try selling the first deals yourself. If you are designing a new large-scale process or revisiting an existing one, ensure you shadow it a few times to see for yourself where it fails. Don't hear things secondhand through status slides and updates; experience them yourself.

   
   

3. Hire only when you have to. This can be seen as the conclusion from the two previous ones. Hire only when you truly can't handle things yourself. People need to be onboarded and retained before you see value in them, and in the longer run, they need to fit together retained. All this requires resources, that in early stages, you want to invest in other places, such as quick delivery.

   
   

4. Focus on delivery and learning. Similarly to people, build and implement technologies and processes later on. In the early stages, your focus should be to find your place and what you do well. You achieve this by trying to deliver results and learning from your mistakes.

   
   

5. Learn from mistakes and don't be afraid of pivoting. It is crucial to be adaptable and open to change; Pivoting is not failing, it is finding your place.

   
   

6. Identify gaps and place yourself there. The easiest place to start and find quick wins are places that no one else is there. Identify places where opportunities might hide, where processes are not followed or defined, or where your edge is superior to others to get those success stories.

   
   

7. Promote your successes. Every win or milestone achieved counts and you need to make sure you are not the only one knows about it. One success story attracts another, with that resources will come and more request for your deliverables.

   
   

8. Hire well. If you start alone, the second person you bring will effectively double the team. The third you bring will be a 50% increase, and so on. Every new person is critical to the growth you expect to get, especially if you hire only when you have to. Therefore, understand each person's strengths and weaknesses, and ensure you recognize how they will work together as a team.

Lastly, I would wish you good luck, to follow Napoleon's saying "I rather have lucky generals than good ones". Even with all the skills and knowhow, you'll need the fortunate alignment of circumstances to be successful.