Managing your team: the basics

I often come across entrepreneurs who successfully grew their idea into a real business, and they realize their one-man organization has grown to 20,  50 or even more people. They can no longer do everything themselves. They have grown their team but they cannot afford to hire managers whose only job it is to manage others, as they are still very much relying on each individual’s contribution to help grow the top line and keep the bottom line in check. They need to start to act as managers themselves.  But where to start … ?

Based on my experience and what I have seen some entrepreneurs struggle with, here are the basics to put in place. These are the basics only, but they are often incomplete.

1. A few basic indicators visible to everyone

No need to have walls full of charts. A few indicators (start with one !), critical to the business, that employees get to see regularly and understand. And for which it is clear their effort contributes to the indicator moving in the right direction. Ideally, the indicator shows both company performance and the direction of their variable compensation.

2. A regular one-on-one meeting with each key player

This can be informal, over breakfast or lunch, but it must be clear it is a working meeting, and it takes place every 2 weeks at a minimum. This is the opportunity to clarify what is going well and what is not going well, to be clear and explicit when there are performance issues that need to get addressed (or else …). No need for an agenda or minutes, but do come prepared knowing what needs to be discussed or what needs to be followed up from the previous meeting. This is also where the personal relationship between the entrepreneur and the key players are developed and maintained.

3. A regular team review

This is where everyone is together, and the priorities of the company – including the indicators described earlier – are reviewed. This is the team working together, helping each other out. Individuals who are lagging are not put on the chopping block in front of everyone, that’s one of those things that doesn’t go down well in Asia. Those issues are addressed in the one-on-one meetings (by you !). The team meeting focuses on the team effort and synergies to be found.

This is not a list in which to pick one or two … These 3 elements are linked and need to exist together. You can’t have only individual meetings (where talk often moves to whining about the people that are not in the room) or only indicators on the wall (without a team review of the progress).

These are rather simple steps, that don’t take up too much of time, and they go a long way in giving direction, basic structure and follow up to your management team.

There is an i in team

There is an i in team. I am referring to the i of innovation. When we think about innovation, we like to think about those individual geniuses that have entered into the history books. Archimedes in his bath tub (an invention, not an innovation, I admit) or Steven Jobs with the latest i-something. Innovation seems to be the realm of extra-ordinary people, and so there are books and training courses to think like Steve Jobs. I am not sure how many innovations occur thanks to training courses in innovation …

A whole different view of innovation was presented in a recent blog by Samuel Bacharach, summarizing an interview with Jef Bezos, the founder and CEO of Amazon. Bezos describes his innovation process as follows: "In my experience, the way invention, innovation and change happen is [through] team effort. There's no lone genius who figures it all out and sends down the magic formula. You study, you debate, you brainstorm and the answers start to emerge. It takes time. Nothing happens quickly in this mode.”

Three critical elements to innovation, that are in fact in direct opposition of the stereotypes.

1. It’s about a team, not a genius. It’s a group process.

2. It’s a process (not a light bulb) with debate, brainstorming,  and playing with alternatives.

3. It takes time. You can’t force creativity by scheduling an innovation meeting on Tuesday morning (or any other day).

That is exactly the reason the Action Learning process very often delivers innovative and creative ideas to complex problems. In an Action Learning session, the team asks questions to understand the problem in all its aspects, not to jump to (incomplete) solutions. Action Learning is the perfect team process as it includes reflection on the learning that is taking place. And in fact, although innovation cannot be sped up, the Action Learning session’s structure and intensity ensures that within a couple of 2 hour sessions, significant breakthrough solutions have been developed.