While building a startup, owners tend to prioritise business models, strategies, objectives, goals, financial issues, and so on. Undoubtedly, these factors are also significant. However, a study suggests that over 60% of the new business ventures fail because of team issues. If you thought choosing from the Spectrum bundles is a tough decision, wait till you hear what types of decisions entrepreneurs have to make on a daily basis!
One of the most crucial things to decide is what kind of team for your startup. After all, these are the people who will be running the business. whether you are hiring your first, 5th, or 50th employee, you need to make careful decisions based on your startup’s needs, budget, and values. Also, prioritise hunting the right skillset that empowers your startup in years to come.
Let’s give you some effective tips to build a strong team for your startup.
Shared Vision and Entrepreneurial Passion
While building a great startup team, many factors count. As mentioned earlier, prior experience and product/service knowledge are worth-considering. Relevant industry skills play a major role in the success of a business venture. Furthermore, experience also broadens the resource pool of the team. With valuable prior experience, employees are capable of identifying the right opportunities and grabbing them. Therefore, skills and experience are positively related to team effectiveness.
However, experience and skills are not enough for a budding startup to thrive. It also needs soft skills. For superior team performance, shared strategic vision and entrepreneurial passion are the most essential ingredients. External venture capital investors vouch for passion and strategic vision to be the most significant attributes for a growing venture to thrive, grow, and expand.
Hire Doers
The initial phase of growing your business is not easy. You will need more production to keep new competitors at bay. And to stay ahead of the game, you will need a team of self-motivated doers. Most startups demonstrate weak performance if the team members have a low level of passion and shared vision. Even if the team is full of skilled workers with valuable experience in the same niche.
This is especially true when it comes to innovation and improvement in services/products, recognizing and grabbing new opportunities, cost control, customer satisfaction, and estimated sales growth. On the contrary, if a team has average previous experience but exhibits enthusiasm and passion for common goals, it shows excellent performance.
Therefore, whilst growing your startup, you need a team of doers to expand it. When you shortlist candidates for your team, check whether they are doers or not by using a simple trick. It might sound clichéd but it works. You need to ask them how to do a particular task and then ask them to do it practically. You can then gauge the similarity or difference in their theory and practice.
Lastly, beware of dreamers. You need to clearly distinguish between doers and dreamers. They are not the same and you need to be clever and foresighted to detect the difference between mere lofty claims and real motivation.
Hire People with T-Shaped Skills
Remember the old idiom, “Jack of all trades, master of none!” As many assume, it doesn’t have to have a negative connotation. In fact, this idiom is used as a compliment for a person with broad knowledge and the ability to fix things. And in the case of a startup, these all-rounders will make the ideal team for you!
People with T-shaped skills mean that they have valuable experience in a particular area but they are willing to tackle other areas too, at which they are not exceptional. But they are avid learners and motivated to take new challenges. They are always ready to walk the extra mile to make things work. That’s exactly the kind of people you need when you are growing your startup from scratch!
Jacks of many trades will prove to be highly useful compared to those who have profound expertise in just one area. They will not stick to one specific task and will try to contribute to whatever they can. Additionally, a startup has a limited budget. You may not be able to splurge on hiring experts for everything that you need. That’s again where these all-rounders can prove to be a precious asset!
Therefore, to find these T-shaped employees, consider asking your candidates in their interviews about their knowledge about various professional skills, which are not relevant to them. If they are reluctant to talk about other skills and focus only on the ones, they have expertise in, then you will know that they are not the ideal all-rounders you are looking for.