April 18, 2012 at 17:34Remart: how I created my business
Part III: Team
So, after a long way of searching for ideas and investors , making decisions, we got to the most difficult and interesting stage of our project. There is no turning back, only forward. And the most important thing now is to bring suitable people with you, i.e. build a great team.
How to organize a team and infect all members with a common goal? All the time I am tormented by the question: “Well, why do they not understand?” After all, you first need to strain and work hard to get a result, and only then you can think about how to relax. Obviously! It turns out that not many people think so, I would even say a minority. It turns out that most want everything right now. They do not care much that you are now at the very beginning of the journey, that you do not have the resources to make their life a fairy tale, and that they need to get along in expenses for a certain period of time. There is such a concept as “the desire to avoid uncertainty” and, it turns out, most people tend to avoid this uncertainty as much as possible.
Working in a startup, the team is faced with the fact that such uncertainties are at every turn. Touching specifically on our project for sure. We bring a new product to the market, no one has done this before, which means that it is difficult to understand the value of the product for consumers. According to our assessment, this is valuable, but it is our assessment, and some kind of research is expensive. Often we turn to external opinions to evaluate the service and all of ours. Thanks for the feedback in previous articles, I see what you like, that our efforts are not in vain and we need to move only forward. We work, communicate with partners, for them it is also new and unpredictable, reactions are also different. It seems like it wasn’t fitting for us to turn our nose, because we are still small and not very interesting to everyone. Impossible to calculate revenue: how to build a model, if there is nothing to compare and nothing to attach to? Accordingly, the team also has nothing to promise, in any case, reasonably calculated. Complete uncertainty.
In such conditions, we focus on several areas:
1. The team must be constantly motivated by personal example and infect with our optimism.
2. Releases. Break them down into smaller steps to see the result. We did not immediately come to an understanding of this point, but nevertheless came. Before the official launch of the project, we identified 5 stages for ourselves and gradually, reaching each goal, we felt that we were moving forward, and not standing still.
3. Yes, you have to promise and promise the golden mountains. However, there is no need to give empty promises. I approach this issue cautiously and promise what I can provide if everything goes well. There is uncertainty, but it cannot be completely eliminated.
4. Communication outside work and at work, we try to do the most open. For example, when they rented an office, they made repairs themselves. We could hire people and our losses would be minimal, taking into account the total costs and the length of the repair time by our efforts. We did everything ourselves, except for specialized work with electricity and a computer network.
Here is our repair and team in the faces:
You know, but we really got to know each other and understood who is who and who to rely on. As an example, a person recently left us, and simply framed us. He is the only one who has never come to help. We expected something similar, but not so fast.
The main thing that I realized is that you do not have to give in to a momentary impulse and take the first more or less suitable specialist into the team. A man should really suit you if you want to work with him side by side. A startup has a problem - it is a small and unknown company, therefore it is very difficult to attract people. This process takes longer than a company with a name, but taking everyone in a row is disastrous for you. Now I can say that we have almost fully staffed our company. People are interesting and talented, which is always a pleasure for me to celebrate. Working with such people is interesting, but also difficult, because everyone has their own opinion on each question, and it is not easy to find a compromise. I say that they practically staffed, because the appetite comes during the game, i.e. I want more and more, and the scope of work is only increasing. I would like to note that we try to take a balanced approach to new problems, therefore we periodically conduct tests to determine our performance, identify inefficiencies and solve them. Of course, there is no limit to perfection: we are constantly working on it, and we understand that we still have a lot of reserves in the team, but we are deliberately fighting this. I advise everyone to pay attention to labor productivity and do periodic monitoring, in addition to this, the practice of internal training has proven itself in our practice, when productivity leaders pull the lagging behind. identify inefficiencies and solve them. Of course, there is no limit to perfection: we are constantly working on it, and we understand that we still have a lot of reserves in the team, but we are deliberately fighting this. I advise everyone to pay attention to labor productivity and do periodic monitoring, in addition to this, the practice of internal training has proven itself in our practice, when productivity leaders pull the lagging behind. identify inefficiencies and solve them. Of course, there is no limit to perfection: we are constantly working on it, and we understand that we still have a lot of reserves in the team, but we are deliberately fighting this. I advise everyone to pay attention to labor productivity and do periodic monitoring, in addition to this, the practice of internal training has proven itself in our practice, when productivity leaders pull the lagging behind.
Time is the most valuable factor in our work, despite the fact that our service has no direct competitors, all the same, customers want and ask for development, rapid development, new services, new interiors, new partners, etc. We ourselves want to provide customers with a full service so that you can transfer a picture to your home without leaving your home by pressing a single button. We learn to value time, for example, all sorts of meetings and conferences are an obvious devourer of time. The introduction of simple and long exaggerated rules in management books allows us to clearly save this time. For example, preparing a list of issues discussed before the meeting, a letter at the end of the meeting with the decisions taken and with the responsible executors and deadlines. After these simple measures, our discussion ceased to go into the air, i.e. each meeting already brings changes to the work.
People can both raise your project and ruin it, be careful! Good luck!
Visit us on the website and group on facebook
So, after a long way of searching for ideas and investors , making decisions, we got to the most difficult and interesting stage of our project. There is no turning back, only forward. And the most important thing now is to bring suitable people with you, i.e. build a great team.
How to organize a team and infect all members with a common goal? All the time I am tormented by the question: “Well, why do they not understand?” After all, you first need to strain and work hard to get a result, and only then you can think about how to relax. Obviously! It turns out that not many people think so, I would even say a minority. It turns out that most want everything right now. They do not care much that you are now at the very beginning of the journey, that you do not have the resources to make their life a fairy tale, and that they need to get along in expenses for a certain period of time. There is such a concept as “the desire to avoid uncertainty” and, it turns out, most people tend to avoid this uncertainty as much as possible.
Working in a startup, the team is faced with the fact that such uncertainties are at every turn. Touching specifically on our project for sure. We bring a new product to the market, no one has done this before, which means that it is difficult to understand the value of the product for consumers. According to our assessment, this is valuable, but it is our assessment, and some kind of research is expensive. Often we turn to external opinions to evaluate the service and all of ours. Thanks for the feedback in previous articles, I see what you like, that our efforts are not in vain and we need to move only forward. We work, communicate with partners, for them it is also new and unpredictable, reactions are also different. It seems like it wasn’t fitting for us to turn our nose, because we are still small and not very interesting to everyone. Impossible to calculate revenue: how to build a model, if there is nothing to compare and nothing to attach to? Accordingly, the team also has nothing to promise, in any case, reasonably calculated. Complete uncertainty.
In such conditions, we focus on several areas:
1. The team must be constantly motivated by personal example and infect with our optimism.
2. Releases. Break them down into smaller steps to see the result. We did not immediately come to an understanding of this point, but nevertheless came. Before the official launch of the project, we identified 5 stages for ourselves and gradually, reaching each goal, we felt that we were moving forward, and not standing still.
3. Yes, you have to promise and promise the golden mountains. However, there is no need to give empty promises. I approach this issue cautiously and promise what I can provide if everything goes well. There is uncertainty, but it cannot be completely eliminated.
4. Communication outside work and at work, we try to do the most open. For example, when they rented an office, they made repairs themselves. We could hire people and our losses would be minimal, taking into account the total costs and the length of the repair time by our efforts. We did everything ourselves, except for specialized work with electricity and a computer network.
Here is our repair and team in the faces:
You know, but we really got to know each other and understood who is who and who to rely on. As an example, a person recently left us, and simply framed us. He is the only one who has never come to help. We expected something similar, but not so fast.
The main thing that I realized is that you do not have to give in to a momentary impulse and take the first more or less suitable specialist into the team. A man should really suit you if you want to work with him side by side. A startup has a problem - it is a small and unknown company, therefore it is very difficult to attract people. This process takes longer than a company with a name, but taking everyone in a row is disastrous for you. Now I can say that we have almost fully staffed our company. People are interesting and talented, which is always a pleasure for me to celebrate. Working with such people is interesting, but also difficult, because everyone has their own opinion on each question, and it is not easy to find a compromise. I say that they practically staffed, because the appetite comes during the game, i.e. I want more and more, and the scope of work is only increasing. I would like to note that we try to take a balanced approach to new problems, therefore we periodically conduct tests to determine our performance, identify inefficiencies and solve them. Of course, there is no limit to perfection: we are constantly working on it, and we understand that we still have a lot of reserves in the team, but we are deliberately fighting this. I advise everyone to pay attention to labor productivity and do periodic monitoring, in addition to this, the practice of internal training has proven itself in our practice, when productivity leaders pull the lagging behind. identify inefficiencies and solve them. Of course, there is no limit to perfection: we are constantly working on it, and we understand that we still have a lot of reserves in the team, but we are deliberately fighting this. I advise everyone to pay attention to labor productivity and do periodic monitoring, in addition to this, the practice of internal training has proven itself in our practice, when productivity leaders pull the lagging behind. identify inefficiencies and solve them. Of course, there is no limit to perfection: we are constantly working on it, and we understand that we still have a lot of reserves in the team, but we are deliberately fighting this. I advise everyone to pay attention to labor productivity and do periodic monitoring, in addition to this, the practice of internal training has proven itself in our practice, when productivity leaders pull the lagging behind.
Time is the most valuable factor in our work, despite the fact that our service has no direct competitors, all the same, customers want and ask for development, rapid development, new services, new interiors, new partners, etc. We ourselves want to provide customers with a full service so that you can transfer a picture to your home without leaving your home by pressing a single button. We learn to value time, for example, all sorts of meetings and conferences are an obvious devourer of time. The introduction of simple and long exaggerated rules in management books allows us to clearly save this time. For example, preparing a list of issues discussed before the meeting, a letter at the end of the meeting with the decisions taken and with the responsible executors and deadlines. After these simple measures, our discussion ceased to go into the air, i.e. each meeting already brings changes to the work.
People can both raise your project and ruin it, be careful! Good luck!
Visit us on the website and group on facebook