How does your team function?

Most team leads don’t how to answer this question. Most of the time they will give you job specific answers about vision, process, timelines, etc. Yes you need those for providing direction, but they are secondary to having a methodology for how a team functions.

If you run teams for long enough you’ll learn that what direction you ultimately send people (i.e. vision, process, etc) is secondary to how they function in getting there. The "how" ends up being more important than the "where" because the where can change, especially in a startup.

You see this exemplified in sports. The best lead teams can execute new formations and tactics on a per game basis, while poorly coached teams can’t. Why is that?

Because a change in strategy is the where, not the how. The how is about the consistent nature by which the team goes about their work on a daily, weekly, and annual basis. The best coaches are maniacally consistent about the how. They know that if the how becomes automatic, they have the freedom to change the where without disrupting the team.

I’ve been running teams for 15 years. Most of it, poorly done. I was too focused on changing the where without ensuring my teams were consistent in their how.

What makes this self discovery hard is there is no right answer. It takes a lot of practice in getting it wrong to figure out how to get it right. And in the end it takes self confidence to decide…this is how I like my teams to run.

Personally I focus on three elements…

1. The When

I start with the cadence of when the team works. Note this isn’t about 8-5, but about the rhythm of the team for when individuals work, teams connect, and the whole organization sets new goals.

In sports this is clearer with practice, games, and an offseason. In business it’s harder because everyone has their own personal schedule which can conflict with a team work schedule.

That aside I focus all of our energy around the following cadence.

• The Daily – Maximizing people’s peak hours and grouping calls / meetings to the middle of the day. This enables morning people and night owls to maximize their best hours.

• Weekly – Regrouping within teams so everyone is on the same page with what needs to get done by when.

• Trimester – I found quarters were too fast so we run our company cadence around trimesters. this means we bring everyone together every four months to review our results and set new goals.

• Bi-Trimester – Because four months is a long time we take a pause half way through a trimester to reflect, meet with the Board, and continue forward.

2. The How

This section is more business specific. It evolves based on the size and maturity of the team you’re running. The list below is for running a sub 50 person company.

In creating this list you want to make sure it aligns to the processes used against your stages of when. It gives the team confidence to know what we do at each stage.

• Daily – standup to keep everyone on the same page with chat and calls to move through issues during the day.
• Weekly – team sessions keep everyone on the same page and 1:1 sessions give individuals the feedback they need.
• Monthly – reviewing our financial results and updating our forecast, this lets us check in on the trajectory of the business.
• Bi-Trimester: we pause to review our progress half way through, while looking ahead to the trimester in front of us.
• Trimester: we review our results, discuss process improvements, and set new goals.
• Projects: how we define and ship work together. From small to large we use the same process to define, discuss, and run cross company initiatives.

3. The Where

I try to create consistent spaces the team can rely on to do their work. Back to sports, they have practice fields, training facilities, and a stadium for games. Within a company you need to create these artificial places so the teams know where to go to do what.

• Dashboard: a singular data dashboard per company and per team that enables them to understand how we’re doing against the goals we set and problems we’re trying to solve.

• Schedule: a simple, high level calendar with a list of dates that affect the whole company. Even at 40 this is still a simple google doc with a list of dates.

• Project Management: a tool the team can use to organize and plan their work both as individuals and as collective groups.

• Slack: our communication tool for chat and calls.

• Briefs: how we think and edit our most important work. Written down plans provide clarity and scalability for others to pick up the ball and help.

• Journeys: how we map out the steps in everything, from products to projects we use this tool to make sure we don’t miss anything.

• Docs: having one place we store and define everything. Yes folders can get cumbersome but how you label and organize them matters.

• 1×1: the weekly session between team lead and player to provide feedback and work on individual skills.

• Company Meetings: done every two weeks, this is our chance to review, brainstorm, and discuss cross company issues.

• Off-sites: where we do our big brainstorms and fix team process. This provides us the place to tackle the uncomfortable team subjects.

Conclusion

Figuring out the strategy (where) is much harder than developing a highly functional team (how). Even if you are unsure about the future direction of where the team needs to go, you can be very consistent about the methodology to get there.

A word of caution is if you are super creative developing a consistent how can be much harder for you. You assume that spontaneity is they key to your success. That might be true for a group of one, but that doesn’t scale to a group of two and beyond. Therefore if developing this methodology isn’t your thing then you should put someone on your team who can develop and execute it consistently.

If you have any questions dm me @marcbarros.