Most of the time, in the fast-paced business industry, we tend to get too overwhelmed with pressure, competition, and expectations. However, although it is part of a tough journey towards success, oftentimes we forget that this whole thing isn’t solely about you and your business alone, it is also about your employees – your team.
Every day, whenever you enter your office, you can clearly spot diverse people bonded to work together. Those people serve as the engine that keeps your business going and giving them boundless opportunities is just one of the most ideal options you can consider to generate positive outcomes and increase income.
Increasing revenue without adding more resources is called “scaling up.” This phase happens when your startup increases revenue despite sticking to your old same team and not bringing in additional resources.
In the long run, scaling up is a big advantage, however, if not properly managed, could be a liability and a big loss to the company. In fact, as cited by Brian Anderson in his blog entitled “How to Scale a Team: Vision, Values, and Culture,” scaling up too early remains a prevalent problem for startups.
“Report also concluded that premature scaling played a part in 90 percent of failed startups.”
While there is a lot of pressure placed on startups to improve their performance, it is still crucial to trade a quick win with uncertainty.
As Richard Branson quoted, ““Focus on your passion, start small, dream big, and plan ahead. Scale-up only when you are ready—not just because opportunity knocks.“
Now, join me as we discuss the process of how to properly build a team that can put you in the spotlight in the long run:
Select the ‘cream of the crop’
Success always originates from the core. If you are launching your startup and you are aiming to build a high-performing team, you need to be tough and picky when it comes to hiring your people. Remember, they will serve as your engine and the key to making your car move.
Make sure to bring in great people with diverse talents and backgrounds.
This step is critical in a business of any type and size. A great team not only enables you to meet your end goals but also makes things easier and we cannot agree more on that!
This team will stand alongside you and work hand in hand to achieve a common goal, therefore, you must be able to filter your applicants and select only those that suit the position you are looking for.
Do not settle for the bare minimum. Aside from it will probably cause you headaches in the long run, it might also ruin the balance that you are trying to apply to the team.
Make sure that you hire goal-oriented, committed, doers, and talented people. Afterwards, your next goal should be to bring them altogether and nurture their skills and capabilities.
No matter how excellent of a person you are, you cannot realize an idea without them – your team.
Outsource strategically
When selecting your players, bear in mind the cost that you need to spend to finance hiring and training. What’s best when it comes to outsourcing is the fact that you can save a lot of money. Outsourcing is one of the cost-saving strategies that businesses adopt to sustain their day to day operations.
Human resource or the manpower eats up a lot of your fund, giving you tight budget allocation. However, outsourcing non-essential tasks would significantly take you away from all those financial problems and will allow you to save a lot of time. Aside from that, outsourcing also enables you to access a new and diverse pool of talents. Oftentimes businesses stick with outsourcing because hiring professionals aren’t in their options, instead, they look for multiple employees with diverse skill sets and help the company to get the job done.
The best option you can have if you’re limiting your expenses.
LEAD, not DEAL
If you are already in business for quite some time now, you’ll surely burst out thoughts on how a toxic working environment commonly makes businesses go downhill. As the leader aiming to build a high-performing team, it is your job to cultivate your team with a great sense of responsibility, values, and good morals.
Remember, there is a big and wide difference between being mere colleagues and being a team. Your efforts of being a leader will identify what relationship you are building. Dealing with them, giving them tasks and deadlines to meet does not equate to leading. It goes further than that.
Read here to know more about it:
Your team is not a machine. In an organization where diverse people are working hand in hand and have extensive loads to finish and deadlines to meet, it is overwhelming. As their leader, you must have a perspective that not every one of them is the same and they took on different roads and doors to enter when they got off from work.
In order to make it work and develop a solid relationship with your employees, respect their capabilities as an individual and understand that as other people have, they too have limitations.
As stated in the article “9 Steps to Building a Strong and Efficient Team: How to Build a Strong Team” by MasterClass, “A robust team environment blossoms when individuals are honored and respected for their unique gifts and their ability to contribute toward your common goal.”
Feed them with positivity. Competition is one of the drivers for businesses to continue developing new strategies and plans that will win customers’ liking. In the process, we cannot avoid certain circumstances where everything seems not right. Sometimes it can inevitably happen because of your team’s mistakes. However, in cases like that, try to practice enforcing positive feedback rather than negative. Instead of bursting out criticizing their mistakes, opt to point out the positive outcomes to boost your team’s confidence then go down gradually to the things that went wrong. Try to maintain a calm discussion and avoid heated arguments. Settle it properly.
“Positive reinforcement is a far more productive manner of motivating team performance than shaming those who screwed up,” MasterClass stated.
Practice constant communication. Of course, effective communication is the root of understanding. If you’re unsatisfied with the output and you want more, inform the team and explain your suggestions. Allow your members to know where they need improvement so that it does not result in negative outcomes such as stress and misunderstanding. Proper communication brings out the best performance in the people you are working with.
Empower and encourage them to showcase their optimum capabilities and perform their responsibilities well. However, with the ongoing pandemic that hampers almost all human activities outside, thus, communication between the team seems so hard.
Founderphone offers you the perks of convenient communication with your team as well as delivering customer support via SMS and calls, directly from Slack.
Don’t forget to visit the link and start growing your business!
Foster accountability
Building your business is already challenging, but scaling it is even more challenging. It is a different topic to be discussed.
When you already grouped the right people and be able to lead and align them toward your goal, it’s time to make them feel accountable for the success of the business. When your business started to grow, always recognize your employee’s hard work and accomplishments.
Adam Pisoni, the founder of Yammer, said that “establishing roles, defining a clear mission, and creating accountability can help your team be productive while maintaining ownership and focus on building great products.”
Even if you encounter barriers that impede your business’ success, remember that your team will also be the ones who will put you up from the bottom. With proper accountability comes a greater chance of developing a positive outcome.
Try, fail, succeed
According to Paulius Uza, “The definition of insanity is trying to do exactly the same thing over and over again while expecting different results.” There were a couple of businesses that successfully scaled up their business, massively grew, and were tagged as global giants including Facebook.
Mark Zuckerburg, Chief Executive Officer of Facebook, also emerged from his humble beginnings. Tried new things, failed, even sued and accused, but in the end, he still succeeded. Accepting failure is a hard pill to swallow, but from there you will learn.
So, try new things and allow yourself to grow along with your business.
When starting up a business, aside from needing to think where to allocate your capital, you also need quite some time to scout your team and ensure that those people fit perfectly on the position. After you establish your business, scaling up is a whole new step that you need to take into serious consideration.
Scaling up is a risk crucial in businesses as this is where usually failures occur, when businesses try to grow immediately. As Branson stated, scale up only when you’re ready, afterwards, encapsulate all that’s stated hereinabove to start your business from growing.