When we talk about start-ups and start-up culture, many imagine a collection of smart and driven individuals fulfilling business goals. What’s missing from this picture is the team management ensuring that it all runs like a smoothly oiled machine. Without good team management, the future and success of a start-up can be short-lived if no one is looking after long-term strategy and steering the team. Below we look at some of the reasons why team management is important and how to improve yours.
The Importance of the Team
The success of a new venture doesn’t just lie with the founders and their vision. It’s only when those founders attract a great team around them, bringing in more experience and a diverse range of skills, helping to drive the founders’ vision forward, that long-term success will be possible. Good team management will identify any weak spots present with the intention of providing support until it can be resolved. Start-ups with a willingness to adapt, learn, and take on new ideas whilst implementing tangible changes should something be proved to not work are more likely to survive and thrive in a competitive market environment.
Speaking of steering and team management, it must be noted that start-ups don’t have the luxury of misreading the market like Microsoft did when they dismissed the mobile computing revolution as a fluke. However, start-ups do have the advantage of being more responsive to market demands. Good team management is all about analyzing the market from all the possible angle, making tweaks to business plans and strategy, before the business enters any particular market segment.
How to Best Manage Your Team
Identify weak spots: as mentioned before, all start-ups should evaluate the state of the team to see where extra support is needed. There should be a good balance of different skills to evenly cover the diverse needs of a business starting out.
Use tech to help: if your start-up is quite small, it can be tempting to not implement internal processes until a mythical ‘later’ date when the team or business grows. But doing this from the start will benefit the team in the long run and instill good working habits. Manage team resources with a tool like Resource Guru, ensure no one misses a meeting with GoToMeeting, and get daily activity reports with Team Colony.
Implement training: start-ups attract talented individuals but that doesn’t mean they don’t need training or further development. Invest in your employees through scheduled training, helping learn from each other through skill sharing, talks, and more.
Delegate: learning to delegate successfully is an art that needs to be practiced from the start. It’s easy to take on too much and feel that it’s all too important for someone else to complete. Instead, delegate early and trust the people around you to get things done well.
Understand different personalities: the kind of people who gravitate towards start-ups are likely to have similar dispositions. Nevertheless, simply holding that assumption won’t work; get to know every employee and their personality to best understand the kind of approach that will bring out their best qualities.