Dec 11, 2017
Our second Code Chiefs event ‘Success in Growth’ was a massive success. Our two speakers Paul Keen and Jeremy Gupta shared insights on how to successfully grow your teams and overcome cultural, behavioural and even technical challenges.
I’m a non-technical person, but after the Code Chiefs presentation I took away several ideas and useful tips and tricks that we can implement at Precision. Here are some of them:
1.The three important P’s: People, Priorities, Projects
When you are a leader that is used to handling every minor issue yourself, eventually you find yourself in the middle of the fire that you can’t fight alone. It is easy to get involved in multiple minor projects, forgetting to implement the right processes that will help the team to perform better. And when the right processes are not in place, people are less effective. They get frustrated and, eventually, leave. Thus, it’s important to put people first, processes second and with that in place you won’t have to fight every fire by yourself!
2.Implement smart and useful KPI’s
Data that is irrelevant to your team performance is not useful for measuring your team’s effectiveness. It is important to understand what activity to be measured, especially in the technical team. Sales KPIs and P&L statements won’t accurately reflect the effectiveness of your development division. And blaming and shaming employees for not hitting them will only make the situation worse. Focus your KPI’s on team values and the efficiency of your team will improve.
3.The three important questions
Do you like who you work with? Do you feel that your work is important and meaningful? Are you growing as a person when you work? These questions are important for employees as well as the leaders. If you want your team to be effective you need to ensure that you maintain healthy culture and empower your employees. In a rapidly growing organisation it is crucial to build smaller teams of like-minded people that can work effectively together.
4.Make sure your platform is ready for massive success
When your organisation grows exponentially and you you’re not prepared, you may face a lot of technological challenges. Such as the platform not being able to handle the volume of people using it. So, it’s better to be ready in advance and (preferably) automate all the processes that require too much manual labour. Success can come fast and you never know when it’s going to happen. When growing a team and your platform make sure that you build it with a view for anticipated rapid growth. That way, sudden increase of platform/product users will not cause disruption and won’t stop the entire organisation’s work for a big chunk of time.
There are many different factors that you need to consider while growing a team. What I found interesting was that both presenters agreed on one massive thing – focus on people. You can have the most amazing company in the world, but if you don’t hire, retain and develop the individuals that work for you – you won’t succeed. That’s why we’ve decided to make our next event focused on people. And how to make sure people in your team are happy and the culture is great. See you in March 2018 for Code Chiefs -‘Building a Diverse Workforce’.
