7 tips on how to scale a team
Growing a team is a tough job. Things change fast and there’s little or no room for mistakes. So what should I do to avoid messing up?
Here’s a list of top 7 tips from my experience that will help you scale your company:
Hire people who are smarter than you.
If you are the smartest guy in the room, you are doing something wrong. Find people who excel at what your team needs most and hire those people. It might cost you an extra arm and a leg, but it’s one of the best bets you can make.
Build a company culture (or a cult).
Pick a set of values for your company and only hire people who support these values. Great, now everyone in your team have something in common to bond around!
These values will remain strong even when you scale up to hundreds of people. Thousands, if you are lucky. It will help the hiring process, increase performance and strengthen the company’s brand.
Automate everything.
Did you just compile a list of emails for today’s newsletter in Excel? Stop doing that. Find how you can use code to automate these processes for you. Your company needs brainpower, and wasting it on trivial tasks will get you nowhere.
Don’t just delegate, give ownership.
Build trust relationships by giving ownership of tasks to people who work on them. You will soon be able to spot those few hidden rock stars who can lead others by example. Trust them, support them and they will lead your team through growth.
Hire doers.
Yes, that marketing “expert” who does not know how to send an email campaign is scamming you. Hire people who can think as well as do. The rest of your team will naturally gravitate towards people who get sh*t done. Use this as a natural management structure.
Try new things, repeat.
The definition of insanity is trying to do exactly the same thing over and over again while expecting different results. So try new things, measure what matters most and make informed decisions quickly. Don’t dwell on something just because you know it works. Always try to improve your processes and set your goals high.
Provide strong vision.
Do task X before date Y does not motivate your team. Give them something they can project far in the future. Vision will keep your team aligned and focused on the bigger goal even when working on smaller tasks.
Finally, put people in your team above everything else.
Thanks for reading.
