Your team is great, all in one place. Everybody is here, exited and ready to work. Are you shooting for the moon now? But working together as a team means much more than putting few great minds in the same room.
Let me tell you a story about one of the greatest teams in the history of mankind. The NASA team.
This is a story about President John F. Kennedy’s first visit to NASA’s headquarters back in 1961.
While touring the facility, the President’s entourage reportedly came upon a man mopping the floor in one of the hallways. The President stopped to chat with the man, shook his hand, and asked what he did at NASA. The janitor proudly addressed the young President by saying, “Sir, I’m helping to put a man on the moon!”
Now, imagine President John F. Kennedy is visiting your company. And he asks your your teammates the same question. What would their answer be?
Try it. But my bet is that they would most likely give both different and vague answers.
I’ve discussed with teams from all over the world and found few aligned. Most of them have a dissonant way of tackling and seeing things. Sometimes even the founders have different perspectives.
They start with these disparities, yet sometimes they succeed to grow. But getting bigger doesn’t mean problems are solved. It means discrepancies are getting even worse and they’re slowly growing into time bombs.
This is one of the reasons why there are so many sucky products out there. So many Sucky products and so many failed companies.
In conclusion for a startup working together as a team is an absolute must.
The NASA story is the perfect example of an aligned (and successful) team. We are all dreaming of “putting a man on the moon”, right? Well, as a CEO make sure you’ve done your first task and your aligned your team.
To see if you’re there, ask these fundamental questions and discuss the answers inside the team.
– Who is the ideal customer we build our solution for?
– What is the most important problem we solve?
– What are the most important features to build?
Do it right now, just copy paste these questions and send them to your cofounders or to the management team. If you get different answers, it’s time to sit and discuss.
Developing stunning products needs clarity, alignment and, focus. Moreover, to align your team you need to repeat this process from time to time. This is the only way you can be sure, everyone is on the same page.
