Good teams make good companies. Soft Skills make them even better.
It might sound stereotypical but it is true: At Mr Jeff, we are reimagining the very traditional laundry and dry-cleaning industry by applying constant technological innovation for enhancing customer experience, optimizing operations, pick-up and delivery time, and finally, improving the conversion as much as possible.
Put simply, our products support the following scenario: a customer books an order via a mobile app (first product) scheduling pick-up and delivery time to a particular address. The different franchises receive that info in a SaaS (called Providers, (second product). The logistics is set up to collect it and drop the clothes at the laundry point using a logistics app (third product). They then tag and video record the clothing which is then washed, dry cleaned, folded, ironed and packed It is then returned to logistics to be delivered on the scheduled date. And, that’s not even taking changes or issues into account. Uh, tough enough!
It has been a hard journey for the last two years, but from the initial idea of using a sharing economy approach with mom-and-pop shops, with a number of difficulties (e.g. tech resilience and not open to innovations with manual, non-formalized processes and operational load not defined), we pivoted and were able to create and set-up our own network of more than 1,500 suppliers over 20 countries in South America, Europe, and Asia.
Success and failure in startups
There are many reasons behind why a company might succeed or fail. Most people usually spot the underlying idea and hypotheses, wrong market research or not being able to find the right product-market fit. They might be right, but I would like to point out something else that I have fully realised in the last couple of years: for a startup (for any company, in fact), is the importance of the team — not only in terms of the founders but also, all and every single hire in the company.
Founders and initial members
Gurus in startups usually explain how important it is that founders set a well-balanced group: never better applied than at Mr Jeff. Any startup is very horizontal but part of the initial success of Mr Jeff was that the founders were complementary and fit into the main areas related to the company: business, operations, and product. From the beginning they chased the motto of “stay hungry, stay foolish” with a true quest for the product market fit and the process was the full responsibility of the team and the investors, a problem-solving mindset, ability to work under pressure and teamwork. It is the role of any founder to create the culture of the company, but in this case, I truly believe that we had started to create it from the beginning.
Leadership: functional skills + soft skills
I guess this is obvious for you all, but my notion of a good or bad team member was mostly focused on functional aspects (in a broad sense, from knowledge of common coding good practices, previous implemented architectures, or having an insightful design portfolio). At other times, I was impressed by their knowledge of the company history, if they had tried the service, or by their explanations of their possible contribution to the company. Nowadays, the simple piece of advice I give during the practical interview any candidate needs to go through with the team is, “remember this will be the person providing you support, the one inspiring you and the company with new ideas, the one giving you a hand when something goes wrong”.
Sometimes soft skills are confused with wrong empathy. I am not saying that we should forget about the functional skills or the expertise they have in the area, but I think talented people should be measured in different ways. Having soft skills is more about being honest about your gaps, successes and failures as a professional, being open to receive feedback and clarify questions. Being self-critical and constructive is fundamental to improve yourself.
Finally, having those soft skills is better for the company and will let them grow faster in a fast growing company like ours, which typically means plenty of opportunities, but also friction and uncertainty into moving into new product lines or services. Those skills are critical for growth and that potential is more important than any existing functional skills. Talented people are required to help lead the charge.
Better teams with better individuals
It is difficult to explain how individuals can affect a team, but the reality is that no individual with functional skills is worth damaging the potential of a good team. Not only due to the potential to damage the team but also the effect this can have on its productivity or morale. Employees with soft skills provide leverage to the group. It is not only about their expertise or individual contribution, they are able to leverage others’ work and inspire other team members on how they can contribute to the company. They can foster the best from the team and it has full impact on the overall performance of the team, over the value provided to the product. The best products are influenced by people in love with what they do, with the mission of the company they work for and the relationship they have with their colleagues. That is not to say that everything is peachy.
Lesson learned and backstory
I think the initial success of Mr Jeff was due to the founders and the culture they created — working hard, but working fair. It is fundamental to creating such a culture from day 1, so those values are shared along the company and with new employees. From that starting point, you can create the basis of the team to scale at different stages.
But not everything works smoothly all the time. In a small company like ours, a hire not working as expected, has a direct impact on the company. Firing someone can be a big issue and most times it was due to soft skills — people who are difficult to work with, people not knowing when to accept responsibility for any mistakes made or to be persuasive and able to influence while seeking a solution beneficial for all parties.
After a year, we had to fire one of the early employees at Mr Jeff. It was a tough decision, but it was influencing the team in a very negative way, so much so that after firing him ,all the 1 to1s with the team were very satisfactory. We regret not having done it before so the team could have started to reflect on the change by working happier atmosphere and improving its performance.
