We build teams fit for purpose

Vipps and MobilePay is becoming one company, bringing both challenges and opportunities. This article is part of a series on this topic, and the primary audience is Vipps Mobilepay employees. If our reflections on culture and ways of working during the merger is of interest to you, you’re our audience too! 🤗

Introduction

I recently shared our list of Ways of Working principles in Vipps MobilePay. Today we’ll look into “We build teams fit for purpose”. What do we mean by that? How do you know if your team is fit for purpose? You need to understand and answer a number of things:

• What is the purpose of your team? What services do you provide and who are your customers (external or internal)?
• What is your current way of working? What does your service delivery model look like?
• What are the sources of dissatisfaction?
• What are the sources and nature of demand?
• What is your combined capacity and competency?

The answers to the questions above need to be continuously revised and verified. Based on this we can continuously refine our knowledge discovery process and our service experience. We can balance demand and capability. We can address sources of dissatisfaction. The result is an everlasting pursuit of fit for purpose teams and services. If that sounds like a lot of work, That’s because it is. 😅

Go team! But what about me?

Building a team is more than filling the roles within the team with the right competence and delivering on our promises. We recognize that we are more than our roles. We are human beings. Irrational, complex, flawed. To build a fit for purpose team we need to cover the necessary competence, but we also need to be able to work together. We need to build trust and understanding.

There was a time when the leading paradigm was “being professional”. Play the role. Do the job. Keep your head down. 🤐But the work of the modern world is complex and fast paced. In such an environment we need more. We need to laugh together. Chances are we need to cry. We need to speak up when things go wrong. We need to hear the opinion of even the most soft spoken. 👂We need to collaborate across organizational boundaries. We need servant leaders who enable and support rather than give orders.

To make this happen we don’t need to be intimate friends, but we need to be more than colleagues. 🥰 Great teams don’t happen by accident. We design them by considering and rebuilding team dynamics every time someone leaves or joins. When we hire we don’t ask ourselves “Can this person do the job?” — We try to picture how the team will change if this person joins. We hire to make the team even more fit for purpose. And that is about team dynamics as much as competence.

The elephant in the room? 🐘 With the merge between Vipps and MobilePay, many team members and leaders have found themselves in new positions. Some teams with similar responsibilities have been merged. This means teams have new team members that they did not necessarily ask for or choose. Most will grow into great teams through time and effort, but during that journey, the struggle may be real. But fear not, dear Padawan — our team of coaches will be there to assist in any way we can. 🤗

Not everyone will be a perfect fit for their new role from day one. But we believe in a growth mindset. We are more interested in who someone wants to become than who they have been. It’s natural to be vary of new team members, who perhaps even sit in another country. Our cultures are different, our ways of working are different. Building a great team will be harder, but not impossible. Meeting physically in a social setting is a good start, and over time we may grow to become ..more than colleagues. 🤗

Teams are the the driving force of everything we do, which is why this principle is so important, now especially. We all understand the extraordinary circumstances of the merger, and through our principles we state loud and clear how to get through it:

Teams don’t just happen to be fit for purpose. In Vipps MobilePay, they are built to be. 💪😍

XOXO — The Vipps MobilePay Ways of Working coaches.