Thoughts About When Startups Grow Bigger than One Team
We were recently interviewing for a position at Cheezburger, and a candidate was describing a difficult situation at one of his previous jobs. I asked, “How did you resolve it?”
“Well, I’ve never seen the world’s problems solved without communicating,” he replied.
I practically wanted to hire him on the spot.
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One of the things I’ve been thinking about quite a bit lately is putting together good teams. (Randy recently suggested a book called Beautiful Teams, but I haven’t had time to read it.)
More specifically, I’ve been thinking about when startup teams start to grow beyond the point where everybody can sit in the same room. There are three dilemmas that have been on my mind.
Specialization versus Generalization
When there are only a handful of people, specialization is something that’s hard to afford. Instead, a startup needs jacks- and jills-of-all-trades.
The thing about these jacks and jills is that they’re hard to interview for because most of what being one of them entails are intangible qualities: a good attitude for doing anything and being flexible, and the ability to figure things out on your own.
Ben is always suggesting doing some sort of screening or “testing” to find candidates with these qualities, but have yet to think of a screen or test that will find these types of people. I would completely be open to your suggestions in the comments.
Organizations in Flux
Another dilemma has to do with building teams at an organization in flux. One quarter your building widgets, but the next quarter you’ve pivoted based on the “product/market fit” and you’re building gidgets.
At a more stable company, or where you have larger organizations (and specialization), it’s much easier to say, “we need a widget stamper” and hire someone against that need. But, at smaller companies you’re always looking for people who could potentially fill two or three roles. “I need a widget stamper who could also manage the widget stamping team, and occasionally make gidgets.” Again, this raises the degree of difficulty on hiring.
Functional versus Tactical
A functional team is, for example, the design team—all of the designers report into a design manager. A tactical team is a “project team”—in this case, there is a cross-functional group that works together on a specific task.
In a startup, tactical teams are absolutely the way to go. In a small startup like Cheezburger, we’re basically just one tactical team all working together. But, as startups get bigger, having one giant tactical team is impractical.
This is illustrated by the following riddle: “If it takes 2 people an hour to dig a hole 10 feet deep, how long does it take 6 people?” As anybody who has ever worked on a group project knows, the answer is not “20 minutes”. At best, it’s “one hour” and more likely it’s “an hour and a half”.
As a result, the practical thing to do is split the group into multiple tactical teams. Yet, there are two challenges I see with tactical teams. First, is the obvious, “who reports to who?” Is it realistic to expect a project manager to supervise a developer or designer?
The second has to do with actual quality: at some point, as you have more than one tactical team, there has to be someone ensuring the “quality of the craft”. In other words, someone making sure that all the developers, designers, etc. are working to the same standards of quality across all the teams.
Typically, what ends up happening is that there are functional teams and tactical teams. The official org chart has functional teams, but as a day-to-day matter people work on projects tactical teams.
The introduction of functional teams means hiring functional team managers, which adds overhead, both monetary and organizational. A startup might be able to afford the monetary overhead, but it’s the organizational overhead that is the killer.
Why? All of the sudden, there are do-nothing-managers having meetings with other do-nothing-managers about what the actual do-something-workers should be doing. In the meantime, the do-somthing-workers sit around and wait to be told what to do. At this point, most likely, your startup stops being nimble and dies.
Square Pegs
These issues are murky and challenging and there isn’t a right or wrong answer. These dilemmas have probably been around for generations—I bet the bible even has suggestions on org charts!
Yet, all of this confusion leads me to a final thought: earlier in my career, if there were a team member who didn’t fit—a person who was competent, but who was a square peg in round hole—my inclination was to replace that person with someone who is a better fit. I regret some of those decisions because now, with more experience, I see that that as a mistake.
The biggest challenge in hiring people is finding someone who is a good fit. Hiring for a startup is risky and hiring mistakes are expensive, both financially and organizationally. As a result, these days my inclination is the other way: if your team has someone that is “good”…someone who is competent, who works hard and is committed to their jobs, who is pleasant to work with and willing to be flexible and learn new things…then find a place for them.
A startup is probably better off with these people than with the unknown of a perfect widget maker who probably has some other set of issues that, as a startup manager, you’ll have to deal with. In other words, it’s the devil you know versus the devil you don’t!
So agree! “The biggest challenge in hiring people is finding someone who is a good fit.” I have found people get into trouble hiring when they don’t pay attention to the skills they can train people to do versus the personality and consistent traits and talents the person has been endowed with – those things that can’t be learned. The difference between what you can train for and what you can’t.
Jennifer
4 Feb 10 at 11:50 am
I’m reminded of that expression basketball coaches use a lot, “you can’t teach ‘tall’”.
So, the question I have is what techniques do you use to find “the personality and consistent traits and talents the person has been endowed with”?
scottporad
4 Feb 10 at 12:02 pm
re: “you can’t teach tall”
I am so going to use that!
After reading blink by Malcom Gladwell, I became convinced that some people are very good at thin-slicing. Making assessments and judgments quickly. Part of my talent is interviewing and assessment. You can teach some skills to assist with it but there is a point at which “you can’t teach tall.”
My best advise is to find that person on your team who has the talent in understanding people’s traits, skills.
I interview over 200 people each spring for about 130 summer camp jobs and interview over 50 teenagers each year as part of my job doing psycho- educational assessments. Am I good at it because I do it so often or do I do it so often because it is my talent?
Tony Beshara on How to Ace Your Next Interview talks about what an interview is doing in an interview. They want to know: Do I like you? Will you fit in here? Can you do the job?
My guess is many companies can figure out if you can do the job but the other to are more challenging. Some companies find psychological profiles that are valid and approved for job screening can help. Asking questions about how they may solve specific scenarios can be useful. That being said, if the interview is not “tall” they will only be marginally successful.
Jennifer
4 Feb 10 at 12:27 pm
I wonder why companies don’t run something like the Apprentice. With so many great applicants out there the distinctions must be difficult to derive in a short time. I would think offering internships to a few of the top applicants, or maybe simply some take home assignment would be of value to both parties. With the basketball analogy, “you can’t teach ‘tall’” assuming there are some set of identifiable characteristics that produce a quality output, a better output may be produced by yet unidentified attributes (Muggsy Bogues) which can only be determined in the course of play.
Michael
4 Feb 10 at 3:52 pm
I do think that summer camps are masters (or should be) at “right fit” hiring practices and the transfer of culture.
I always tell my staff I can teach you almost any skill, but I can’t give you a personality (you can’t teach tall). We are hiring what is valuable and hard to find. Teaching archery is not hard, but connecting and engaging on a personal level with others is difficult unless its a natural part of you.
The transfer of culture of leadership to staff member and from year to year at camp happens in a week. New staff come in and are submersed in the culture of how a camp operates. I think many companies and industries could learn from how camp professionals deliver this year after year.
dave
4 Feb 10 at 4:28 pm
Sorry this is so long, but you hit a hot topic for me…
I’ve worked as an I.T. manager at different levels for a large wireless carrier for nearly 10 years and have had this conversation with dozens and dozens of co-workers, friends, and family. When I first started hiring, I wanted the smartest of the smart. They’d blow me away with their technical knowledge; I’d be sold and they’d be hired. Live and learn I guess, but that can be just as detrimental as hiring someone with no knowledge of your position. That person may know the technology inside and out, but will pollute (and disband) your current employee pool fast if you’re not looking to see if they mesh with the team.
So over the years, my hiring method has gone from finding the person that knows 99% of the job, to finding the person that knows *some* of the job but really meshes well with the team. I’ll write the job description “good enough” to get a wider range of applicants, and really put my time in on sorting through them once they’ve applied. A “good personality and 50% knowledge of the job” crushes a “bad personality and 99% knowledge of the job”.
You’ve hit it on the head with:
“if your team has someone that is “good”…someone who is competent, who works hard and is committed to their jobs, who is pleasant to work with and willing to be flexible and learn new things…then find a place for them.”
If they’re “good enough” and an “great” fit with the other members of the team, you’ve hit gold.
In regards to your statement about:
“Ben is always suggesting doing some sort of screening or “testing” to find candidates with these qualities, but have yet to think of a screen or test that will find these types of people. I would completely be open to your suggestions in the comments.”
From what I’ve found, it’s not something you can screen for on an application unfortunately. You need to have a conversation or 4 with the person; email, phone or whatever to really get to know them. They’re applying to your job because they like what they see. Give them the respect and opportunity to prove they deserve it.
As each application comes in, I check out if they have any of the skills I’m looking for. If they have a handful, they’ll at least get an email from me that is set to dig a little deeper (past jobs, skillsets, etc) to see if they’re on par with what they claim. 90% of the time this can be bluffed if they want, but you’re gaining knowledge as to what/how they communicate. People can be misread on email and intonations may not come off as intended. If the email goes well, I’ll give them a call to follow up on the technical side to see if on the spot they can back up their email claims and diffuse any inconsistencies in the email.
If the call goes well, come on in to chat. If they’re coming in, I’m 98% sure they’re technically the right fit. I’m now *only* gauging how well they’ll fit with the team personality-wise. This is the turning point now. If you’re in the office for a chat, you’re book smart enough for the gig and you’re 25% of the way there. The remaining 75% now bends around how the current team interacts and feels around you. Each team is different so I like to have the whole team there and we rarely ask too many technical questions; mostly situational based and “tell me more about yourself” type questions. If you’re meshing with the team throughout this, you’ll likely get the job.
I’ve seen businesses shrug it off as just needing to “put a butt in the seat as you have a lot of work to be done!” NEWSFLASH: Everyone has work that needs to be done, that’s why you’re hiring! That’s a copout because it’s not difficult, it just takes time. Moving too fast rarely leads to a good hire. I’m of the belief that this should be a very key (if not *THE* key) piece to your business (after of course proving you can make $). Put time into hiring/interviewing; it’s your nucleus that you’re growing stronger and you absolutely need that at the startup phase and is very hard to retrofit when you grow larger.
Making a good choice here may take a few extra hours out of your month now, but I can assure you it’ll save you days/weeks/months over the lifetime of the position by not having to deal with the loads of issues/baggage that come with a bad hire.
Very nicely written post Scott!
andy
4 Feb 10 at 4:53 pm