In the early stage of running your own business, it’s natural to try to do as much as possible by yourself. It’s the most cost-effective, comfortable, sensible way to do things in the beginning.But as your enterprise grows, you will find yourself stretched thinner and thinner. Eventually, you’ll find you just can’t continue to oversee operations, sales, accounting, fulfillment, and marketing and hope to grow your business.When you reach this point, it’s time to think about bringing other high-level managers on board to help you out. You need to build a team that’s able to manage all the critical areas of your business to take it to the next level. Building your team demands jobs matching to people’s strength. That means giving people responsibilities according to their skill level. That includes you as well- don’t give yourself an impressive title and job unless you deserve it.
In a team-oriented environment, you contribute to the overall success of the organization. Even though you have a specific job function and you belong to a specific department, you are unified with other organization members to accomplish the overall objectives.Team building is a four pronged process. The elements of this process are, building a strong foundation, creating the strong pillars to build the next floors, building the first model floor and then just replicating as long as you grow.Why a strong foundation?For maintaining an effective team you have to concentrate on foundations required for them. You must build or repair the foundation first if you are seeking to build an effective team.[Tweet “Stronger the foundation, higher the building will go.”]This stage needs lots of digging, too much patience and unbounded perseverance.Who qualifies to be a founder member?Identify the three core skills needed for your business and get them in the team as much as possible. The members should have shared goals and similar values. Don’t mix personal and professional relationships in your business because friends and relative don’t always make a good team.Who builds the pillar and the first floor?This is the next core team, may be next 5-6 key people. This may include more functional experts (marketing, HR, technology, sales etc depending on your business). Hire them for passion and skills. New businesses are much about ownership, hardship and passion as much as about skills. Hire for attitude with shared goals and values, and train for business.
Who builds the floor?This is the growth stage where your business is working. You know what to sell, to whom you sell and where you want to go. Here skills are more important as you know what you are looking for. Passion, common goals and shared values are important too but to a lesser extent now.How do I find co-founders?[Tweet “The key to find a co-founder is networking”]The key to find a co-founder is networking: network, network and network some more. Make an effective impression: talk about your business with passion.