How To Organise Your Team So Your Startup Succeeds

A successful start-up business, is a careful mixture of a great idea, good planning, investment capital, and a team of people who can work together like a well-oiled machine.

There’s, sadly, no simple formula to successful team organisation when it comes to start-ups but many who have been there before have shared some wisdom on the subject.

Below, in this article,  we will explore the pieces of advice that surface most often when the conversation turns to successful team organisation and start-up management.

If you’re curious to see whether you could implement some of the ideas, then read on.

Hiring

The people you hire to work at your start-up will be responsible for bringing your idea to life and sustaining it through growth. Hiring is then the most important issue that needs utmost care and attention.

What makes start-ups different from traditional businesses is agility an opportunity to do things differently.

Look beyond the ‘CV’

With this in mind, consider whether you’d rather hire ‘good on paper’ candidates or look beyond the CV to find candidates that are truly passionate and open to learning.

The latter is typically what start-up owners tend to lean towards as hard skills (beyond certain specifics) can be taught whilst intuitive working, flexibility, and curiosity are more or less innate and impossible to cultivate if not present from the start.

Processes

When a team is small there’s usually some resistance to implementing too many official processes since most things can be dealt with by email or through informal conversations. This, however, is short-term thinking that will be prohibitive once the business begins to grow and other tasks take priority.

Think about implementing tools and processes from the start, paying special attention to scalability that’ll future-proof your start-up against disruption caused by rapid growth.

Automate Tasks

Automating administrative tasks by using resource management software can help to streamline and alleviate issues that are likely to arise as the team starts to work together on a series of projects.

Innovative companies need innovative solutions and automation of admin offers an innovative way of working for start-up teams.

Communication

Once start-up operations are in full swing and employees have had some time to work together, differences in working styles and business strategy may arise. This is unavoidable and also completely natural as passionate individuals will sometimes clash.

Relationships

The mark of a successful start-up is dealing with conflict and disagreements in a productive way that doesn’t cause upset to individuals or affect the team’s ability to work together.

Communication is a skill that isn’t available to all but, thankfully, it can be taught and improved upon with practice.

Set up formal ‘dates’ between colleagues where they will have an opportunity to get to know each other outside the rigidity of the work day, building more positive and authentic relationships.

Raising concerns as soon as they arise should be encouraged and appropriate communication channels must be built to make this possible; it’s always better to address initial negativity before it has a chance to mutate into serious problems.