Learn from Kid's football teams
Here’s a simple fact. Most football teams for 5 yr olds, who play 6 aside for fun on Sunday mornings, playing for only 30 minutes in a local little league, will send more time training and practising than most business teams. The aim of the former is to have fun and learn how to play together with rules and shared responsibilities- fantastic training for life. The aim of the latter is to achieve super fast growth and millions in ARR. So why the disconnect? Why don’t small businesses invest in training their teams?
Your people, their ability to function as a team and their skillsets are your biggest asset. A mediocre strategy with a great team will outperform an amazing strategy with a mediocre team. It’s all about execution.
One of the biggest challenges most startup founders have it not enough time and not enough money. However when it comes to training and enhancing the capabilities of your team then not only can you make the time but you must and done properly it should not cost you any money. Let me explain.
As a founder or co-founder you have a number of skills and a certain amount of knowledge. As you bring people into the business you always face a risk that they will not have these to the same degree as you or your co-founder(s). Most startups have an initial induction or training session and that’s it. Some might keep going for a few weeks and then everyone gets busy and it peters out. This is a waste. Your knowledge and skills and the ones that your co-founders or most senior hires have are not only your best assets, but they are transferable assets. On top of that they are free and cost you no money. The more time you invest in your team training them, developing their skills and knowledge and increasing their capabilities both as individuals and as team then the faster your business will grow and the stronger it will become.
A structured weekly training program with modules divided by skills and knowledge is essential with a clear overall program and assessed outcomes. You can set different levels where level 1 is basic, level 2 proficient and level 3 advanced. You can then structure it with different level attainment required so for example everyone in sales and product has to pass level 3 in their own and each other’s skill area but only level 1 in finance and HR. Perhaps marketing needs to pass level 3 in sales abut only level 2 in product and product only needs level 1 in marketing. You get the gist but the key idea is that you are building business wide skills across the team so that you can ensure that everyone is helping drive the business to the best of their ability.
Also the best people to employ in new roles are people who already work for you and who have already bought into the culture and demonstrated the right mindset for your business. This cross- pollination of skills and knowledge also allows employees to try out different areas they may be interested in and possible move permanently from one to the other. This enables you to promote from within. It rewards your team with fast career growth and helps them develop. This is a quid pro quo and is in return for all the hard work they are producing to help drive the business. Not only does this drive employee engagement and motivation it also helps drive faster growth. It’s 100% mutually beneficial.
It also becomes an employee hook when you are interviewing as a differentiator that they won’t get elsewhere. Once it’s up and running it also provides real examples of people in the team who have befitted from it and grown careers faster than they would elsewhere. These are people who you can point to as examples in the interview process. Options are great if you can award them but they are entirely dependent on an outcome at some point in the future which is at best highly uncertain. A well-planned skills and knowledge training program is concrete and gives them fast career growth capabilities that they can start to benefit from on day 1.
Cross-pollination also drives better understanding across departments. Everyone thinks that their team works harder than other teams and this can cause friction, negative energy and ultimately bad outcomes for clients. This is especially true in fast growing startups where the pressure is intense and people are working long hours. Part of the reason for this is that they don’t understand what other teams do. Training everyone up to basic level 1 across the business goes a long way to resolving this.
This is doubly true with sales and product who always think that their team works harder than the other one. This needs to be nipped in the bud as it causes resentment which can fester and lead to bad client outcomes again.
The most successful startups are the ones with the best teams. The best teams are the ones where the founders/ cofounders have invested the time and energy to make sure that they are building and enhancing their capabilities, skills and knowledge on a permanent on going basis. Best of all it’s free. So take a lesson from the local kids run around on Sunday and start doing some training with your team. 😊
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