‘People’ is a critical factor on your way to making things happen. Journey of a entrepreneur/maker involves several types of people. Some helps you to actively pursue and achieve your goal. And some does otherwise. It’s almost okay when somebody does not come to your aid but nobody has the right to distract you, derail you and waste your energy.
People who work for you and hold your vision and equally motivated by your passion are the people you need to keep engaged with you. However, this number will be very slim and you should not be afraid of number at all. There will be also people who will motivate and encourage you to go ahead from outside of your boundary. You should also stick with this group of people.
But there will be another group of people within your team or outside of your team. And these people are killer. They, no matter where they stay, will always make you to stay low. They would not complete things on time, they would not give feedback, they would not work on time, but they would complain, and they would, most of the time, waste your precious time. These people will reduce your productivity, derail you and will be the cause of your failure. And if you succeed they will take credit but if anything went wrong they will blame you for all. These people spoil organizational culture, destroy group moral, and slow down your pace of progress.
The bad thing is that most of the time you don’t delete these people for anonymous reason. But to make progress and keep your team sprit active you must get rid of them. Don’t waste your energy dealing wrong people instead get rid of them. Making decision, especially in startup, is hard but sometime things that look bad at the beginning become the ultimate cause of all good.
So, when you are forming your start-up team you must be very careful so that you can make it right. How to make it right? Here are few tips:
Attitude comes first
Make sure your team has the right attitude that is required to start, build and make your ideas happen. Startup is a different journey. High work load and low compensation. If anybody does not feel motivated to take challenge, work hard, and enjoy working for a startup as it requires then it would be really tough to move ahead. Doing mentality, challenge taking capability, working hard attitude, and high sense of accountability & responsibility are few must have attitudes in a startup team member.
Values change everything
If your team members/ co-founders values and your values contradict it dictates a real problem for a startup. Build a team with people who hold similar values.
Mission
You want to change the world but your co-founder wants to make money first. This kind of contradiction is real threat to the existence and success of a start-up. Make sure your team holds same mission as yours and go ahead.
If anybody does not match your criteria the best way is to get rid of that person. Starting-up and making things happen is enough tough job to do, don’t amount your challenge by taking someone who takes your energy away.
