The 12 RULES for creating a perfect team

Finding the right employees for your business project, is the first major hurdle you will face, especially if your company is not yet able to compete with average market salaries.

Companies have realized that retaining talent in digital, is an increasingly difficult task, and are trying to offer growth plans, attractive compensation, etc….

How then to overcome the problem?

Table of Contents

• Hiring a freelancer or employee?
• The 12 rules for creating a perfect team
  • Do not judge by appearances or the way you dress.
  • Creates a characteristically diverse team
  • Look for people better than you
  • Absolutely avoid Yes-Man
  • Looking for people with entrepreneurial spirit
  • It incentivizes smart-working
  • Set goal-oriented, not time-based work
  • Trust but verify
  • Reward employees who have been by your side “since day one”
  • Always be truthful. Lie only for good
  • Take responsibility for mistakes (including those of your co-workers)
  • Give precise and detailed instructions
  • Speak directly to the team
    • HOW CAN I HELP YOU?

Hiring a freelancer or employee?

The first step will be to decide what contractual arrangement to offer the employee who will work on your project.

Let us make clear from the outset the difference between the two:

Freelancer (or self-employed professional): is a self-employed person with his own VAT number. He has no obligation to go to the office of the person who commissioned the work. His goal is to complete what was agreed upon in the estimate. At the end of the work performed, there are no obligations between the parties for subsequent renewals.
Both the amount and the duration of the collaboration are variable according to the needs and agreements undertaken.

Employee: is a worker who receives a fixed fee each month to carry out assigned tasks. He has greater obligations and protections from the employer than freelancers. He is entitled to vacation, leave, health care, and severance pay (TFR, the Italian statutory end-of-employment allowance); on the other hand, he is almost always required to travel to his place of work with an average workday duration of 8h.
Both the amount and the duration of the collaboration are fixed obligations every month by the employer regardless of the financial performance of the company.

You need to ask yourself some basic questions before opting for one choice or the other:

• What is the budget for the project?
  The answer to this question, will provide you with more certainty. If the answer is I don’t know, go and read these two posts: how to create a Business Plan and how to create a Financial Plan.
  If the budget is small, a full-time employee would fall under “Fixed Costs,” and at an early stage when you would need to remain as flexible as possible, at the first unforeseen event you would risk blowing the project. Better, therefore, to opt in this case for a Freelancer until an MVP (Minimum Viable Product) is reached.
  Conversely, with higher budgets you can allow yourself a few more risks and start from the beginning to create team logic.

• Do you plan offices or want to have maximum freedom of movement?
  In case you want to have an office location, the costs to consider would be higher. But is it really worth it to spend money on a nice office when you can work in Smart Working and have less costs?

• I want to work from anywhere in the world. Should the company be based in Italy or abroad?
  If your life plan is to move abroad or work traveling the world, things would change; the easiest management would involve working with freelancers.

• How many people will the project involve in 5 years?
  If you anticipate that your project will need 10-15 people within the next five years of operation, it may be complex to manage the workload exclusively with external collaborations. My advice is to frame with full-time contracts the people who are essential to the operation of the project, and for the parts that are not neuralgic to the business to collaborate with freelancers.

• How to find people willing to work on my project with little budget?
  Not everyone is driven solely by economic motivations during the job change process. There are also people in the market who are willing to bet on a startup project, investing their professionalism and time in it. This mode of work is technically called *“*Work for Equity,” meaning work in exchange for shares in the startup.

The 12 rules for creating a perfect team

The people you need for your team must complement each other character-wise. Teams composed of personalities that are too strong or personalities that are too weak can disintegrate after a few months.

The first step is to better understand the person in front of you.

Do not judge by appearances or the way you dress.

Those who work in digital have a more “comfortable” way of dressing than other office jobs. So don’t expect a software programmer to show up to the interview in a suit and tie. Much easier to find a person at the interview wearing a T-shirt of his favorite metal band.

Although this guy may seem unremarkable to you, he is one of the Betabrand engineers (recipients of major international awards) who jokingly poked fun at the famous HP company in a video after the statement that “even developers must submit to corporate dress-code by wearing ties.” (Source: TheRegister).

Now, without wanting to generalize, from personal experience I can tell you that in years of work, the best “minds” both in terms of competence and quality of work were dressed roughly like the guy in the picture. Conversely, the best shenanigans I’ve taken from the very people who wore ties.

Creates a characteristically diverse team

Having too many leaders, rather than just submissive people, can be extremely harmful. The risk is to generate conflict and block the flow of work.

Before the interview even begins, submit the following questionnaire to the candidate: 16personalities. It lasts about 15 minutes and is free of charge.

Once you have filled out the test, the site will give you a character summary of the candidate, which will rank in one of 4 main types:

• Analysts
• Diplomats
• Sentinels
• Explorers

At the end of the interview (not before) read the result together is then ask this simple question, “Do you reflect yourself in this personality type?” Now let the candidate speak.

You will be amazed at the accuracy of the results you get.

Look for people better than you

I have known entrepreneurs who were afraid that one of their employees would become better than him in some areas of the business.

This is the stupidest fear a leader can have.

If an employee is better than you (or becomes better over time) at doing a job, you should be overjoyed!

The benefits are many:

1. You will have a great opportunity to learn (even if you are the highest ranking you should always have the humility to know new things)
2. You may feel more confident in delegating tasks.
3. You will know you have done a great job, from selection to training.

Absolutely avoid Yes-Man

The last thing you need is an employee who always says yes! Although feeling like you are always right might give you the impression that you are making the right choices, in reality these kinds of resources will not add any value to your company.

Looking for people with entrepreneurial spirit

You can say you’ve hit “bingo” when you find a candidate who in his or her previous experiences, has created one or more projects from scratch. Even small ones, it doesn’t matter. But he will be an extremely “hands-on” person who can help you with day-to-day problems.

Go hunting in the CV for this crucial detail.

It incentivizes smart-working

The real revolution in the digital world is the ability to work from anywhere in the world.

Do you want to stay home with your children while you work? You can. Work from a beach. You can do that. Work at the library. You can do that.

Even with an employee contract.

In Italy, there is a law that regulates precisely this work model: Smart Working Law (Law No. 81/2017).

But despite this, Italian companies that have adopted this type of work are still limited.

A glimmer of evolution may have come from forced isolation due to Coronavirus.

Well, I’ll tell you some news…

There are plenty of people on the market who are willing even to lower their salaries by 10%-20% in order to work alongside their loved ones.

The main source of stress in the company starts right during the home-office commute. Do not underestimate this aspect because it could be your key to attracting talent.

Set goal-oriented, not time-based work

Should you decide to hire a full-time employee, don’t give in to the temptation to get upset if an employee starts or finishes after hours. Leave total flexibility on hours worked, but first set weekly and monthly goals together.

This freedom must, of course, be compatible with the day-to-day management of clients/partners.

Trust but verify

Most entrepreneurs have a distrustful attitude toward their employees. The most frequent fears are bad words behind our backs, coffee breaks that last for hours, etc..

Here, if you get to these kinds of attitudes, I’m going to tell you something you’re not going to like: the responsibility is 99 percent yours. You may have made a mistake either in the hiring process or in the training/team building process.

During the team-building stages, do not rush things by trying to overdo it. Trust is a fundamental feeling in a group that must be consolidated over time. Gradually give your people trust by starting to delegate some tasks.

Once you have established trust, help your team members develop strategic thinking. The latter will be needed during those times when you have no ideas and feel entrepreneurially stuck-this situation happens especially when the workload increases and you are not getting the results you hoped for.

Team members having developed strategic thinking will be able to come to your aid with new ideas and proposals to implement in the company.

Reward employees who have been by your side “since day one”

The employees who have been with you from the beginning, when no one believed in you yet, are your strength.

If you have trained them properly they will be aligned with your company vision and be able to communicate with leadership to newcomers. People love to be empowered and to see their sacrifices rewarded.

Pay attention to one key point: before increasing a team member’s level of responsibility, make sure:

1. Want it, and feel up to it
2. Have developed appropriate management skills
3. Other team members are not affected by this

For the first point, talk to the person concerned and consider whether this increase in work, is compatible with his or her private life.

Should he be available at the beginning of this new job opportunity, train him properly by enrolling him in a professional leadership/staff management course. Being an excellent worker, does not automatically imply having the skills to be able to lead a group.

Also consider how other team members might take it. To get an exact answer to this question, all you need to do is remain silent and watch/listen to your team. If you have built your team’s culture on a free sharing of ideas, you will be able to figure out in a few minutes who they have elected to be the leader of the group. That will be the first person to be considered, so that their Job Title is aligned with their leadership. You will have a calm employee and a team ready to listen to the guidance he or she provides.

And remember: promote the right person for the team, not for you! There are social/corporate climbers ready to bamboozle and praise you–the classic “brown-nosers” in short. Stay away from them like the plague. They damage you and the whole team. You need sincere feedback, not flatterers.

Always be truthful. Lie only for good

There should be few occasions in the life of an entrepreneur when he or she should lie to his or her team, especially if in your direct employ. One of these I think is when there are difficult problems that you are trying to solve.

Try to make these issues weigh as little as possible on team members, or you may burden them with anxiety and stress. Always protect and safeguard those who work with you.

Take responsibility for mistakes (including those of your co-workers)

Know that there is no more obnoxious thing than an entrepreneur who is unable to admit his or her mistakes. We are all human, and we make mistakes. Everyone, from the first to the last.

The thousand things to do, the thoughts and responsibilities, will quickly lead you to make mistakes.

Only those who do not do, do not do wrong.

I can guarantee you that there are very few entrepreneurs around who can unapologetically admit their mistakes.

Those few who can, are incredibly respected by their employees.

Accepting and indulging the culture of error within one’s company means taking the risk of improvement. Without mistakes, there can be no innovation (personal and corporate).

Arm yourself with broad shoulders, and remember:

“A good leader centralizes criticism to himself, and shares with the team his successes.”

Give precise and detailed instructions

Having a team confused about what their tasks and goals are to achieve ends up halving everyone’s performance.

Low performance is synonymous with a loss of money because it decreases the efficiency of a team.

To solve this problem you will need to do a very good initial job of strategizing your business, including writing a Business Plan and a Financial Plan.

Speak directly to the team

Bitter pills do not need to be sweetened. Because it would only be counterproductive.

Treat everyone as responsible, and always give them the respect they deserve, but if you have to criticize them, do it directly.

Criticism should be exclusively limited on professional topics.

An honest confrontation will open up, in which you may discover scenarios you had not considered.

HOW CAN I HELP YOU?

Do you have a business project in mind but don’t know where to start, or do you want to give your business more visibility to attract more customers over the Internet?

CONTACT ME