How to transform your startup team from sprinters into endurance athletes
Getting and keeping your team engaged in the ups and downs of your startup’s journey.
You fill your early-stage team with the best and the brightest in the startup community. They’re primed to move fast and break things make an impact, and for a while they do. However, the ebbs and flows of your startup’s journey seem to be slowing down those sprinters and you feel the energy start to dissipate. Responsiveness feels delayed, enthusiasm is waning, and while you’re getting stuff done, there is a feeling of disconnectedness that you just can’t shake.
As a founder, your goal is to be the consummate endurance athlete on the team, showing up with relentless energy, and thermostat-like stability. But the rest of the team? Is it possible to get those less invested than you to show up with a longer-term lens leading to a more significant impact?
how DO you turn your team from short-burst hurdlers to tenacious marathoners?
Celebrate progress while aligning individual contributions toward achieving a startup’s vision
Why This Works
While revenue goals are the ones that are going to eventually turn your startup into a business - and that fear of failure is real - recognize that the incentives of your team often extend far beyond a dollar figure. You may spend all day selling your investors, customers, and potential partners on your big vision, but you need to keep this top of mind for your team members too. Articulating the 30,000-foot vision during onboarding and end-of-year recaps isn’t enough.
Why Do This Now
You may not be an ultramarathoner in real life, but the mental agility and fortitude to achieve such a big goal are crucial for startup success. Enthusiasm is infectious and tangible as team members get started. However, once the initial excitement fades away, if a team member's daily actions aren't in sync with achieving long-term goals, you might find yourself as the sole endurance athlete within the team.
Rob Sadow, CEO of Scoop Technologies, points out that remote work has changed the approach managers should take when working with their employees to ensure productivity and alignment. In the past, many managers focused on physical presence in the office as an indicator of productivity, assuming that if people were at their desks, they were being productive. However, with remote work, a shift is needed to manage outcomes more effectively and gain a better understanding of true productivity levels. This requires managers to step up their game and adopt a long-term results-oriented approach.
how We Do: Celebrate progress while ensuring that each individual's efforts are aligned toward achieving the vision
Rules (Process) 📝
Document your mission and vision for your employees.
Audience matters. Your mission and vision don’t need to change from your investors to your customers to your team members, but the delivery can and should change. Which version of the vision can you convey that will ignite their excitement and enthusiasm throughout their time on the team, making them fully committed and engaged in the journey ahead?
Connect your team’s projects to the overall vision/mission.
Shoot for the moon. Even if you miss, you'll land among the stars. Whether you’re using OKRs or another audacious goal-setting system, ensure the highest level goal for a project is a stepping stone in furthering your mission or executing your vision. (Need a good prioritization tactic? If your projects won’t help you achieve your vision, you’re working on the wrong stuff. Reprioritize your time!).
Celebrate team accomplishments by marking progress towards the team vision.
Instead of “Great job surpassing this month’s KPI!”, try, “Wow – because you’ve achieved XYZ, this will unlock the opportunity for us to achieve X part of our vision”.
People 🫶
Understand what “purpose-driven” work means for each individual on your team. Some might be giving you maximum energy and effort because they’re looking for a big exit while others are driven by making an impact for the customers you seek to serve. Honor those differences by taking a moment with each member of the team to understand their why.
Offer direct praise to each individual, acknowledging their specific contributions to the team's success and their impact on making progress towards our collective goals. Furthermore, recognize and appreciate the way their sense of purpose drives them to excel and make a difference.
Tools 🛠️
Instead of using Google Docs or Notion, try communicating your Mission and Vision in a more visual way using Mindmeister or Miro. Help the team visually connect the dots from their work to your mission using simple yet impactful visual flows.
Create a Slack Channel to celebrate your team member’s micro wins, or consider an integration such as Matter. Feedback Friday and kudos go a long way to ensure buy-in and alignment on shared successes while being mindful that this feedback must be tied to the team’s vision.
Keep an eye on how often you’re calling out individuals and make sure to spread the love. Not everyone’s roles will have as obvious an impact so being sure to meaningfully highlight every individual or team and connecting their work to the larger goal will help keep this practice positive.
Note that not everyone is comfortable with public praise. Ask people what they prefer and if they’d rather not be called out, send direct messages acknowledging their wins.
Actually Actionable
Nice article. Now what?
We’ve taken the ideas above and created an action plan for you and your team.
Objective 1: Communicate and Align the Vision
Meeting 1: Refine the startup's mission and vision statements (1 Hour).
Meeting 2: Brainstorm and assign roles for effective communication strategies to align the team with the vision (1 Hour).
Objective 2: Foster Purpose-Driven Culture and Recognition
Meeting 1: Conduct a purpose discovery session for team members to explore their motivations in relation to the startup's mission (1.5 Hours).
Meeting 2: Introduce a platform for celebrating team members' achievements and reinforcing a purpose-driven culture (30 Minutes).
Objective 3: Enhance Team Cohesion and Goal Alignment
Meeting 1: Organize a team-building workshop to strengthen relationships and foster a sense of unity among team members (1.5 Hours).
Meeting 2: Conduct a goal alignment session to ensure individual efforts align with the startup's vision, promoting a more focused and cohesive approach to work (1 Hour).
Before you go
Hiring high-quality employees is only part of the equation for startup success. Ensuring that they buy into the long-term vision is equally, if not more, important. Such long-term alignment allows you to transform your team from sprinters to endurance athletes and creates a shared sense of big-picture accomplishments.
That said, it’s the micro-wins that lead to larger successes, so establishing a culture that recognizes and rewards the small victories and articulates how they play into the larger strategy becomes paramount. Lean into team-building activities that foster a shared sense of “why” so that team members connect with the MVV of the company and surround yourself with employees that grow alongside your company.
Writer: Britt
Collaborators: Caleigh & Scott
Thoughts on a topic that you would like us to cover in a future issue - we would love to hear from you: founder@weofalltrades.com