Growing Your Team: Tips from the Trenches

By Matt Leavell, CEO of BuyLow Warehouse

Growing a team is a thrilling yet daunting challenge. Over two decades as an entrepreneur, I’ve learned that the right approach can significantly impact your company’s trajectory. Here are some key insights:

Hiring the Right People

This always starts with clear responsibilities and processes being documented of what our team is doing on a day-to-day basis. Without the documentation, there is no way to understand which responsibilities/processes take the most time or make the most sense to keep together with the same team member. Once we have defined the responsibilities/processes then we discuss which tasks can be handed off, what a "full plate" looks like for our existing team member and we have a clear outline of what we are hiring for. This helps us make sure we hire the correct candidate based upon their personality, intellectual capabilities and skill sets.

Aligning Your Team for Success

Having a clear, defined and written down goal is super important to get the most out of your team. If left to each individual team member to define, you will have everyone running full speed towards something, but they could easily be running in the wrong direction! Nothing is more frustrating than to be working as hard as you can, just to find out that another team member is working just as hard to move in the opposite direction! To solve this, get everyone together and allocate a large enough block of time to brain-storm, debate, discuss and agree on where the company should be going and the steps to get there. This may take several meetings, that are several hours each. Once in agreement, you will be able to coordinate as a team to go after that goal and you can be assured that no one is working in a counter productive way.

Cultivating a Thriving Company Culture

Whether you have taken the time to cultivate the culture of your organization or not, your organization has one. Nurturing the culture of your organization is one of the most important things a CEO can do. It is what provides the "rules of how we play" that can inform and guide your team whether you are around or not. It defines the boundaries and what is deemed as important within your team. It provides a level of freedom to your team members so that they can always know how to operate. It brings a level of efficiency to your organization that can not be achieved in any other way. Once defined and cultivated, you must protect it. Hire and fire around it and do not compromise it.

Recommended Reading: Traction by Gino Wickman

For a comprehensive guide to organizational growth, I highly recommend Traction by Gino Wickman. This book offers practical strategies for scaling your business effectively. It’s a valuable resource for any leader looking to build a thriving organization.

Growing a team is a journey filled with challenges and rewards. By implementing these strategies and leveraging resources like Traction, you can create a high-performing team that drives your company forward.