‘How I’ offer a playground to my team.

Looking back, I realize that one thing which inspired me to start up on my own is the ability to take decisions and be fully accountable for the consequences. For the last four years, the same attitude has helped me build and rebuild. You need relationships and mentoring to grow, they present you with the right amount of bumps, perspective and experiences. Your life, entrepreneur or not, is a playground where you choose what to control and what to give up. And that is how we learn.

Choice

My first employees were micro managed by me, and I faced a backlash. After introspection and reading good articles online, realization struck that the best way to have team members engaged is to create opportunities for them to grow. Since I had chosen a playground, why not give a part of it to each team member for their sand castles?

Intra-preneurship

Their sand castles but your playground = motivated team which gains way more than they otherwise would have. Since it is your playground, you communicate the objective and what the end result should achieve. Since they build their sand castles, they make mistakes and learn. It is humanly not possible for us to imagine every possible version of a sand castle, and allowing your team members to do it their own way results in new findings and better methods. While being available for feedback and guidance, you effectively run sister companies within a company.

Culture

A healthy company’s culture ought not to be a personality cult, but a set of values that have the potential to define an well loved individual. Your personal choices should not dictate terms, but your fondness for organization & communication hygiene should. Thus, by laying boundaries and defining strategy (communication, language, appearance), you allow your team members to add a dash of their personality to your playground. If a dictator prefers blue, all sandcastles might end up being blue. Democratic and transformational leaders have a colorful playground with a team that’s happier.

How I do it.

I will have to make the context clear, since my solid startup experience of three years is still in the process of bearing fruit, might need your feedback to be better. Hammer and Mop (my enterprise) has two distinct silos (with two way communication encouraged) – Communications (led by Jude) and Operations (led by Gauri). Thanks to Jude – our English is better, language more courteous and client experience smoother (I tend to get abrupt). Pursuing Masters in English Literature, he is a voracious reader with a dash of madness which adds the right flavor to all communication. Thanks to Gauri – our processes are streamlined, defined and disciplined. She brings her engineering and MBA experience to the forefront. She is decisive and understands the whip (I’ve no management education). As a result, my team is way more than just one person, and I’m glad they wear their individuality on their shoulders. This helps the enterprise be stronger with all our strengths combined.

Internship Castles

The same rule applies to interns. While you might have specific projects on work that needs to be done, a true learning experience for interns would be to conceptualize and initiate projects on their own. The sting of the initial inertia is a lesson for all future projects and work experience. Even if your interns plan to be employees, being proactive is a necessary trait. There is no better way of teaching this to them, than handing them a playground and asking them to build a sandcastle of their own. Quite like throwing them in a swimming pool leading them to splash around. Offer guidance, offer feedback but ask them to research and start building.

A sphere is powerful.

All points on the circumference of a sphere are equidistant from the centre, unlike a pyramid. A sphere is a powerful weapon, while a pyramid is truly lethal only from a single point. It is recommended to motivate your Generals and troops and give them a purpose greater than yours to fight. The purpose should be equally personal, as much for the greater good.

Transformational leadership creates win-win situations and thus builds empires from scratch.

🙂

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This is an attempt to add to the ‘How I’ series initiated by Alok.

Read his ‘How I Hire People’

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