Scaling the A team

I've been participating in quite a few audits over the last few weeks, and you see some patterns after a while. There are a few obvious tropes: inexperienced leaders, lack of technical vision, and specification-driven development.

But one of the patterns I've noticed in the last few audits is less obvious: an overly talented start-up team.

Start-ups need intelligent and experienced people to take off. The founders' ability to surround themselves with smart people is critical. Yet, having an all-star team comes with a price.

Some of the teams we interviewed were doing fine. Everyone was at the top of their game, the collaboration was great, and the results were fantastic. Yet they struggled to scale their organisation. Or, more precisely, they couldn't find the right talent.

Sure, it's a tight market, but that often isn't their real issue.

Scaling the A-team is hard. A small team of intelligent people finds a modus operandi. They make it work almost effortlessly. Their flow works well until less experienced or talented people get added to the mix. Suddenly, they find onboarding to be complicated. They lack documentation, have no clear role descriptions, and have no structured ways of sharing knowledge. The machine grinds to a halt.

They feel they have a hiring issue, whereas their organisation and processes need work. After a certain period, every team should be able to onboard less experienced employees. That's the key to scaling: you get the exceptional to launch and organize yourself so you can hire more broadly.

I often find it hard to convince these founders. Your stars need to be less efficient to support B-players: that's what it sounds like. If your first few hires are rock stars, you feel that that's the ideal way of hiring. Hiring "regular team members" feels like a step back.

Yet scaling means making sure you can take on less experienced people and grow that talent in-house. And to do that, you need clear role descriptions, documentation, and process.