Source: Good to Great by Jim Collins

A framework is more like a guide, it does not tell you how to walk the path but gives you guideposts on what you should focus on. Building great teams is the bedrock of building great companies. I have mentioned many times that when you are investing in a startup, the team matters a lot. Building great teams that execute is an important necessary condition. All other things you can change but the team dynamics is critical, it is hard to encapsulate and constant changes in team members and structure always leads to confusion and delays progress.

I believe the framework build by Jim Collins in his Good to Great book clearly articulates what I mean. The first stage in all great companies before they became great was the build up of disciplined people. Without disciplined people all other things falls apart, what do I mean by disciplined people? I can sum this up in one sentence, disciplined people are those who Make and Keep Promises. It is as simple as that. If you one can build a discipline to do that one can get disciplined in anything. There are a number of qualities that are required to be disciplined, I like :

  • Relentless
  • Resourceful
  • Resilient
  • Responsible
  • Respects other opinions

This is by no means an exhaustive list of attributes that comprise the winning team, however it is a good start. Paul Graham wrote a very interesting post about being relentlessly resourceful, he was of course referring to startup founders. I think the concept can be applied to anyone. I would like to be in a team that is relentlessly resourceful, that is resilient ie. when adversity hits the plan the team has a way to stand up and keep moving forward. Responsible is another word that I really like Dr.Steven Covey talks about this a lot in his books, the word responsible can be broken into Response-Able ie. have the ability to respond. Respecting others is not a nice to have but a must have quality. No-one knows everything if you want to win in the marketplace you need to bring people together who can compliment each others weakness. Thats the way winning is done! I wanted to leave this blog post with words of wisdom from a very famous philosopher Rocky Balboa.

The world ain’t all sunshine and rainbows, it is a very mean and nasty place and I don’t care how tough you are it will beat you to your knees and keep you there if you let it. You, me or nobody is going to hit as hard as life… but it ain’t about how hard you hit, its about how hard you can get hit and keep moving forward, how much you can take and keep moving forward… Thats how winning is done!

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