3 Crucial Steps to Building a Great Team Ignore the "hire fast" advice. Use these three crucial steps for building a great team.
By Aytekin Tank Edited by Jessica Thomas
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In the 16 years since I started Jotform, we've reached a lot of milestones. Growing a business from a nights-and-weekends side project into a successful company with 10 million users has been a rewarding (and sometimes exhausting) journey. But of all of the breakthroughs we've made over the years, I think I'm most proud of what we did in 2015.
When I started Jotform in 2006, there was one single employee: Me. Being a bootstrapped founder, growth came slowly and deliberately; up until 2014, I didn't make more than a few new hires each year. But in 2015, we moved our operations into a new, bigger office.
Suddenly, we had room to grow. And we did. In 2014, we had 12 employees. In 2015, we jumped to 22. Such quick growth isn't always successful — adding too many people too fast can upset a company's delicate equilibrium and throw things into chaos.
For us, our new hires brought about a new way of working. Rather than individual employees working on individual projects, we formed small, cross-functional teams. It was this team-based approach that led to the creation of Jotform 4.0 in 2016 — the form builder we still use today.
Switching to teams made a huge impact on the way Jotform operates. For the first several years of Jotform's existence, we'd been a small company that grew slowly. In 2015, we gained momentum, and were able to make major advances to our product on a whole new scale.
Relatively quick growth worked for us, but it wasn't a given. Here's how to do it without breaking what you've got.
Hire from within
No matter how many times you interview a candidate or how impressive their track record, hiring is always risky. A bad hire can cost your business money, but even worse, it can derail the company culture and sink morale.
Rather than spending time and resources on hiring from the outside, ask yourself whether the right fit for a role is already under your nose. Doing this has two distinct advantages: They already know the culture, and you already know what they have to offer.
If you don't think anyone is right for the role, it might be that your organization isn't offering enough training opportunities. Research shows that failing to invest in employee training can drive 40 percent of employees to quit within the first year. On the flipside, offering employees an array of training opportunities can create high performers who want to stick around.
Obviously, hiring from within requires having a pool of employees already. When you're making those initial hires, look for candidates with growth potential who you'd want to hire for bigger roles down the line. If you don't have faith that they'll be able to step up when the time comes, do you really want to hire them anyway?
Related: The 5 Crucial Phases of Building a Team
Have a clear vision
In order to hire employees who share your vision, you obviously have to understand your vision yourself. What purpose do you want your business to serve, and how do you want to get it there?
In addition to knowing your own vision, you have to make sure your team understands it as well. Getting everyone on the same page will make it easier to overcome obstacles and pain points, since ultimately, you all have the same goal. It's okay to be a bit of a broken record when it comes to communicating your vision, since people often need to hear things a few times before it really sticks.
Having a clear vision also allows you to tell the difference between opportunities and distractions. Do you want to develop a new product because it's trendy, or because it genuinely aligns with the path you want your business to take? Does entering a new market fit within your overall purpose? Asking yourself these questions before taking action will keep you on track and prevent you from chasing flights of fancy that ultimately just waste time and resources. Because, as Jim Collins, author of Good to Great and Built to Last puts it: "If you have more than three priorities, you don't have any."
Lastly, an easy-to-communicate vision is essential for attracting and retaining customers. Straightforward messaging makes it easy to understand what you're offering, and consistently delivering establishes trust and loyalty.
Related: 3 Reasons Building the Right Team is Mission Critical For Your Business
Be patient
Software developer Joel Spolsky, who was a major source of inspiration to me when I was starting Jotform, wrote in a 2001 blog that "Good software takes ten years — get used to it." In other words, writing quality software code does not happen overnight. It has to go through several iterations — likely over the course of a decade — before a product has genuinely reached its peak form.
The same goes for building a great team. Hiring just to beef up your numbers will inevitably do more harm than good. Picking your team with care may take longer in the short-term, but failing to do so can have costly effects in the future. Companies that hire indiscriminately often wind up with high turnover, either because employees see the role as temporary or because it turns out they aren't the right fit.
Hire with the idea that each team member should bring something unique to the table, and treat them as such. Not only should everyone understand the organization's mission, they also need to understand how their role specifically is contributing to it. When employees feel undervalued, they're unlikely to do their best work — and far more likely to leave. In one study, employees were asked why they quit their jobs, and nearly 80 percent cited lack of appreciation as their reason for quitting.
Building a great team is an art. It takes time, patience and probably a few missteps before you get it right. While there's no silver bullet for ensuring the process goes smoothly, you can dramatically increase your odds by making conscientious hires, investing in your team, and making sure that everyone is aligned with your company's culture and values.
Related: How to Build a Team That Embodies the Voice and Mission of Your Company
