How to replicate a successful team

Your business is going great. You have managed to pull together a team that delivers your services to your main clients and now you want to grow.

You are thinking of setting up a new office in another city, or putting together a second team in your existing office.

Here’s where it gets hard.

A successful team is usually led by a few great individuals who have worked out how to get on with each other, work as part of a larger team, and how to deliver to customers.

It is naïve to think that you can just hire a totally new group of people to replicate the same phenomenon.

This is the point where you need to start capturing some of the team’s operations in systems and processes. This shouldn’t be overdone. Work with them to recognise some of the key areas of their work processes which should be replicated.

You can also split the team and add new people to both the new teams. However, this is potentially disruptive to the existing team, and your cash flows if they start failing to deliver because of the disruptions.

You can also start rotating people through the successful team before moving them to the new team. This might involve taking the No. 2 or 3 from the original team into the new team as well. Also set up a mentoring/collaborative arrangement with the existing team.

You can hire in successful individuals or teams from other companies. This needs to be accompanied by ensuring that they really do know their field of expertise as well as the say they do. Also, you need to ensure that there is cultural and values compatibility otherwise toxic relationships may form with the existing team.

If you are setting up in a new city or town, you definitely need to get some of the new team to come to the existing operations and vice versa.  If you don’t do this then you can end up with a strange ‘us and them’ type culture that can become quite adversarial. You really need to send legal, marketing and finance types to spend time with the new office to keep all of you aligned.

Replicating a successful team is possible, just accept that it can take some time and quite a bit of effort.