3 extremely simple things we learned about our team

In a few topics I was asked to tell about our team. Namely, how it happened that we immediately knew how and what to do in business, and it seemed that we were not mistaken. So, we never supermen. We often make mistakes, often walk in rakes and often argue within the team.

First of all, we were lucky that almost the entire original team was with a mathematical education . Secondly, by the time of the start, each of us was a professional in his field and more than once received a forehead with a pen. Third, each of us was well aware of our weaknesses. This is probably the most important thing.
')
Recently, our network is 5 years old. The first two years were just an explosion: we started without a loan from one small shop and somehow suddenly became a Russian retail chain.

First simple thing

We never take to the core of the team of those who do not fit in the spirit. When a person thinks only about money, he will obviously work poorly - he is completely uninteresting to change the world. Well, not everyone is able to make our style of work - if possible, meetings no more than 15 minutes and no more than 5 people (we are not talking about the planning of senior sellers, for example - but about those where fundamental decisions are made); if you need to do something urgently - do it and do not grumble about your fixed work duties; on holidays - be sure to stand and trade in stores; you cant see - just say it, not corrected - say it again louder. And so on.

So, if a mega-professional comes to the same vacancy, with whom, on sensations, it will be difficult in a team, and a person with less knowledge, but burning with positive, the choice is unequivocal.

Second simple thing

I'll start from afar. Imagine that you are a medieval inventor who came up with a very useful thing - armor. For starters, you just hang a warrior on a chest with a sheet of something strong, such as metal or wood. Unfortunately, the enemies quickly realized that they had to hit the extremities, not in the middle of the enemy. Then you tried to take the same material and close the whole body of the fighter with solid plates. Your troops immediately began to complain that the thing turned out to be hellishly inconvenient, heavy, and still vulnerable to a bunch of different factors. The day before yesterday, for example, the lieutenant fell from his horse into a puddle and drowned. If you try to regain mobility again - armor will break through in many places. Plus, you need different coatings: from a crushing blow (with a load distribution over a large area), and from a cutting blade (with the ability to take a large load on a local section). As a result, "pumping" in one parameter immediately reduces the other. But the armor is needed. Then you remember TRIZ and make small durable plates that protect well in the place of a point impact, coolly distribute the load and at the same time remain as strong as cast metal armor.

Overlapping the plates partially solves the problem, but the armor becomes heavier (after all, you still have enough primitive materials). However, the truth is somewhere nearby. At about this moment, you understand one more thing: you can use not only the “target” plate and the adjacent ones, but also the rest of the armor to some extent, to distribute the impact force. Plus, you can not only take a blow, but also reflect it, that is, allow it to slip. So step by step you went to maximize the effectiveness of the armor with the available imperfect materials. Now you have to combine all these methods to get the best of the possible. Let's do it again: you have just invested a lot of intellectual work in order to achieve perfect results from obviously imperfect material.

What does this have to do with the topic of building a team, cap?

Very simple: the same principle works for team building. There are no ideal people, and in some degree or another you need to work with those who are. Fortunately, as it turned out, you don't need the perfect ones. It is enough to find such combinations of people in teams who are able, “overlapping” in the project, to use only their optimal sides. Returning to the armor, each new plate of armor covers the vulnerable areas of the previous one. Outside the armor can be seen only that part of the plate, which is designed to take a hit. That is, the strengths of the person in the team.

Our founder, Dima Kibkalo, told another important thing: there are people who seem to be ideal candidates - with knowledge in all sectors, with successes and so on. And there are those who have certain sides obviously strong, but there are obviously weak ones. Such people are much more reliable in practice, and they appreciate the opportunity to realize themselves. Usually, the employer sees the weak side - and decides not to get involved. We see strong and decide to get involved.

So, if you look at the team outside, it turns out that it has no weak points. At the same time, of course, each of its participants has weak spots (like all normal people).

Played in Jagged Alliance 2? Then you perfectly understand what I mean. One fighter runs poorly, but ideally trains the militia. A nurse who is able to shoot through her leg is steadily restoring the fighters. The sniper is not able to remove the stretch and quarrels with another fighter. But at the same time, all together act accurately and correctly.

How does it look in practice?

Here, for example, we have an excellent manager who can do everything except repetitive operations. Routine at some point begins to annoy him - like many of us, I suppose. That is, for example, deduct all the documents to the letter every day will not work. On the other hand, there is a person who also knows everything about our sphere, who, on the contrary, feels comfortable in the strict order and harmony of repetitive actions. It turns out a pair of the ideal administrator and leader, who together are much more efficient than separately. The leader does not sink into the routine and sees the strategic level, while the administrator plays tactics perfectly. This is a connected pair.

Could there be more ligaments? Yes maybe. In almost every department there are people who form such groups. As a rule, one administrator is needed to maintain current processes and control over trifles, one person with a bunch of ideas, then those who can translate all this into specific tasks and do it, and if the team is large, the one who is able to unite everyone and speak in the role of coordinator or translator.

How is teamwork organized?

In "Ender's game" tactical battles between earthlings and aliens are described. The aliens were driven by a single mind with monstrous efficiency. People developed a distributed command system, when each of the officers acted on their own level, and together they clustered under the guidance of Ender, who saw the strategy. That is, any task was detailed in the work up to the tactical level. This made it possible to gain superiority in tactics: where the enemy was forced to focus fully on one difficult part of the battle, the earthlings could create several situations at once where each individual commander conducted complex combinations. The newcomers were losing in the resource of attention because of one leader (the queen of the hive), the Terrans won because of their coordination system.

The fundamental understanding of how the process should be arranged comes at the moment when you move away from the idea of ​​doing everything yourself. Yes, it is very entertaining and interesting, but you can never single-handedly “raise” a large project. For example, if you are doing OS development, then the task of the coordinator is not to lead everyone by the hand, but to create an ecosystem and conditions for work.

Again. As a manager, you should not focus on your current tasks and (ideally) give direct orders. Your goal is to create an ecosystem in which everything is built correctly. It is necessary to learn to think by processes, and not by specific instructions. Putting a process is like good programming and working with architecture.

Third simple thing

We are not afraid to change something. I have often come across a common corporate trait - the fear of change. As one friend of mine told a psychologist during a conversation about changing the structure - only - of the report: “I now feel that he can have a bite to eat a scrap from stress now”. Large companies often produce a bunch of things that do not touch just because it is so accepted.

More principles

We have a very short hierarchy. The store employee can call the general and offer to change something. The answer will most likely be “do”.

We do not play democracy . If the discussion comes to a standstill - you have to go up a level and do as the manager says. Everything.

Employees have a certain leeway . This is the right to risk. If you solve your problems - you can try your projects within the company. The most vivid example is a girl who was once engaged in packaging and decided to try selling passport covers in a store. Six months later, she became the head of our direction of souvenirs and gifts "To love."

We have HR, but interviews are conducted specifically by department heads . The famous quest is missing: almost everyone is invited. The texts of the announcements of hiring people are also not written by HR

One more thing. One of the most important features of each team is the ability to transfer experience from one job site to another . When we go where we don’t understand, we begin to use our work from other areas - IT, producing and so on. As a result, as a rule, it turns out to get rid of the overhead of old methods that no longer work in the desired field. That is, we first do not know anything, and then, having collected information from a heap of sources and having thought, we get something close to the most efficient and customized model. Obviously, we don’t always cope on our own - sometimes we are looking for those who understand the coolest of all and attract as experts. We learn.

Stories

Before writing this topic, I traced the history of almost all of our employees who were in the team when we grew to 40 people. Among them were four large groups:

• About a quarter of them left the company and started their business. As a rule - successful. Or become tops in large companies. It is very nice to see such examples. Even nicer - when they appear strong partners.
• Approximately one sixth - reached a certain level of earnings and left Moscow. More often pulls to the forest, the sea and creativity.
• About one-sixth more — they just work elsewhere with a boost.
• The rest (about 40%) work for us, but at the same time they have significantly increased in terms of development. Many - twice, for example, not from the seller to the senior point, but, for example, from the seller to the head of the direction or from the operator to the head of the online store.

Here are some illustrations:

• Stas Evmenchik - completely plaguey specialist in the production of advertising. Can find anything, anywhere and in any way. He started as a content manager, started helping with advertising, then began to coordinate the movement of everything over the network and gained unreal experience. Now he has his own business and a house somewhere near Krasnodar.
• General Andrei Sitarsky - at first he was attracted as an expert, searched for premises and opened stores. We played with him, he liked it. Stayed, caught on.
• Retail chain manager Masha Tankova was at first a seller, then she became a senior, then she ran a Moscow retail, then she began to lead the whole. Human work.
• In the development of games there is Seryoga Skoropupov: he was first a line collector, then a storekeeper in the department of events, now he is in charge of production.
• Galya Ivannikova: I started with the “master of all trades” in the office, was engaged in content, became the head of the advertising department, then went on a long vacation, returned - became an art director in production. I remember how we cursed with her wildly and argued over trifles like Christmas tree quotes around the English word in the Russian text, and then some underground trash from the life of scavengers watched the Lviv on the train. Galya has now left for her native city and is doing something of her own.

The most enchanting story - this is probably how we somehow made leaflets about “come to work with us”. On the leaflet it was written that if this thing came into your hands, you can directly come and talk. The fact is that they were distributed by sellers only to those who personally liked them - they were put into the bag. Already at home, the man opened and saw such a surprise.

So, came one crazy girl. She was met at the entrance by a commercial director and asked:
- What is your position?
- I dont know!
- Why did you come then?
- Well, I'm fun and cool, and I have a lot of ideas. Everything is written in a leaflet! .. I also have a birthday today. So I brought a cake, and, naturally, pulls out a cake. Then, in the office, learning of the correct game of Mafia began, and Olya stayed with us. And then she wrote in a blog that on this birthday she found the job of her dreams.

PS For a long time I didn’t want to write this topic, because I somehow give it away with egoism. But promised. I hope you were interested and at least a little useful)