#LifeatMest3 — Lessons from Mest Alumni On Finding the Right Team
Hiya, welcome to #LifeatMest, a casual review of the lessons, insights, activities, and interesting conversations as an #Entrepreneur in Training at Meltwater School of Technology (MEST).
Omo!
A term that best describes my surprise at how complicated teams can be. Last week we listened to MEST Alumni share their experience, forming and building teams for various projects at MEST. It all seemed planned to have 4 alumni visit us at different times but it wasn’t. They all came at different times, at the Nile House & at MEST Campus.
Here at MEST, you will always work with people, from random peer-to-peer made by fellows to capstone team members you hand-pick yourself, you will always be working with people, it is astonishing!
Based on this model, it is possible I would have worked with almost everyone in my cohort. knowing this, you can see the significance of learning how to work better with people, this is a skill we would continue refining throughout our time here.
Customizing the Right Team
“How do you form the right team?”
According to Noam Wasserman, 65% of startup failures are due to irreconcilable team friction, when a team’s dynamics are tested under intense pressure. At MEST, pressure is what we eat for breakfast, with only a few weeks to our first capstone delivery, everyone is trying to set a good first impression on Pitch day.
So far, we’ve simply been looking at people we get along with and
There are so many ways to form a team, typically we look out for our friends, and the people we get along with, but as Emily, our faculty director has told us, sometimes, the people you think you’d never get along with will be the best contributors to your team, forming a team is one thing, learning to work with your teammates is another skill, let's explore some methods for working together.
Working Together as a Team
Our Alumni shared thrilling stories of their time here at MEST, their victories, their low points, and things they could have done better. Lawrence Ayi, co-founder of Heny told us how using the DiSC Method helped his team hack their team dynamics
Team Dynamics by Personality
The DiSC profile is a personality test that calculates your working style based on your everyday personality. you can either fall into these 4 parts; D — dominant, i — Influence, S- Steadiness, or C- compliance. He shared how his team used their personality type to assign roles to each other.
Both co-founders of Heny were in the “influence category” they were the fun guys, the ones everyone came to when they wanted to get a party started. with both leaders having an influential personalities, it was hard to determine a speaker for their pitches.
Having 2 dominant people could make it difficult for decisions to be made, having 3 i-personalities could make every meeting look like a party, and sometimes it could be hard to balance this out.
Team Dynamics by Skills
Creating your team dynamics based on skills means assigning tasks to the people who have the ability to get the job done. Need to design a prototype, give it to your design guy, need to figure out your financial model, then assign it to the business owner. I'm sure you can already see the flaw in this method;
“what if there’s no one with the required skill to complete a task”
What would you do if you have no one with the skill to get a task done? Another unnoticeable flaw here is that we would assign certain tasks to certain people while ignoring others.
You may give all your design tasks to a single designer when there’s someone in the team who would love to improve their design skills and get the job done.
Team Dynamics by Role
When Andrew Miracle, the founder of Techmie visited Nile House over the weekend, he mentioned a tech team must have people filling up these 3 key roles;
COO — the operations role, that manages all the moving part of the team
CTO — the technical role, that ensures the product functions at every point
CMO — the marketing role, that ensures the team has publicity & partners
Of course, there are many variations to this, but there still has to be someone talking to customers, someone ensuring the financial projections are right, someone testing the product, and someone designing the brand, there are so many moving parts of a startup. It’s easy to get lost in roles and titles and miss out on other things that need to be done.
Team Dynamics by Activities
“Explore everything and all the courses you learn and then master one, so you can be an asset to your team” — Lucky Dogbey
A great way for teams to work together is by assigning tasks and responsibilities based on what is to be done. If all that needs to be done this week is market research, each team member must do a portion of market research.
If this week, our assigned task is market research, then everyone is going out there to collect data. This is a great way to gather a lot of insights at the beginning of a project if you don't want to be siloed into one way of thinking. It could also be a great way to swap roles, the usual pitcher could design and allow others to pitch, next week roles might be reversed, that way everyone is learning and doing something new.
Current Hacks: Current Hacks are simple and clever tips I use in accomplishing tasks & goals more easily and efficiently
Therapy
It took me a while to admit that I needed help, but once I admitted to myself that there must be a reason for my constant mood swings and lethargy, I was able to seek help.
At MEST, we can book weekly slots with a wellness expert, Billie Richardson. This week was the first time I utilized this, it was so heartwarming, and I felt a lot better after. Your emotional health is important, if you’re having constant anxiety or intense discomfort, seek help.
Use Time Slots
After every class, we have short time slots. one hour here, one hour there that seems to add up. It is easier to wait till you have 3 hours of free time to work, but what if you never get that time? making use of these short time capsules to practice and learn helps me get a lot of things done, little by little.
Do it as it is Done
Once a class is over, you could forget about it or you could do it as it is done. Read about it as the class is over. A simple way to retain anything learned is to practice as soon as you learn. If you learn something new, try repeating it until you it sticks
Extra Hype: Extra Hype is non-related school stuff that I do within the week, they are fun, interesting, and memorable
- Experiencing the Nightlight Afrikiko
- Attending Untethered GH: Listening to experts teach Blockchain Technology
- Visiting Accra Mall
Over to you….have you worked with a diverse team? How did you manage your team dynamics, which method worked best for you? If you love this article, clap on this and comment on this blog
