Phil Sugar left a great comment on last week's MBA Mondays about Turning Your Team:
Do not think that the reason you aren't scaling is because you need to bring in outside management. That will kill a team.
This is the biggest worry I have because some will read this and think, I'm not growing what I need to do is turn the team, and that is just wrong.
If you aren't growing, its likely to be a product problem, a strategy problem, or a competition problem. I have rarely seen a management team problem be the reason for lack of growth.
Company building is not this simple, but I do like to think about it terms of two stages. Getting the product right and customers/users scaling. Then scaling the company and the team. If you aren't doing the first, you mostly don't need to worry about the second. There are occasional team issues in the first stage you need to deal with but they aren't the big thing you need to focus on. The big thing you need ot to focus on is the product and its fit with the market.
These issues can play themselves out again when the company is larger. Companies can lose their way. Or their product lineup can get stale. Or competition can enter the market and change the dynamics for users or buyers. Once again, you need to focus in on getting the product right and making sure that it is providing value to customers/users.
In all of these situations, it is tempting to think the issue is the team and that turning the team will fix the problems. That is exactly why Phil left the comment he did. Team issues are largely scaling issues not growth issues. And it's critical to be able to recognize which is which because fixing the wrong problem can be devastating to a company.
