Doing work: team

[This is part of a leadership series where I share small snippets about team building and success]

This year, I’ve been learning to build a team—a process that’s ironic because I’ve largely been working solo. But working alone has given me the space to reflect on what makes teams thrive.

Throughout my journey, I’ve been fortunate to grow in rooms filled with talented people. There’s a lot of discourse around “being the least experienced person in the room,” but that can’t be the only formula. If we only focus on assembling so-called A-players, how do we nurture the next generation of 10x achievers? How do we balance betting on potential with relying on proven talent? Startups, especially, often lack the resources to churn through top hires without fostering growth internally.

These questions have led me to define values that guide who I work with. The first is eccentricism—a love for out-of-the-box thinking. I thrive on unconventional ideas and bold actions. Conformity, on the other hand, drains my energy. In my experience, nothing kills momentum like a teammate who overplays the devil’s advocate role to the point of becoming the devil of the project. Instead, I value those who are willing to take risks, fail fast, and learn faster.

Of course, this isn’t a blanket rule. In some contexts, excessive innovation can be counterproductive. But in creative pursuits, a team of eccentrics often achieves the extraordinary.

Cold showers

During October, I decided to run a random experiment and stick to taking nothing but cold showers, regardless of the weather. Why would anyone do this? The idea was shared with me by my brother, who went through a month-long experience of taking showers at 5 a.m. at the advice of his therapist. I was intrigued by this (I love body hacking and will try most things at least once!) so I decided to challenge myself to see if there was any merit. It also just boiled down to challenging myself to get outside my comfort zone and see if I could improve my performance and health by living differently! My findings:

Finishing

I want to share an observation that I made and have wanted to put into words for a while. A lot of times we talk about starting something, going for our dreams, never quitting or (eventually) quitting without paying attention to the process of executing. I think in-between start and result, process is something that needs a lot of thought, especially the means to create a long streak of consistent results or action.

Uses

My workspace is a constant work in progress. I believe designing a workspace is an exercise in setting the tone and values of your work. We all design our workspaces, either intentionally or otherwise. Of late though, I have been making calculated moves to eliminate things that don’t work well and replace with stuff that sets an ambience that inspires creativity. My elimination process has evolved to identifying a weakness, deep diving into potential fixes, then buying something with a money-back guarantee, and friendly return policy (pro-tip). My list is not a recommendation list, but a collection of things that work very well for me, YMMV. Here we go:

I changed jobs, again!

Last year was a busy and also difficult year for most people. I hadn’t realized how hard it hit me until someone pointed out that I had written just one blog post the whole year! Of couse with Covid and major shifts in how people could socialize and work together, everything was so unpredictable. The one thing that I was still very happy about though, was the work I was doing over at JaSure. Since the beginning, we had been a remote company so we didn’t suffer in terms of culture when work moved to Zoom and people’s homes. Actually, I have worked remotely for close to 5/6 years now so it’s fair to say remote is ALL I know at this point.