Building x10 Teams; What Most Leaders Miss

The secret to building x10 teams is simple. But first, you have to understand the “Why."

Teams are more than the humans in the team.

Lots of gurus with MBAs talk about synergy and 1+1 that is somehow greater than 2. Like most cliches, there is a deep truth hidden behind the buzzwords and clickbait. Where most internet advice falls short is in the reality that the magic of synergy can only happens when all of the small details are right.

Strong teams are stronger than each of its members, and building such teams means investing in the tiny steps that compound.

Teams Are More Than People

Building a team means building humans and building the organization.

Every team is composed of two fundamentally different components: the group of humans in the team and the intangible quality that transcends the specific humans. It's this intangible quality that makes or breaks the x10 teams.

If you follow sports, you probably heard of a team that hired all A-player superstars that was a complete flop. Or you may have seen a team that has certain values that last decades, even when players come and go. You can run this thought experiment for your own team: imagine that an engineer on the team leaves and another joins. Imagine that this goes on until eventually every single human is different. Some things will still be the same. These things are the durable qualities that transcends the individuals.

The people on the team are important, but even the best people are not enough to make the best team. The quality of great teams is durable and long lasting, which means that once you build it, it will pay dividends over months and years. Investing in this quality is what separates good leaders from great leaders.

Building a team means investing in the intangible qualities that transcend the individuals on the team.

The Intangible Quality of a Team

The intangible qualities of a team can be learned and can be built.

What makes a team a team is three separate qualities: 1) Culture; 2) Process; and 3) Technology. By understanding these building blocks you can create a strong team that is stronger that its components.

Of all the three building blocks of a team—culture, process, and technology—culture is both the most challenging to build and the most resilient. The people that I worked with on the team with the strongest culture are exactly the people that I want to work with again, even after so many years. It was early in my career, but I had the privilege of seeing how intentional our department manager was in building the right culture. Building an empowering culture is possible. You can learn how to do it.

When you build a great team culture, it will stay strong when people come and go; it will even outlast you. It is exactly the day to day, the mundane and repetitive actions that build the team's culture. With intent and consistency, you can build teams that last.

This intention and consistency create that hard to describe, intangible quality that defines the best teams.

Team Meetings Build This Quality

The tool to build team culture is right there in front of you, the boring and recurring team meeting.

Team meetings should happen every week, or every other week at most. It is this consistency that gives you the perfect opportunity to build the right culture, one meeting at a time.

Approach team meetings with intent. Over the years, I iterated and experiments and tweaked dozens of different formats for the meeting. In my personal management career and in my more recent work with dozens of managers I found that there are consistent themes that work for all teams. Many managers struggle with structuring or prioritizing their team meetings because they don't understand the why behind the meeting. By focusing on building the team, on the why, you too can find the right how, or structure.

With intention, experimentation, and consistency, you can create high impact team meetings. I know because I've seen this play out in others, and I've never seen a manager regret the effort. Because great team meetings build teams that blow past expectations.

Team meeting are the best tool in your toolkit to build the right team culture, where the team really is greater than the sum of its part.

In Practice

Ready to turn these ideas into practice?

I am sharing the exact six-step team meeting process that builds a great culture and engineers love.

Join the live session on February 19th, 2025.