Managing Startup Teams // BUSINESS 424

Tuesday, March 6th from 6:00 - 7:30 pm

Pick a winner for this smackdown: the great team with an ok business plan vs. the mediocre team with a bullet-proof idea. No contest: a great team is going to have a serious advantage.

Getting a group of people to act as a team requires general management and leadership skills. Like other complex behavior – mastering a martial art, playing a musical instrument, or excelling at a sport – you learn as you practice.

These course modules will explore best practices for managing and leading people at work, and the relationship between culture and technique. Our discussion will be grounded in practical methods that you can begin to implement now, and continue to practice as you refine your level of skill.

Building Culture: A Management Advantage (March 6, 2012)
As a new company goes from a small, tight team to a larger group, it doesn’t take long to see that you can’t scale people. It’s no longer possible for anyone – or everyone – to weigh in on every single decision. Culture is infinitely scalable. When implemented with intention, culture serves as a north star that helps guide good decision-making and effective management.

We’ll talk about values, mission and intention as a basis for organizational culture, and how to begin building them into your management style and practices.

You’ll leave understanding the benefits of putting effort into consciously and actively developing your culture, and a set of action steps and resources that will help you to begin to build your organization’s culture.

Incentives, Motivation, and Goals: Basics of Managing Individual and Team Performance (March 13, 2012)
Getting things done at work requires clear communication about goals, checkpoints to ensure progress and remove roadblocks, and methods to measure and recognize success. As an organization grows and matures, transparency and clarity around goals can help you to create order from chaos.

We’ll discuss how to structure goals in alignment with overall objectives, and characteristics of the systems and processes that managers can use to manage individuals and teams, as well as to measure results.

You’ll leave with a practical understanding of the basics of managing people and performance, as well as a sample template for managing individual performance.

Anne Libby is the founder of Anne Libby Management Consulting LLC, where she works with leaders, founders, and business owners to build excellent general management practices, skills and knowledge into their firms. She studied Finance and Entrepreneurship at Wharton (MBA) and Behavioral Science at the University of Chicago (AB). Find Anne on Twitter @annelibby, and elsewhere online. She loves to discuss meditation, the fiber arts, and finding management wisdom in pop culture.

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