Building a team
From the beginning, I knew that if my vision were to have the impact I wanted and the process to be exciting that I had to build a team. There were many struggles along the way that taught me how to make a team strong.
1. Honestly assess what you and those around you need but are bad at and whenever possible, appoint people who are better than you to do them.
2. Invest in enthusiasm; even when you are unsure of the idea behind it. Doing so uncovers hidden assumptions you have been making and further commits your team to you. Those who work because they are excited often perform better than those who work for money or just experience.
3. Weed out weak players. When someones strength turns out to be weak - remove them completely. A weak player brings the entire team down.
8person executive team
45person extended team
"Invest in enthusiasm; even when you are unsure of the idea behind it. Doing so uncovers hidden assumptions you have been making and further commits your team to you."
Managing creativity (on time and under budget)
The first year was at best a successful disaster. Our target demographic turned out and had a good time but almost nothing went as planned. I was determined it wouldn't happen again. So, I implemented the software Project Pier and Basecamp to communicate and allocate objectives to my team. Shortly thereafter, I dug into Merlin - producing gantt charts and monitoring resource utilization so that no task was missed.
