How to Build the Perfect Team

Imagine you’ve decided to make a big, delicious pot of soup. You decide on the type, what flavors you want the soup to have, and what you’ll need to make it just the way you like it. You go to the store with your recipe in hand and pick the very best ingredients to make your soup extra tasty. Once you’re back in your kitchen you spend hours dicing your veggies to the perfect size, cooking the best stock for your broth, and mixing everything together for the perfect flavor.

But now that all of your perfectly selected ingredients are simmering in the pot your job still isn’t over! You taste the soup every so often, making sure it is cooking together the way you planned. Sometimes, you take a taste and it doesn’t seem right, so you stir things up and make sure nothings settling.

This exercise isn’t just to make you hungry, it’s to remind you of the simplest way to build your workforce! That’s right — building the perfect team is as simple as making a pot of soup.

It is best to decide what type of soup you’re making before you get the ingredients; a team of workers is no different! Before you start hiring, decide what you want the team to accomplish, what type of culture do you want the team to have, what personalities can help you build that culture, what skillsets will make the team more successful?

Once you’ve determined what you need, you can get to hiring armed with your ‘ingredient’ list. You can get basic ingredients that simply fill the pot, or you can get high quality ingredients that will enhance your soup’s flavor. Apply the same idea to your hiring! Sure, you can hire any team member that will fill the empty chair, or you can find the perfect fit for your recipe for success.

So you have a plan, and you have your ingredients. But imagine that you dip your spoon into the bowl and you get nothing but broth; you peak into the pot and notice a whole chicken, whole vegetables and un-chopped herbs. Maybe you can consider the contents of the pot soup, but without proper preparation, the flavors won’t work together. Think of training your new employees the same way; consider their training the ‘prep’ for you soup.

Of course, once all of the ingredients are in the pot your job is not quite done. Good soup needs time to simmer, it needs to be stirred and tasted and adjusted as it cooks. Any good manager knows that this is a vital part of managing your team as well! It is important to keep a pulse on your team, check in, ensure things are still working the way you originally planned. Sometimes we need to stir things up to keep the flavor just right — the workplace needs that too!

Unfortunately, despite our best efforts, sometimes the soup goes bad. You take a taste and realize it is nothing like the soup you planned for. All is not lost! Sure, you can toss out the whole pot and start from scratch. But what about the awesome ingredients that did work? In the case of your team, it is typically better to pick out the bad ingredients. Maybe that means separating everything to identify where things went sour, then mixing things back up again.

And sometimes, you just need to add a little extra kick to get the soup just right. Something to enhance your ingredients to be the best they can be. In the kitchen, it could be your family’s secret spice blend; on your workforce, it could be gamification!