Maaike Doyer advises early-stage founders to build multidisciplinary teams and use two tools: a shared vision as a horizon point, and a team-charter bus metaphor to define roles, values, and goals. Leadership means clearing obstacles, not micromanaging.
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I think most of you are right, is it single person team right now? Yes. No? Yes, no? No. Most of you? Yeah. And some have more people back home or, yeah? Okay, good to know where you are, right? Because I mean, the whole team is so important, right? I mean, the don't fly solo in the end, that's, it's so crucial, especially Especially I think in this phase where you are right now. And because I believe, if I am correct, a lot of you are working on an idea like let's figure out whether or not this can turn into a company. Some of you might be a couple of stages ahead already. And then of course you're gonna pitch in a couple of weeks. That's correct, huh? Yes. Okay. And it's the don't fly solo. Yes, of course, you mean you don't have any money because you don't have any customers yet. Nice, Maike, but I cannot hire new employees. That's because you don't have any, any money yet in the company. But still, try to collect as many people as possible around you that have a look with you at your ideas, whether it's here, friends within the university, whether it's mentors, whether it's just some friends that you'd go to the bar with, or friends at home. Try to involve as many people and try to get as many perspectives as you can because it's crucial in this phase of the exploration that most of you are in. And so don't fly solo. And when you start to build a team, it's all about this multidisciplinary team, of course. I mean, you all have your superhero powers, what I noticed as well on the CVs. And you need to have that mixture of the diverse powers, right? It's important. I mean, connecting it to a large company already, if we do strategy with an organization, with a large organization, Typically, they say, okay, let's do some workshops with the management team, right? And I said, no, let's not do it with just the management team because they're always in their ivory tower behind their computer, right? They never speak with customers anymore. I wanna have the people in the room that actually have day-to-day contact with the customer. Like for example, we did for a hospital. We had the board of directors in there, we had a couple of doctors in there, a whole variety. We also had the lady at the reception in our strategy workshops. And guess who came up with the most brilliant idea? The lady at the reception. The lady at the reception, right? And if you— so that's why this, this diverse team is so important. I also always say get someone in from finance, for example, because finance is usually never involved if it comes to creativity and new ideas, right? Because they're typical risk-averse people. Finance people in general are risk-averse people. And because that's their job, right? They need to watch the money, that's their job. But it's good to have all those different perspectives in a team, to get that in and to make sure you're in a good environment where everybody can have their own opinion because that's very important. So that about the team. And when you have this team, having this shared vision is crucial. Really understanding what the direction is that you're going. This picture, I mean, it shows like vision. We want to go there. The thing I do not like about this picture is that it looks like a straight road, and I think you all know it's never a straight road. But it's very important to have that point out there at the horizon, like that's where I want to go to. And you just start to travel, you probably will deviate and we'll do some detours, or maybe you even go back a little bit, right? You'll go all over the place, and that's fine as long as you all agree and know That's the moment where we want to, that's where we want to go to. And that's crucial as well in the beginning of an organization. Have you done some vision exercises as well for your own company? Like where do you want to go? Yes. Great. Important. And this is one of my favorite quotes from one of my customers, do the dishes. What he said, he's in charge here in San Francisco actually. It's a large European company. They have an innovation hub here in San Francisco. It's a car manufacturer. And he said, well, what's really important, once you have that shared vision, so every— you have this great team of wonderful people all together, you have this shared vision, I'll step out. I'm gonna do the dishes. I'm gonna make sure everything around them is organized and clean, right? That's what he means with doing the dishes. I'll make sure everything they need is there. If they need food, they can just take it, and they can do their job. I trust them. I trust them in doing the job because we all have the same vision. That's what the agreement is about, and let them figure them out. I, as a leader, don't need to be involved in every little step and every little detail. I will do the dishes so that they can do their work, right? I love this quote. So that's, I was thinking especially what you just said about if we're gonna go like in really big large companies, I think this is an important one to remember, do the dishes. and let your team do the work, as long as you have the shared vision. That's your job in the beginning, make sure we all share the same vision, then back off and do the dishes. Nice, right? Yeah. So, so that's a little bit about, about the team. This is a sneak preview, by the way, of our new book. So I couldn't print it yet, was not allowed to yet because it's not published, and then you get into problems with the producer, the publisher. But this is a charter that you can use for your team. Where, I mean, the bus, that's the company, right? That's the people within the company, and then there's a driver. So who is that driver in the bus? It's probably you, right? Because you're the one that's sort of driving out there. So who do you gather in your bus? Who's all out there? Who are all those different team members? There's always trouble, right? There's always trouble on the road. What if shit hits the fan, as we'd like to say? So, so what, what is that kind of trouble that you can actually expect on the road? And what are in general the expectations from the team? What is it that the team expects from each other and what are the values attached to that? It's important to understand with your team what do we really believe in and what makes our company so, so important. What are the obstacles? Because obstacles will definitely be on your road. Can we already identify some of the known obstacles? And where do we get our energy? It's also a very important one, the energy sources, because the bus only drives if you fuel it with energy. And so how do we get that energy in our team? And the goal, well, which is that shared vision, where do we actually wanna go to? And so this is a bit of a summary of the slides here up front. How can you actually, how can you actually use that? And this is one of those many tools that will be in the book because What it is with those tools, none of them is a holy grail, right? None of them will make your company succeed, none of them. But it's all about structuring the right strategic conversation at the right moment.
