23% of failed startups did so because they did not have the right team build and working together quick enough. This means that despite a great idea, market demand, and funding, your team can still be the reason your product fails. Ensuring there are these different roles in your team is key to the survive and growth of your company.
Even older companies need to check in and make sure the important roles are functioning at their best and have the tools they need to continue to evolve and improve.
Here are the different roles that are important to your team’s success and how they can work better:
The Big Picture Strategists:
Depending on how big your team is, there may be one of these or many of your team members may take on this role at various times. Either way, having people on your team who are thinking at a macro level at all times helps to align and keep direction with the smaller, day to day work. Your team always needs trajectory. Every task your team performs should clearly and directly support long term goals so you are as efficient with time and money as possible. If you’re a startup, this is even more imperative. Keeping a big picture mindset alive throughout your entire team is key and having a team player whose job is that keeps everyone looking ahead. The biggest role of that team member is having consistent connection with all parts of the company to keep everyone aligned and engaged toward a common goal.
Using a collaboration tool like Hibox with company chat functionality, this leader can instantly connect with different departments via chat as well as communicate with the company as a whole from a public chat stream. With a central place online for communication everyone is a part of it, it’s easy to unite towards common goals and lead consistently, no matter where your team is.
Project Managers – The Planners:
In order to take big picture ideas and turn them into a reality, your team needs a few planners. Planners are organized by nature and know how to take big goals and break them down into trackable, attainable tasks. They know how to delegate these tasks to those on their team that are most capable so that things get moving quickly and smoothly. Planners are detail oriented where other types of team members may not be, like Big Picture Strategists, for example. They are able to see how all the smaller pieces fit together to move the team towards achieving bigger, long term goals. They are in charge of making sure that what needs to happen day in and day out is taken care of in an organized way. Without this role, the big ideas the rest of your team is eager to see happen are executed step by step.
Planners need proper organization functionality and fluid connection with all team members to do their job. In Hibox, planners can organize chat into separate streams to keep conversation organized and focused. They can create tasks in these streams and assign them with due dates and subtasks to break down goals into smaller, more attainable tasks. Planners can use the task calendar view to plan long in advance and ensure everyone is working together to beat deadlines. Planners can see how many tasks team members have to effectively assign and not overload team members. Descriptions and comments can be added to tasks along with files from Dropbox and Google Drive to keep work organized and intuitive. Tools like this make planners jobs much easier.
Marketing and design – The Creatives:
For any company looking to stay on the cutting edge, your creatives are your driving forces of new ideas that propel your company forward ahead of competition. Fostering collaboration and creativity is key to making sure fresh ideas are churning out of your talented team. Creatives are often hyper independent but are fueled by differing opinions and discussion. They are able to see new possibilities within upcoming trends and opportunities in problems and roadblocks. Creatives can work in various departments with various skill sets. Your creatives may be content creators, designers, developers, etc. Making sure there is way for collaboration and connection between them will allow your creative to bring ideas to life within your company easily. Creatives are interesting because they need freedom to work on their own but definitely benefit from collaborative time and structure.
Within a collaboration platform like Hibox, creatives have multiple tools that help them both organize their creativity and collaborate with other creatives easily. Team chat is ideal for bouncing back and forth quick ideas and thoughts that normally get lost in email threads. Your team can use video conferencing within the platform to brainstorm together no matter where they are. They can share files and images from Dropbox, Google Drive, and Box through chat streams to keep all work iterations in one place. With both fluid communication and organization tools, Hibox is a creative-friendly collaboration tool for creative teams.
Sales: External communicators:
Any company is technically in the business of sales. Every company has a sales team and oftentimes the majority of the company is a big part of sales, even if indirectly. Your team likely has team members who are more “outward facing” and deal with representing your company externally than others. It’s important that these team members are prepared, organized, and supported to put on a united front in selling your company. Organization and planning in sales is key; not just charisma! Especially if your sales team is more than a handful of people, you have to have army-like organization and united strategy to perform your best, even if most of the work is beyond company communications. Team members who work in sales have to spend a tremendous amount of time researching and learning about prospects as well as check in and collaborate with other sales members to align strategy and make sure that leads are handled cohesively.
Chat streams in Hibox dedicated to the sales team and leads are a great way for sales team members to organize themselves in one cohesive space as they work independently. Your team can create tasks for each lead and assign follow ups to members. For bigger leads, your sales team can use a separate stream where updates can be shared, marketing materials can be shared, and any progress made can be discussed so everyone is on the same page. Additionally, there is a feature to integrate your clients’ incoming emails into our Hibox sales team stream, so everyone is up to date realtime. Organization and intuitive communication is key for sales teams’ success.
With these roles on your team well defined, aligned, and functioning well together, your team can tackle problems and execute new ideas easily and quickly so your company not only survives but thrives. Sometimes it’s good to take a step back and make sure your team is on track to success. For the best way for your team to collaborate and organize together, try Hibox for free today.
