The Leadership House

CHAPTER 6WHAT MAKES A STRONG TEAM

“The way a team plays as a whole determines its success. You may have the greatest bunch of individual stars in the world, but if they don't play together, the club won't be worth a dime.”

—Babe Ruth

By this point, over an hour had passed since Sophia and Felix first became trapped in the ancient elevator with its faulty alarm system. But they were enjoying talking shop so much that they were beginning to lose track of time, and neither of them minded. Felix was especially enthusiastic; he was soaking up all of Sophia's leadership knowledge, and she was just as eager to share it with him.

“As you said, Felix, to build a strong team, you must hire strong talent and give them the right roles. At least, this is the starting point. Tell me about your team!”

“Okay. Let's start with Mark. Mark is not only my co‐founder but also our Chief Operating Officer. We went to university together. Like me, he studied business administration and was awarded a Master of Business Administration degree. We both focused on entrepreneurship and took exactly the same courses. As the two of us worked as bartenders in the evenings, we became aware of how burdensome cash‐forecasting was for bar and restaurant managers. And we also realized that scheduling was difficult and took the managers more time than it should. During a business model generation workshop we attended at university, we came up with the business idea of building software that would solve these problems. ...