Find Your Fit

If you are starting this module it means you have successfully:

• Set a goal
• Created your strategic roadmap
• Mapped out your key processes
• Identified your team roles

Now it's time to bring the number sheets into the mix. I know many innovators get thrown back by numbers sheets. But it's the best way to make sure you go out and recruit the right people for your team.

Remember the three roles that interact when building a team? Team Lead, Management, and Recruitment. Well, now it’s time to think about your team from the Management and Recruitment perspectives. ‍

Management perspective
As a manager, you tend to have three forces always pulling at you in different directions:‍

• ‍Pace: how many hours do you estimate your team needs to create deliverables.‍
• Time: how many months do you have to reach your goal.‍
• Budget: how much money do you have to hire the talent you need on your team.
  

To find your team-challenge fit, you have to understand how each of these forces influences the others. I will show you a tool that will help you get a better sense of how increasing or decreasing your pace, time, or budget will effect each other. You can use it to find the right balance between the time you have to reach your goal, the size of your team, and the budget you have available.

Once you have the right balance of your team’s desired pace, available time, and budget, it's time to look at your team from a recruitment perspective.‍

Recruitment perspective
As a recruiter, you need to take the overview of roles the team needs, what they need to deliver, and at what pace, and turn it into a Team Wishlist:

• Team size: how many team members do you need?
• Team availability: how often is each team member needed (full-time versus part-time)?
• Team member skills: what skills should each team member have?
  

Ideally, you're able to hire all the team members on your Team Wishlist. But, if you're not able to hire the team you want, you have to double-check your team-challenge fit and decide what to adjust.

You want to check that the team you can put together can maintain the delivery pace for all the deliverables they need to create.  If it does, amazing. You're ready to start assembling your team. If it doesn’t, you need to find more budget, increase the challenge time frame, or adjust your business challenge.

In this module I will guide you through two exercises:

1. Balance your team & budget
2. Prioritize your team wishlist

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Balance Your Time & Budget

It's hard to make team design decisions when you don't have a clear sense of what you can do with the time and budget you have available.

In this module, you will learn how to create a Time & Budget sheet that will help you find your team-challenge fit. The sheet will help you decide:

1. Team size: the total size of your team.
2. Team budget: how much money will you need to hire your team.
   

It will help you determine what budget you will need to build a team that can handle your business challenge.

I know that many innovation team leads get thrown back by numbers. But stay with me as we go through the sheet. I promise that you'll be glad about the result once you get through it.

Start by filling in the fixed variables from your Workstream Pace sheet:

1. Deliverables: write all deliverables you identified in your workstreams as the row headers.
2. Team roles: write all the team roles you identified within your workstreams as the column headers.

Next, fill in the delivery targets from your Workstream Pace sheet:

1. Hours per deliverable: write the hours each team role contributes to a deliverable under each ‘Hrs / #’ column.

Last, fill in the total number of deliverables, team role salary, and timeframe:

1. Amount of deliverables: write the total number of deliverables you will need the team to create in the column next to each deliverable name.
2. Team role salary: write the hourly salary rate for each team role in the row under each team role name.
3. Timeframe: write the number of months you have to reach your goal on the top left corner of the sheet.
   

Once you finish these steps, you will have an estimate of two things. One, the total number of hours you need from each role. And two, the budget you will need per month to hire a team that can maintain your desired delivery pace.

Ideally, you have the time and budget to tackle your challenge. But, if you don’t, you can adjust the different variables until you find your fit:

• Amount of deliverables: adjust the number of deliverables your team needs to produce.
• Team role salary: adjust the hourly salary rate for a given team role.
• Timeline: adjust the number of months you have to reach your goal.
  

You might be tempted to change the delivery pace of a deliverable. But if you filled in the Workstream Pace sheet correctly, these are realistic targets, and making them more optimistic will either place unnecessary pressure on your team or set a pace that is not reachable. Either way, you risk building your team based on an unrealistic scenario. So keep these values fixed, unless you find a good reason to adjust them.

When you are done playing with the variables, you should have found the right balance between:

• Timeframe: number of months to create the deliverables
• Full-Time Employees: number of members you need on your team
• Budget: amount of money you need to hire your team
  

And that's it. You officially have all the elements that make up your Team Challenge Fit.

In the last exercise, we will look at your team from the recruitment perspective and create your Team Wishlist.