Start with Lunch
The simplest, most delicious way to become a great team
We’re in the post-adoption phase of the internet, and there’s an app for almost anything. It seems like everything is solved, except for the truly hard problems.
The history of technology companies has shown us that solving hard problems is only achievable through the work of great teams. Successful companies are synonymous with stories of the tightly knit, highly collaborative teams that drove their innovations.
This is not a fluke — the catalysts for human innovation are trending away from individual experts, and towards teams that find opportunity at the intersection of knowledge from different domains. The internet has intensified this trend, enabling teams to collaborate easily, build products cheaply, and distribute faster than they ever could before. Again and again, we’ve seen small teams tackle huge problems they never could have even ten years ago.
Teams are everything today, and being able to sustainably nurture strong ones is the number one competitive advantage for any company in the long term.
There’s a whole plethora of advice out there that talks about the best ways to do this, and the standard advice goes: hire well, drive alignment, have multi-disciplinary groups, then step back and let your people do what they do best. It’ll just happen.
Many of us have tried to implement this advice, only to fail to realize the potential of a team. What gives?
Popular team building advice basically says “if you build it, they will come.” — the truth is it won’t.
What I’ve observed is that effective team building has very little to do with actions or processes, and much more about the individuals we place in a team.
Inelegantly put: teams are made of people, and people follow other people, not processes or theories. Thus, great teams need leaders to follow.
As a young lad building pricing models at Kraft Foods, I was fascinated by the behaviour of the leaders in the company, and how it differed from others. One day, I received some of the most salient advice I ever would in my early career, when I asked a fast-rising director the question: “Everyone seems to follow your lead, how do you do it?”
His response was to become my go to rule for building any great team.
“Be the lunch guy. Be the guy who strolls around 5 minutes before lunch asking people if they want to eat. That person is a leader, that person is loved by all.”
Why lunch matters
Team building tactics miss out on a fundamental truth about great teams, which is that the people on these teams have meaningful relationships with each other.
This is the real reason why start-ups perform better on a pound for pound basis than larger companies. Start-up teams spend so much time together — working, laughing, crying, succeeding, and failing — that they can’t help but care about each other and establish a certain intimacy together.
It’s intimacy that enables a team be perform at a higher level.
With intimacy, meetings change from tip-toeing social etiquette to being honest, open, and passionate dialogues. Functional expertise is replaced by an all-hands-on-deck, everyone-pitches-in way of working, and when your team members win, it feels just as good (or better) than winning yourself.
Intimacy on a team drives effectiveness that is otherwise impossible to achieve… and there are few things more intimate than breaking bread together.
Be the Lunch Hero
Food is serious, don’t mess it up. Here’s how to feed a hungry team.
1. EVERYDAY, ask people to get together for lunch.
Every. Single. Day. Take it upon yourself to ensure that every single member of your team has been fed. It doesn’t matter if they brought their lunch, just asking matters, and shows you care.
Be diligent about this and over time, you’ll start to notice something amazing - you’ve become the trigger for people to feed themselves.
I can’t emphasize enough how powerful that is. People love being fed. And now people will love you.
2. Don’t eat at the office, go out.
I know, I know, you’re busy. So is your team.
A change of environment does wonders for decompressing and re-energizing the soul, so take advantage of it and enjoy the world together. It will also really help you accomplish the impossible ask I have of you next.
3. Don’t talk about work.
There’s enough time to talk about work, at work. Force the conversation to be about other things and soon, you’ll know who your team is dating, when their kids are due, and how their basketball game went last night.
This is relationship building 101.
4. If you get takeout, don’t take it back to your desk. Eat in the company cafeteria.
A little competition is always healthy for teams, so show the rest of the company what you’re eating.
This is a bit devious, but you can build team pride through evoking the jealousy of co-workers, as they salivate over your team’s delicious lunch adventures compared to their salami and cheese. Bringing heroic looking take-out back to the office usually catalyzes this conversation:
“Wow, that looks amazing, where’d you get it?”
To which you reply, “Oh this? We went to {this place}, it’s just over on Dundas st. We love that place, we go there every Wednesday.”
“Damn. That looks tasty… enjoy.”, which really means “I’m jealous. If I was on this awesome team, I’d also be having this awesome lunch.”
Ultimately, you need to care
Lunch is just a tactic to break down the social walls that we naturally put up at work. It’s these walls that lead teams to stay within their comfort zones and never push the boundaries to experiment, fail, and then ultimately innovate.
Genuinely knowing about and caring for the lives of the people on your team is the foundation for real collaboration. Remember, you spend the majority of your waking hours with these people — they deserve your care, and you deserve theirs.
Be the lunch hero, and you’ll be well on your way to a great team. The rest is simple, anyways: hire well, drive alignment, have multi-disciplinary groups, and step back to let your people do what they do best.
It’ll just happen.