Teams Are Built With Passion

We’ve been working on the release of a new project for longer than I can remember anymore. It’s hard sleeping at nights thinking about just how much needs to be done and worst working through the days hoping something new will be ready soon.

This secret project is probably the biggest thing I’ve ever challenged myself with (and I’ve dreamed up some doozies in my time). It all started 2+ years ago and I’ve been refactoring those ideas for the entire time. I’ve walked down many pathways, written many versions and revisions, and had more than my share of false starts. Perhaps the light at the end of this tunnel is my wonderful team.

Building a team is really an organic experience. Putting a bunch of bright people together in a room is certainly no recipe for success, though it isn’t that bad either. When I was in college stocking up on sociology goodies, one of the more interesting concepts was that of limerance. If you don’t know, it’s describes that initial period in new relationships where you’re floating on cloud 9 and have no worries in the world. Of course, we all know what generally happens to that - it comes crashing down.

The lesson to be learned here, of course, is that while it’s easy to fall in love with individuals, the more important part is their love of the team. When I first assembled the team I am working with, I was quite intentional to over-populate. It’s always been my experience that despite the inital love affair with a project, for some people there’s not much time for limerance. Just like relationships, team members can quickly fall out of love too.

While I was in Utah last week, Duane and I had plenty of time to talk about all sorts of things. One conversation that I remember was regarding the team members. I told Duane I only want to work with people that have passion for what we’re doing, nothing less would do. Why? Without passion, it’s just a paycheck. And in a startup, sometimes paychecks are hard to come by.

People with passion, they’ll hold out as long as possible, people on the job take the money and run. The people I am working with, I know they enjoy what we’re building. Can you say the same for your team? How do you keep passion levels up?