Every Monday morning at Nest, that’s how my management meetings started: Who are the great people we want to hire? Are we making our hiring goals or retention metrics? If not, what’s the problem? What are the roadblocks? And how is the team doing? What issues do people have? How are performance reviews going? Who needs a bonus? How are we going to celebrate these accomplishments so the team feels valued? And, most importantly, are people leaving? Why? How are we going to make this job more meaningful and fulfilling and exciting than anything else out there? How are we going to help our people grow?

Only after we got through this important subject could we move on to anything else—like what the hell we were building.

The managers on the team saw it was important to me, so that’s how they started structuring their weekly meetings with their teams. It became the Nest way. People first. Always.

What you’re building never matters as much as who you’re building it with.

One exercise I do every January is to map out where I hope my team will be by the end of the year. I create a future org chart, analyze gaps in skills, strengths, or experiences, and make a list of open roles to hire for. You can do something similar by asking yourself the following questions:

• How many new people will I add to our team this year (based on company growth, expected attrition, budget, priorities, etc.)?

• For each new hire, what level of experience am I looking for?

• Which specific skills or strengths do we need in our team (for example, creative thinking, operational excellence, expertise in XYZ, etc.)?

• Which skills and strengths does our team already have that new hires can stand to be weaker in?

• What traits, past experiences, or personalities would strengthen the diversity of our team?

Having a thoughtful, one-year-out organizational plan lets you stay ahead of hiring needs and gives you a handy framework for evaluating candidates so that you won’t fall into the trap of saying yes to the next person who comes along.

To help you get started, ask yourself the following:

• Assume you have a magic wand that makes everything your team does go perfectly. What do you hope will be different in two to three years compared to now?

• How would you want someone who works on an adjacent team to describe what your team does? What do you hope will be your team’s reputation in a few years? How far off is that from where things are today?

• What unique superpower(s) does your team have? When you’re at your best, how are you creating value? What would it look like for your team to be twice as good? Five times as good?

• If you had to create a quick litmus test that anyone could use to assess whether your team was doing a poor job, a mediocre job, or a kick-ass job, what would that litmus test be?

Your team’s culture is like its personality. It exists whether or not you think about it. If you’re not satisfied with how your team works together—maybe the vibe feels hostile instead of helpful, maybe it takes a long time to get things done, or maybe there’s constant drama—it’s worth examining why this might be and what you can do about it.

Ask a good manager about his team and he will speak in generalities, saying that they are

hardworking, responsible, fun, etc. Ask a great manager the same question and she will describe each of her team members with specific details about their personality, strengths, and achievements. Again, think about the “A-Team” action television analogy from the last chapter.