218: Building a Team from Scratch with Adela Bodor

Charlotte Ward: 0:13

Hello and welcome to episode 218 of the Customer Support Leaders Podcast. I'm Charlotte Ward. The theme for this week is Building a Team from Scratch. So stay tuned for five leaders talking about that very topic. I'd like to welcome back to the podcast today, Adela Bodo. Hello, Adela. It's lovely to have you back. Thank you, Charlotte. Thank you for having me again. Always a pleasure. Thank you so much. This week we're talking about starting a team from scratch. And this is something that we were having a little chat about before the show, which is why I was very keen to hit record and have this conversation. Because you've started Teams from Scratch several times. Am I right?

Adela Bodor: 1:00

Yes. I had to start. So every single time we had a new project, every single time we had we added a new country to the portfolio, we had to build up a new team. Some of them, the first one was, I would say, the most challenging and the most memorable experience. Some of them were slightly easier to do because there was already because of language synergies, was already that ease of having a senior person who could potentially take over the leadership of the new team. And this would make things slightly easier. I mean, there's also the second opinion when it comes to building the team, interviewing people, and so you've done this, I think you said five times.

Charlotte Ward: 1:49

Okay. Um, so you mentioned there having more senior people who might help out with with leadership in those early stages. So you have have some support, but you said the first time was particularly challenging. Tell me about that.

Adela Bodor: 2:02

Um, so I was first of all, I was new in the company. Um I had started with the aim of insourcing the service, which obviously meant not only insourcing the service, but as well building up the team that is supposed to serve, provide the service, right? Um and it was I had done quite a lot of interviews in the past because I was still in a leadership role, but not to the level that I needed right now. The requirements of um of the country, of the project itself were extremely specific. And um this is the reason why we had to see quite a high number of people until we got to the right candidate. So I had about a hundred face-to-face interviews until we hired the five people that we needed for the five.

Charlotte Ward: 2:59

What five from a hundred? That that's five from a hundred. That's actually, I mean, that surprises me that it's uh it's one in twenty. I I mean, this is just a slight aside as we stray into perhaps the territory of like hiring processes and efficiency here, but why why did you need or feel the need to see a hundred people in person? That's a that's a lot of hours spent talking to people to hire five of them.

Adela Bodor: 3:30

I mean, each of the interviews was minimum one hour, so you can definitely imagine. Um, why is very simple because we wanted to be as diverse as possible. Um, generally, when you build up a team, what's important is that the team members are somehow like pieces of the puzzle, um, or even better, pieces of a mosaic that they can complete each other and they make a whole unit, you know. And once you have the first person hired, you need to look for people who not only complete you, but they also complete that first person you hired. And this is basically why the level, I would say, of complexity increased. You know, we the the challenge that we gave or we set for ourselves became even bigger than it was at the beginning. Because at the beginning, the only person that I had to consider was myself.

Charlotte Ward: 4:24

That makes sense.

Adela Bodor: 4:25

Yeah, exactly. Yeah, the more pieces you fit in the puzzle, the more you have to make sure, okay, I need to get another piece that completes the previous two and then the previous three, and so on. So, this is the reason why we saw so many people.

Charlotte Ward: 4:40

I I like the idea of piecing it together like a puzzle, but I slightly prefer your your um mosaic metaphor there because it I I have this like illusion now of building this team somehow being like creating a work of art, which is always complicated and painful and takes lots of hours.

Adela Bodor: 4:57

So maybe that's but that's exactly how I would define it. It is a work of art, it is literally about mastering the art of people, mastering the art of making the individuals work together as a unit, as a very, very cohesive unit that is able to reach a goal. So, yeah, that's why I call it the mosaic.

Charlotte Ward: 5:21

A masterpiece, lovely. Um, so um, so having found your five people, having satisfied everyone's requirements, both in terms of diversity and fit and effectiveness as a team, from that point, you get those people in the door. And in this case, I guess all these people are effectively coming in the door in very short, in a very short time span. Would that be a fair assumption?

Adela Bodor: 5:48

Very, yeah. It's it's a very fair assumption. I mean, we're literally talking about three months.

Charlotte Ward: 5:54

Yeah, yeah. How do you um in those early stages, as you're getting people in the door, you're building, presumably not just the team, but all of the supporting infrastructure, processes, um, higher like hierarchy, like standard operating procedure stuff, right? Like um, how how did you manage the balance between finding the people and creating all of that SOP?

Adela Bodor: 6:20

If I'm honest, I actually involved the people quite early on. So the moment someone would get in the door, they were not just you know a team member, but they were as well a contributing team member. So they were constantly involved in the process of creating the SOPs, uh putting the KPIs together, identifying okay, what works and what doesn't. Um in in some cases, even selecting technologies. So they were given a deciding vote in absolutely every single decision that was taken. It wasn't uh anymore about the leader and that's it. It was literally because a leader is only a good leader if he has a good team behind it. That's it. It's it's it's what I believe in. So the success was somehow of everybody together.

Charlotte Ward: 7:14

Yeah, I I I think there's a a lot of what you say there is true even of more mature teams. I guess there comes a point where adding one person to a team of 400 has a very small impact, and that vote is only ever going to be quite small. But but in these early days, or in small teams generally, even if even if they're not that, even if they're not that early stage, a single voice, a single new voice can have quite an impact, can't it? And I think you're absolutely right. Like that it's important to give uh agency and responsibility and uh, you know, and and that that voice that you describe, that vote that you describe really early on. I think the same could be true even of small teams later in the cycle. I I know that people, for instance, coming into my team, I would always say, for us for a start, welcome. Here's your onboarding pack, and your first task is to improve improve the onboarding.

Adela Bodor: 8:12

Yes, exactly. We do we do a similar thing where 60 days after someone is in, they have to literally prepare a presentation and give us the feedback because we want to know okay, uh, what went wrong in the onboarding process, what went right. We also need to celebrate successes, which is extremely important, and as well, what we can improve. We learn so much from these 60 days feedback interviews. I think majority of our improvements have come as feedback from these meetings.

Charlotte Ward: 8:49

That's really interesting. And of course, like um, not only improve improving onboarding, but improving and evolving everything else around the SOPs and the team as well, as you just absolutely absolutely when when you hire someone, you hire them to do a job, but you also hire in in effect all of their previous experience and all of their knowledge and all of their opinions, and and some of the things you described, you know, having a having the uh uh agency over technology and things like that is really key because people bring so much to every team and can have a big impact. Um what's the what's the particular challenge aside from those hundred plus hours of interviews and painting that perfect masterpiece? What are the early challenges that you otherwise identify from this experience?

Adela Bodor: 9:41

I would say one of the biggest challenges that I had was um making sure that everybody is on board with the vision. So you have a vision, you have a clear master plan, you know exactly where you want to reach, and you need at the same time to make sure that everybody who stands behind you is on board with this vision, they owe the same goal and they know how to get there. I think the knowing how to get there was the most difficult part, I would say, because the vision was pretty clear for everybody. I mean, we needed to take over to in-source the service and we needed to make it a success. It's not so difficult to, you know, to understand. But how to get there was, I would say, the challenging part. And the only way we were able to overcome it is by constant communication, constant feedback, uh, long discussions. Sometimes we would literally start a meeting at eight o'clock in the morning and we would finish, I don't know, at four o'clock in the afternoon, because we were literally, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I would say in the beginning days, this is not surprising. It was a a completely new, um, even a completely new service for for the company. So the the the in-source service desk as as it stands didn't exist before we joined. So it was absolutely perfectly normal and somehow understandable that we needed the time to build everything up.

Charlotte Ward: 11:11

Yeah, yeah, I can see that. And I I think that um, you know, the the when when you're effectively trying to craft a whole service very quickly, uh so that so that it has kind of not not exactly a maturity, but a completeness about it. Yes. That's what takes time, isn't it? I think you know, in a startup environment where you're the the sole support person for the first year and a half or two years, you evolve all of that pretty organically, I think. Whereas if you've got five people and you're crafting something quite complete very quickly, no, uh no wonder. That's all I can say. No wonder. Yeah, yeah. So how how did that compare then um to your later experiences starting a team from scratch?

Adela Bodor: 12:02

Well, um, pretty simple. Uh when I started the second project and the third project and the and subsequent ones, um, it was slightly easier because in general I would identify somehow these people in the leadership roles, and I would have these people some except let's say some of the senior team members who could potentially step into a leadership role and they could be groomed and they could literally become a leader. They could themselves then manage a team. So then I didn't feel so alone anymore at the beginning, even though until I hired the first team member and the second team member and so on, I felt really alone. Um, whereas when I took over the other projects, it was more a team effort, it was more shared responsibility. Also, we already had the framework from the first project, and we literally took that framework and we said, okay, what from the framework can we apply to the second one and what we can apply to the third one and so on. Now I literally have a pattern and I use this pattern and I apply it to all of them. And the pattern proved to be so good that it became a product in itself.

Charlotte Ward: 13:16

Wow, wow, yes, that's that's the mark of a success, isn't it? Um exactly, exactly. And you are you still evolving that?

Adela Bodor: 13:23

Yes, yes, I am. This is, I don't think it will be a job that will ever finish. And um, I was recently approached by some of our other countries to build another team. So it looks like um I'm gonna start the journey all over again.

Charlotte Ward: 13:43

What's the most enjoyable part of that journey for you every time you you you you embark on this uh this whole experience?

Adela Bodor: 13:51

Honestly speaking, the celebration that we have after, I make it a point that the first day after the team goes live, we go out in the evening and we literally have either a nice meal at a lovely restaurant, or we literally just have a drink and we all chat about the experience and so on. And I have to say, I learn the most out of this informal celebration after the first day because you get the feedback, I would say filtered feedback from the users themselves, but as well the feedback of the team when it comes to the interactions that they had throughout the day. So it's amazing. I absolutely love it.

Charlotte Ward: 14:33

I can see that. Um, so the final question I have then is is really the question that I like to ask lots of people at this point of a conversation, which is what's your what's your biggest piece of advice for anyone else out there starting on on building a team from scratch? What what what should they first bear in mind?

Adela Bodor: 14:53

I would say be patient. Um define your leadership style, know yourself very well, because it's extremely important. And this is basically the first piece I would say that I had to attack. I had to define who I am as a leader. I had to define who I am as a person. I had to know myself very well until I was able to build a team. So for me, I would say you need to be clear in who you are, in what you want to achieve before you even start this journey. I I don't think you're able to set a clear goal and a clear mission without knowing who you really are.

Charlotte Ward: 15:33

That's super insightful. I don't think anyone else has ever said to me that it's important to know yourself first before you embark on any major initiative, let alone like starting a team and painting a masterpiece or mosaicing a masterpiece. Mosaicing, yeah. If that's a verb, it's a verb now, isn't it? We we you can mystic. We did we went there. Thank you so much for joining me again, Adela. It's lovely to talk to you. Come back soon. Thank you very much. That's it for today. Go to customersupportleaders.com forward slash two one eight for the show notes, and I'll see you next time.