how do we set up teams for success?
Personal notes on management
One of the core skills in management is designing an environment where your team can thrive. I believe that anyone with strong willpower, given the right circumstances and environment, can succeed in their role. As a manager, then, your job is to thoughtfully optimize a set of factors of that environment to unlock the full collective potential of the team. Therefore, the best teams don’t just happen – they are built with consistent effort.
If we choose to believe in this, the natural question is how do we set up teams for success? This is a skill I continue to learn, but over time, I’ve had the opportunity to observe and learn from high-performing technical teams, and I’ve seen a few patterns emerge.
Taking time to craft a successful onboarding project
When onboarding a new team member, it’s not just about handing over a checklist—it’s about understanding their core values and what they believe they need to succeed. This requires deep self-awareness, and oftentimes people often don’t even know what they need. That’s why it’s crucial to formulate exploration-based hypotheses and ask thoughtful, probing questions.
For instance, an early mistake I made was to assume that a senior team member would thrive with independent project ownership. However, their stress about lack of progress unveiled a deeper need for collaboration and regular pairing sessions.
Do they excel in collaborative pair work, or do they prefer working independently? What does their ideal collaboration style look like? Are they more motivated by exploratory projects that encourage open-ended research, or by targeted initiatives leading directly to product launches? Do they find motivation in long-term objectives or need regular short-term milestones to stay engaged?
Building culture that’s worth showing up for
A culture worth showing up for starts with a sense of clarity—both in our shared vision and the core values we return to when the path ahead gets murky. That clarity builds trust by showing people how their work fits into a bigger story, giving us all the resilience to keep going when things get difficult.
Take data quality, for example. If we say we value high quality datasets, then we follow through by running collaborative peer reviews and deeply engaging with each other’s work. That commitment isn’t just about producing better data; it’s about fueling a deeper sense of ownership and collective accountability.
When we postpone a product launch, it’s critical that everyone knows exactly why. This shouldn’t feel like “someone else’s decision.” It should be obvious that we’re holding ourselves to a higher standard of shipping and that quality always wins out over rushing to release.
Ultimately, culture forms through the everyday choices and actions we take. When we maintain a real sense of psychological safety—when people see that their input is genuinely valued, and that candor is encouraged and that we are in the same boat together—they’re far more likely to invest fully in the mission. If we do this right, we end up with a team that cares, a product that improves, and a place that people genuinely want to be a part of.
Effective feedback and retros lead to the change everyone wants to see
A healthy feedback culture is like oil in the machine of teamwork—it keeps everything running smoothly. Because I deeply value my team’s growth, I make feedback an everyday habit. It’s also a collaborative effort: rather than simply pointing out a delayed deliverable, I’ll sit down with my report and explore why it happened. Was there a resource bottleneck? Was the scope unclear? Together, we identify solutions and learn from the situation.
Too often, teams shy away from hard conversations, worried about friction—but in truth, candor is one of the highest forms of respect. When people see honest critique as a gesture of trust, I found they’re far more inclined to engage openly, leading to better decisions and outcomes.
Same with retros. When retros surfaces an error, it’s easy to get defensive. But the real upside of mistakes is that they often highlight assumptions that need revisiting. What larger pattern does this reveal, and how can we fix it for good? We strive to treat retros as a living repository of lessons because they are only as good as its ability to inform the next iteration.
Being a manager often means finding clarity within yourself and providing a principled vision to guide your team forward so that they will have an easier time. You are still in control in setting an example by the actions you are taking next, even in moments when you feel the most uncertain about. I just think that over time it will only get easier.