Whether you are a startup team of 3 or a Google team of 100K people, each one of the 3 or 100K sees something that the other 2 or 99999 don’t see. Each one has some sort of micro-information that is not available to the others. Each one can see a part of the elephant, but not the elephant.

So if we assume a clear and inspiring mission, the biggest leverage you have towards achieving that mission is the dialogue, i.e. how well the players communicate with each other about the available options and trade-offs with respect to the mission.

“How do you see this? This is what I see. What if we did this? What is going to happen? What do you think?”

It’s time-consuming but I personally don’t know any other way… The players have to communicate—and do it well.

And to do it well, they have to want the collective good and be willing to check their ego at the door. They have to be able to evaluate one strategy over the other in a fact-driven, mission-first and “ego-proof” way.

And to achieve this, you need a culture of trust. You need to invest a whole lot of resources and conscious effort to help the players trust each other. You need meetings, 1-on-1’s, training, mentoring, outdoor activities, getting-to-know-each-other’s … and I don’t know what else you’ll need!

There are no shortcuts, or let me say, this is the most slowing-down and at the same time lightning-speed shortcut towards company success that I know.