Having spent the last 11 years growing an agency, one of the factors we consistently focus on optimizing is building and maintaining a high-performance team.
Agencies are a weird beast that gets scrutinized all the time. Why?
- Enterprises are large and monolith enough to employ an endless set of processes going through multiple layers across a number of departments across the organization, taking forever to execute
- Product businesses don’t face deadlines in the same way an agency does. Roadmaps are more easy-going, distractions are fewer, people work on a single product at a time (continuously)
- Support/maintenance firms get interrupted frequently, but established processes in place ensure that there’s a clear chain of command and a limited set of activities support staff is in charge of (and expected to accomplish)
Agencies are a combination of them all. The feast-and-famine cycle leads to irregular levels of work, sales, and project management processes that usually contribute to scope creep, digital and technical challenges + 3rd party dependences inevitably support delays. In most companies, people shift between multiple projects at a time. God forbid sick leaves!
Unless you predominantly work with A-stars, you’re practically out of business in the context of an agency. But regardless of the business you want to run, here are some of the main tips you need to consider when building a high-performance team.
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1. Evaluate Your Existing Team
The very first step is inventorization. In the context of building a team, inventorization refers to identifying and assessing the skills, talents, and expertise of individuals within an organization or candidate pool.
It involves systematically cataloging and evaluating the capabilities and strengths of team members or potential team members to create a comprehensive inventory of their skill sets and experiences.
This comprehensive picture allows you to:
- Build High-Performance Teams: Identify complementary strengths and weaknesses to create teams with a diverse range of expertise and perspectives.
- Optimize Team Dynamics: Formulate team structures that leverage individual strengths and create a synergistic environment where team members can effectively collaborate and support each other.
- Target Training and Development: Pinpoint skill gaps and areas where individuals can further develop their abilities – fostering continuous learning and growth within the team.
Gauge your existing team. Is every member up to the standard?
Sure, some perform better than others. In reality, your crew is around because they deliver.
- Some of them can handle multiple projects at a time.
- Others are more precise when it comes to solving complex problems.
- Certain members fix emergency bugs quickly, no matter what.
- Some can document or report back to a client mitigating further threads.
Assess the top qualities each member represents for the organization. Use this as a starting point when vetting future applicants.
2. Build a Value Culture Map
Culture maps are a powerful instrument to strengthen and expand your organization upon the existing company culture. Essentially, they build on top of the mission and value statements you designed early on.
According to an article from Louis Carter, culture mapping is divided into four phases:
- Envision
- Design
- Open Communication
- Change
Although each phase comprises various activities, the ultimate objective remains consistent: fostering a results-oriented culture prioritising performance and productivity.
Studies show that a healthy work culture is important:
- Nearly all (94%) of entrepreneurs believe it’s vital for success.
- Likewise, a high percentage (88%) of job seekers prioritize it.
Furthermore, company culture can significantly impact a company’s financial performance. Businesses that foster a positive work environment can potentially experience a 400% increase in revenue.
Source: TeamStage
Use the qualities you want to amplify, expand upon, build, or adjust your culture map through every possible channel. Starting from your vision statement, going through your job descriptions, and used as an assessment matrix during feedback sessions.
Start simple, but use this as a moral compass for future hires. We’ll expand on that in the next sections.
3. Design a Bulletproof Hiring Process
No matter how great your hiring process is so far-there’s always room for improvement.
One of the key instruments we leveraged a while back are behavior-based interview questions. After reading High-Impact Interview Questions: 701 Behavior-Based Questions to Find the Right Person for Every Job, we sat down and included a number of highly relevant questions for each role, stressing on the importance of traits we care about deeply.
The book contains a long list of sample questions, but more importantly, it covers the process of preparing a skill matrix for your organization.
Roughly speaking, you can pick the core traits you care about, and design your interview process around them. This process can start as a generic workflow focusing on 3 or 4 traits at a time. As your company expands, the process can be improved in multiple ways:
- Start with the core values for every single member of the organization
- Add critical traits for every role – since development and sales usually don’t share the same values when it comes to hard skills for top performers
- Expand on qualities for senior roles. What makes a great junior doesn’t translate to a senior, a team lead, or a VP of Engineering.
Designing your hiring process around the traits matrix can be an eye-opening exercise during feedback sessions and while discussing possible promotions with your staff.
4. Continue With a Stellar Onboarding Process
An Australian survey shows that 6 out of 10 managers have had an employee leave due to a poor onboarding process. Hiring is slow and expensive as-is – the last thing you need is extra turnover due to poor onboarding practices.
For starters, the right onboarding process will get your new hire up to speed faster. You don’t want to pay for training for months until you start seeing some results. Set some clear expectations and an action plan that gets the job done.
Organisations With Structured Onboarding Saw a 60% Year-Over-Year Improvement in Revenue
An excellent onboarding experience breeds employees that are not only productive in their given task but also committed to the growth of an organisation. According to customer onboarding statistics, if there are events that can help a company grow, then employees with the best onboarding experiences are best placed to identify and implement them.
oakengage.com
Additionally, a streamlined plan builds confidence for both parties. High-performance team want to be in alignment with management, proving they’re worth it, and hitting goals as best as they can.
And if you aim for a high-performance culture, a flaky onboarding process will be your first obstacle in getting there. Good luck re-training your team member after months of slacking or confusion due to the wrong expectations set from the start.
5. Set Clear High-Performing KPIs
Let’s face it: a high-performance culture thrives on hitting goals quickly with flying colors.
Set the right expectations for new hires – be it juniors or senior talent. Clearly outline what they need to be able to accomplish once the onboarding is over. Don’t shy away from discussing details: such as streamlined and crystal clear commit messages or submitting unit tests for developers, proper keyword and headline research for content writers, or a certain sales quota for sales engineers.
You can play with expectations during the process and adjust as needed. But set the bar high based on your top talent (calibration necessary) and indicate this to new hires.
It’s a fine line and you can still lose talent if you aim too high. But finding the right balance will uncover the high-performance team you truly need to scale up your business.
6. Grow Leadership Bottom-Up
High performers come with high expectations.
Employees don’t quit jobs – they quit managers.
Bringing in external management in a culture of top performers is a risky endeavor. Of course, it may be required every now and then, but it’s important to always look inside first before seeking external talent.
High performers are ambitious. They work hard and smart, hitting goals and overcoming obstacles. Promotions are in order – as long as a new title won’t jeopardize the business or cause friction due to missing soft skills.
Once you build your value map and align your hiring process accordingly, you should be aware of the qualities a senior lead should possess. Schedule meetings with your top performers and clearly indicate what it takes to make the next step.
It’s hard to negate a senior order from a leader who has spent years combating challenges side by side with their comrades.
7. Reward Overachievers
Actions speak louder than words.
On top of your public statements regarding your desire to build a high-performing culture, make sure your overachievers understand the importance-and so do your other colleagues.
You can implement a number of different techniques that would indicate that your top performers are worth following:
- The standard “Employee of the month” award
- Monthly bonuses for overachievers
- Weekly shout out for top accomplishments during group stand-ups
- A hall of fame on your website (or an internal productivity/management system)
- Promoting top talent when the time comes
Adjust that based on your existing processes. But in any case, reward the people who work hard and convey that to the rest of the team, continuously.
Just make sure you don’t go overboard by compromising your core expectations for new hires or the culture map.
8. Don’t Compromise On Culture-Ever
Speaking of culture, you can’t build a solid core if you’re making exceptions for certain teammates.
The sales world has suffered immensely from prioritizing short-term revenue over culture and long-term results. In various cases, the top salesperson may be toxic-using shortcuts to close deals, overpromising just to hit sales quota, and bragging indefinitely regardless of hidden tricks up their sleeves.
If your top performers align well with your company culture, that’s wonderful. However, if they portray qualities that directly compete with the value map you’ve designed, punish this behavior immediately.
You don’t have to fire them on the spot-a solid warning or a performance improvement plan may be in order prior to the last resort. But tolerating culture shakedowns for short-term revenue will cost you a fortune soon enough.
9. Incorporate Regular Feedback Sessions
High-performance team need both validation and calibration.
To ensure that everything runs smoothly, incorporate two different feedback protocols:
- Regular feedback – make it as frequently as possible. Every quarter or every month may do, depending on the duration of the assessment. But waiting for an entire year to send over a feedback report would not work in a high-performing team.
- Instant feedback – whenever a solid accomplishment needs praising or a recurring problem is detected, act upon it immediately. Pull your colleagues into a room or schedule a meeting for the next day. Brief them and set expectations straight.
Acting quickly and gathering feedback on a regular basis will keep your performance review process and feedback workflow intact while minimizing the risks of critical exceptions along the way.
10. Build a Career Map For Job Opportunities
Speaking of ambitious top performers, career growth and opportunities are important for many.
More importantly, as you scale your hiring process and recruit more talented A-stars, your existing career ladder would not sustain promotions in the same way it used to previously.
You can’t promote everyone to a team leader or manager. This means that you have to become creative and invent more opportunities for top talent so you can retain them longer.
In terms of horizontal scaling, you can always offer a full-stack role that incorporates additional opportunities within the same field.
When it comes to climbing up the ladder, find out if you can create new roles that complement the existing leadership positions. Additionally, consider breaking down your products or initiatives into different segments, each allowing for a new lead to step in.
The software engineering field presented a new type of role called “Individual Contributor” for overachievers who don’t necessarily need to manage a team. Certain initiatives can be handled standalone (for the most part), which can be a lucrative opportunity for hardcore experts who can get the job done and own a product or a component entirely. The same concept can be applied to marketing or business development, for example.
Bottom line: consider your top talent as intrapreneurs within the organization.
11. Integrate Tooling For Visibility And Transparency
Goals and deliverables are the bread and butter of a high-performing team.
You have to max out your existing toolkit or switch to new systems that enable you to measure velocity, compare task completions over time, track down delays and blockers, and design specific dashboards that make decision-making possible.
At DevriX, we solved this problem through multiple initiatives, including:
- Fully utilizing Asana for project management in ways we haven’t before
- Connecting additional tools and SaaS solutions that enable us to create Gantt charts and track down overflow of tasks (or underassigned employees) to manage the load better
- Building our own custom time tracking system with better notifications and a number of custom rules across projects
- Creating SaaS BPM as a complementary tool for our account managers and operations team for better distribution and allocation of work (immensely helpful especially around covid, sick leaves, remote work)
- Designing our own dashboard incorporating multiple systems in the same place, including a feedback platform gathering data such as problematic deploys or tasks that required more back and forth than needed
In any case, what you need to focus on is data. Aligning your team’s work around metrics will improve the process and make your feedback cycles much more reasonable.
12. Continuously Train Your Leaders
The further your organization grows, the more important your leadership stays credible and adequate to further react and develop your high-performance team.
With more A-stars joining the team, your leadership crew can feel intimidated, or unable to progress sufficiently. This can cause friction, or even showcase ego traits that are not appropriate within your cultural matrix.
This is why boosting your leaders is just as important as keeping the performance culture a standard for the rest of the company.
Look for leadership training courses in your area (or virtually). Consider what would benefit them the most, and make sure you integrate that within your annual budget as a recurring investment.
Consider coaches and advisors too. Working directly with your top leadership team-as a group or in 1-on-1s-will uncover new challenges and discover ways to resolve them over time. From soft skills to communication techniques to presentation strategies, your leaders should be role models, possessing the required confidence, critical thinking, and feedback-delivering skills everyone deserves.
And most importantly-you, as an executive, should be stepping up progressively yourself. Learn continuously, join mastermind groups, find your own business advisor-do whatever it takes to guide the ship in the right direction at all times as you grow.
13. Create Clear Escalation Channels
It’s integral to implement a streamlined communication system that works at all times.
As your organization grows and productivity spikes, you’ll accomplish more, but the team will face more challenges more frequently. This entails both interpersonal conflicts or delays and requests for new licenses, tools, upgrading servers, and the like.
Your expectations should go up too-escalating caveats because they turn into problems that turn into “all hands on deck” situations.
This requires a set of systems for escalations which is clear to all involved parties.
- Could be an emergency channel on Slack where everyone pings the entire crew in case of trouble.
- Or your head of support having a direct line of contact with executives to ensure it’s clear something may be happening soon.
- Your project management team may gather all delays or indications early in the day, reporting straight to executives in their daily standup.
- Or your operations manager can be in charge of monitoring dashboards early on.
- And automation could be improved continuously to ensure everyone is aware of most scenarios that could morph into a problem.
Find out what works best for now and implement it across the board. Document the types of activities that should be escalated as well and build a culture of trust that makes this happen.
14. Invest In Training
On top of leadership training, don’t forget specialization training for your most productive employees (the goal being almost everyone on the team).
Keeping a consistent pace is one of the hardest problems executives deal with in high-performing organizations. Industries have busy months and some downtime so schedule internal training courses whenever your staff isn’t overbooked.
When hiring, you may be able to distribute the workload better. This enables team members to leverage learning opportunities over different courses of time.
Additionally, implement a policy for downtime. If some staff members are between projects or awaiting approvals or assets from customers, or generally having a day or two without too much work on their plate, design a program for occupying their time. Consider internal products or tools, renovation of your website copy, tutorials, or training courses.
Set aside a budget for continuous training-especially for initiatives that would be more important over the coming years.
15. Create Internal Challenges
Your most ambitious talent may be seeking further growth opportunities outside of their day-to-day work.
We’ve seen this in practice across multiple companies and the right leaders have always been in charge of assigning “extracurricular activities” in the form of internal challenges, pet projects, internal products, or R&D initiatives for the future.
Your engineers may want to dive deeper into machine learning or big data. Or they want to explore React or Angular further, even if that’s not what they have to do at work (now).
Your content marketers may seek additional challenges in terms of producing skyscraper content. And maybe running roundup series that connect them with top influencers within the industry? How about starting a company podcast?
Freedom is a driving force for top talent eager to grow further. Make sure you can proactively assign problems that develop their skills and challenge their creative thinking. They will require mentorship and support and you should be ready to lend a hand outside of business hours, too.
16. Recognize Your Employees
One of the biggest fallacies with building high-performance teams is the expectation of hard work or all-nighters whenever needed.
Here’s the bitter truth: nobody will ever work as hard as you do unless they have a serious incentive to grind significantly more than they need to.
This may represent a stake at the firm, a specific compensation that makes sense, extra perks at the office, or anything else that your team member values. It’s often individual and it differs across team members.
I’ve uncovered some of the common techniques startups use to hire talent. Smaller businesses may be able to offer different incentives that large corporations can’t.
A team page with accomplishments may do the work for starters. Your marketing team can be featured across guest posts or stories (which is a form of credibility they retain in the future).
Integration Team Design: Building the Human Architecture for Post-Merger Success
Everything I’ve outlined above about assembling high-performing teams becomes exponentially more complex when you’re merging two organizations. The principles remain the same, but the stakes multiply. In post merger integration scenarios, you’re not just building a team from scratch. You’re fusing existing cultures, reconciling competing processes, and asking people who were strangers last month to deliver results together under significant time pressure.
Having worked through multiple integration scenarios, I’ve learned that the difference between smooth transitions and chaotic ones almost always comes down to integration team design. Not the strategy deck. Not the synergy projections. The actual human structure you put in place to execute.
Why Integration Planning Demands a Different Team Structure
Your normal organizational chart won’t work during integration. Day-to-day operations need to continue while simultaneously executing a transformation program. This creates a matrix environment whether you want one or not. The question is whether you design it intentionally or let it emerge chaotically.
The integration period, particularly the first 100 days after acquisition, requires a parallel structure that can move faster than your standard operating rhythm while still respecting the authority of line managers who need to keep the lights on.
Think of it like running two companies at once: the existing business that generates revenue today, and the future combined entity you’re building. Both need clear ownership. Both need dedicated attention. And the people involved need to understand which hat they’re wearing at any given moment.
Establishing Clear Workstream Owners
Every integration breaks down into workstreams. The specific ones depend on your situation, but common examples include commercial integration, technology and systems, finance and reporting, people and culture, and customer experience. Each workstream needs a single accountable owner, not a committee, not co-leads, not “shared responsibility.”
I’ve found that workstream ownership works best when you follow three principles:
- Assign based on capability, not politics. The best person for the role might come from either legacy organization. Choosing based on which company “deserves” the role creates problems you’ll be cleaning up for years.
- Give owners real authority. If a workstream owner can recommend but not decide, you’ve created a bottleneck disguised as empowerment. Define the boundaries clearly, then let them operate within those boundaries.
- Make ownership visible. Everyone affected by a workstream should know exactly who owns it and how to reach them. Ambiguity here leads to parallel conversations, conflicting directions, and wasted effort.
A well-designed PMI checklist will map each critical task to a workstream owner before day one. If you’re scrambling to figure out ownership after close, you’ve already lost valuable time.
Decision Rights Framework for Integration Teams
Assigning workstream owners solves one problem but creates another: how do those owners interact with each other, with the integration management office, and with executive sponsors when decisions cut across boundaries or exceed their authority?
You need a decision rights framework that answers three questions for every significant integration decision:
- Who can make this decision unilaterally?
- Who must be consulted before the decision is made?
- Who must be informed after the decision is made?
The following table provides an illustrative framework you can adapt to your specific operating model. The dollar thresholds and categories are examples; your actual numbers will depend on deal size and organizational context.
| Decision Category | Workstream Owner Authority | IMO Director Authority | Executive Sponsor Required |
|---|---|---|---|
| Budget reallocation within workstream | Up to $25K | $25K to $100K | Above $100K |
| Timeline adjustments | Up to 2 weeks delay | 2 to 6 weeks delay | Above 6 weeks or milestone changes |
| Vendor selection for integration tools | Existing approved vendors | New vendors under $50K annual | New vendors above $50K annual |
| Process standardization choices | Within single function | Cross-functional impact | Customer-facing or revenue impact |
| Headcount or role changes | Recommendations only | Temporary assignments | All permanent changes |
| External communications | Internal stakeholders only | Partners and vendors | Customers, press, investors |
The goal isn’t to create bureaucracy. It’s to create speed by eliminating the “let me check with someone” delays that plague poorly structured integrations. When people know their boundaries, they move faster within them.
Meeting Cadence That Drives Progress Without Creating Meeting Hell
Integration periods are notorious for spawning meetings. Everyone feels the need to coordinate, align, update, and check in. Without discipline, your calendar becomes a wasteland of status meetings where nothing actually gets decided.
I recommend a tiered cadence approach:
Daily standups (15 minutes maximum) occur at the workstream level during active execution phases. These are not status reports. They exist to surface blockers and coordinate handoffs. If you have nothing blocking you, you say so and move on.
Weekly integration management office reviews (60 minutes) bring workstream owners together to address cross-cutting issues, make decisions that span boundaries, and update the consolidated integration timeline. Come prepared with decisions needed, not just updates to share.
Bi-weekly executive steering committee sessions (90 minutes) focus on strategic decisions, major risk reviews, and course corrections that exceed IMO authority. This is not the place to surface issues that should have been resolved at lower levels.
Monthly all-hands integration updates (30 minutes) keep the broader organization informed about progress and what’s coming next. Transparency reduces anxiety and rumor-spreading.
The key discipline: every meeting ends with documented decisions and assigned actions. If a meeting produces neither, it probably shouldn’t have happened.
Escalation Pathways That Actually Work
Even with clear ownership and decision rights, issues will arise that need to move up the chain. Your escalation pathway should be explicit and fast. The worst thing that happens in integrations is important decisions getting stuck in limbo because nobody knows how to elevate them.
Effective escalation requires:
- Defined triggers. What specifically causes an issue to escalate? Budget overruns above a threshold? Missed milestones? Unresolved conflicts between workstreams? Make these concrete.
- Time-bound responses. Once escalated, how quickly must the next level respond? I typically set 24 hours for IMO-level escalations and 48 hours for executive-level during active integration phases.
- No-skip rules with exceptions. Generally, escalation moves one level at a time. But build in a mechanism for genuine emergencies to reach executive sponsors directly. Define what qualifies as an emergency before you need it.
- Escalation is not failure. This mindset matters. If people feel they’ll be blamed for escalating, they’ll sit on problems until they become crises. Celebrate early escalation of genuine issues.
Continuity Planning for Integration Teams
Here’s something most integration planning misses entirely: what happens when key people are unavailable? Sick leave, vacation, family emergencies, resignations. These don’t pause because you’re in the middle of an integration.
Every critical integration role needs a documented backup. Not just a name on a chart, but someone who is actively kept informed and could step in with minimal ramp-up time. For workstream owners, I recommend:
- A designated deputy who attends key meetings and receives copies of critical communications
- Documented decision logs so anyone stepping in can understand the context behind past choices
- Shared access to all workstream documentation and project management tools
- At least one cross-training session where the deputy leads a workstream meeting while the owner observes
This isn’t just about risk mitigation. It’s about building bench strength for your combined organization. The people who serve as capable deputies during integration become your next generation of leaders.
Making the Operating Model Stick
The integration team structure you build isn’t just temporary scaffolding. Done well, it becomes the foundation for how your combined organization operates going forward. The decision rights you establish, the meeting disciplines you enforce, the escalation pathways you create, these should evolve into your permanent operating model.
As you design your integration team structure, keep asking: would we want to operate this way permanently? If the answer is no, you’re probably building something too complex or too bureaucratic. The urgency of integration should simplify your structure, not complicate it.
The organizations that handle integration planning well aren’t just executing a transaction. They’re building a better company. And that starts with being intentional about how you assemble and organize the people who will make it happen.
Bottom Line
Growing a team of high performance requires dedication. The core of the organization-the leadership team and the culture-should be rock solid, sending the right message both internally (new hires) and externally (through PR and business activities).
Internal transformation is required for most companies to align the existing team along with processes and metrics required to get the job done. New hiring strategies and refined recruitment processes are integral to discover the right talent, too. And since the leadership team should give the right example, growing both personally and professionally is the key to making it happen.
