When you work as an Entrepreneur, you keep a constant lookout for good people. One of your tasks as an Entrepreneur, besides inventing things and raising capital and finding customers, is to build really good teams. Oracle hired their Pizza delivery guy as their first CFO; other companies find people on the golf course. Suddenly you meet someone from a language training camp in England you visited as a teenager, and now the two of you hit it off. If you don't exactly hire them, they still can be in your network of useful contacts. You never know if you have some common interests. There is a myriad of possibilities to find people, from purely social gatherings to professional marketing events.

Socialise before you start working together

It is a truly art-form to build great teams. One company I worked with dedicated the whole working day to social activities, when someone new arrived in their group. They talked and drank sparkling wine (Sekt in German). The Apollo program socialised for the first three or four weeks. In the end, these kind of activities pay off. Getting to know someone as an individual before you start working together is a great advantage. The longer you know someone before you hire them, the better it is.

The influence from family

I still think that teams and organisations have some fundamental influences from the way we are raised in families. We all have parents, and most of us have been raised with one or two of them. Some of us have big brothers and sisters, some have small siblings. The family forms a strict social hierarchy, where no one is at the same level except for the parents (not even twins are at the same level). The family decisions are usually taken by one of the parents, sometimes it can be taken by one of the older siblings. Family decisions are almost never taken by the last born.

I believe we take these roles with us, when we go out in the big world and start working in companies. If you are the first born, you look upon your Manager as your stand-in "parent". If you are last born, you look upon your Manager as your older brother or sister. The stand in parent for the last born in an organisation is the Manager's manager. This has some consequences when you build really great teams.

When you ask a first born to describe their youngest sibling they may use words like: "irresponsible", "spoiled", "cannot handle responsibility". When you ask the last born to describe their older brother or sister, they may use words like: "controlling", "tells me what to do", "buds into my life". What scientists now think is that last born are more creative than first born, because they are forced to be. They need to invent alternative strategies to be successful in life, as no one notices them, or gives them any responsibility. They are not trained the way first born are.

So if you want to build a creative team, where people don't care about responsibilities or social hierarchies, you should probably hire people who are last born. And if you want a team where people feel responsible and where structure is important, you should hire people who are first born. Different businesses need different types of people. And don't be surprised if we meet in the future and I ask you if you are first born or last born. You never know.