The Team I Let Slip Away

I had the best team I’ll ever work with, and I watched them scatter while I was busy doing everything except leading them.

15-20 people. Some of the sharpest programmers and technical minds I’ve known in 30 years of building companies. We’d survived three acquisitions together and ended up inside Lucent Bell Labs as a skunkworks group.

We had a reputation. Other groups would bring us impossible problems and we’d solve them. The kind of technical challenges that made senior engineers shake their heads and say it couldn’t be done. We’d knock them out in weeks.

It was magic.

And I let it fall apart. I wanted to keep them together. I cared deeply about what we’d built. But I was looking in the wrong direction when it mattered most.

The Setup That Should Have Been Perfect

Lucent Bell Labs in the late 90s should have been a dream. This was the place that invented the transistor, the laser, Unix, C programming. The mothership of innovation. They’d just spun out of AT&T with $1-2 billion in funding and a portfolio of 30,000 patents.

They told the market they were a billion-dollar startup. They wanted to be seen as having startup energy and language. But with 167,000 employees, layers of process deeper than a Navy submarine, and people who’d been in the same office for 35 years, the startup act didn’t play.

It was cosplay. And everybody knew it.

My team was different. We were the real thing. We’d built internet infrastructure products together. We knew how to move fast. We knew how to ship. We’d proven it across three different companies.

When Lucent acquired us, they wanted to keep that magic. They positioned us as their internal startup team. Give us the hard problems, the ones that needed to get done yesterday, and we’d figure it out.

And we did. For a while.

What Makes a Team Actually Special

People throw around “great team” like it’s a participation trophy. Like showing up to work and being polite makes you exceptional.

That’s not what I’m talking about.

A great team has three things that can’t be faked.

First, they trust each other’s judgment. When someone on the team says “this is the right technical approach,” others don’t second-guess it or require three levels of review. They know the person saying it has thought it through. They’ve seen them be right enough times that trust is earned, not demanded.

Second, they cover for each other without keeping score. When someone’s buried in a nasty bug at 9 PM, another person shows up with coffee (note: Mountain Dew was more likely) and says “what do you need?” They do this because that’s how the team works. Nobody’s tracking who helped who more. It just works.

Third, they push each other. Not in meetings where they have to perform for management. In real work. Someone writes code and another person looks at it and says “this is clever, but you’re going to regret this in six months when we have to scale.” And the first person listens because they know the feedback is coming from someone who wants the work to be excellent, not someone trying to look smart.

My team had all three. That 15-20 person core group that had been through three acquisitions together. The ones who knew how to ship. The ones who trusted each other. The ones who made the impossible look routine.

That should tell you something about what we had.

The Problem Nobody Warned Me About

When Lucent acquired us, my 15-20 person dream team folded into a much larger organization. But I didn’t just end up with my original team. I inherited other teams too. Groups dispersed throughout the Lucent organization that now reported up through me.

On one hand, I had this incredible dream team. I could throw anything at them and they’d get it done. On the other hand, I had these Bell Labs legacy groups who’d been doing things their way for decades and had no interest in changing.

These weren’t bad people. Some of them were brilliant. Multiple PhDs. Early pioneers in technologies that eventually became Wi-Fi. Real technical chops.

But they were prima donnas. Not all of them, but some were squeaky wheels that no amount of grease could fix.

They didn’t want to be told how to do things differently. They didn’t want to hear that something needed to change. They’d been at Bell Labs for 35 years and they decided how things worked. Not me. Not the market. Them.

And despite all those credentials, despite all that experience, they never performed half as well as anyone in my core group.

My core team would ship in weeks what these legacy groups took months to debate. My team would solve impossible problems while these groups were still arguing about the proper protocol for filing a technical specification.

But now I was managing both. The performers and the prima donnas. The people who moved fast and the people who moved like molasses. The team that shipped and the groups that theorized.

And I was trying to figure out how to spin all these plates at once.

The Leadership Failure I Still Think About

Here’s where I screwed up.

I lost focus on that incredible group of performers while I was busy managing the circus.

I spent hours trying to convince legacy groups to move faster. Mediating between people who wanted to ship and people who wanted to debate. Navigating the politics of who owned what and which group should lead which initiative.

I went to meetings about org structure. About reporting relationships. About how to integrate different cultures and working styles. About portfolio alignment and strategic direction.

I once attended a meeting about planning a meeting.

Not a conference. Not a tradeshow. Not some big international ISO or IEEE standards meeting. An internal management meeting.

When you added up the salaries of everyone in that room, combined with the fact that some of us had flown to the office where the meeting was held, thousands of dollars were spent planning another meeting.

And while I was sitting in that room, my core team was somewhere else actually building things.

That’s where I should have been. With them.

Instead, I was playing the corporate game. And while I was doing that, my core team slowly got pulled in different directions.

Lucent spun off parts of the business. People followed those opportunities. Others got recruited by different groups inside the company. Some just got tired of the bureaucracy and left for startups that were actually startups.

Eventually they scattered to different companies.

And I sometimes wonder: if I had been more focused, if I had been the leader that team deserved, could I have held them together? Could we have seen the Lucent collapse coming and jumped ship as a unit? Started something on our own?

I was so busy managing the groups I’d inherited and dealing with people who thought they walked on water that I forgot where my real job was. With that core team. The ones who could ship. The ones who trusted each other. The ones who had the magic.

That was where I belonged. Not in meetings about meetings. Not managing prima donnas. Not spinning plates. With them.

What I Should Have Done Instead

I should have built a fortress around that core team and let the rest figure themselves out.

When Lucent gave me those legacy groups, I should have kept them at arm’s length. Let them work the way they wanted to work. Let them debate and theorize and follow their 35 years of process. But don’t let them anywhere near my core team.

When those Bell Labs veterans started pushing back on how we worked or tried to slow us down with their process, I should have been clearer: “You do your thing. We do ours. And we’re not changing.”

When senior leadership invited me to another pointless meeting, I should have said no. When they wanted to discuss how to integrate cultures that couldn’t be integrated, I should have skipped it. When they asked me to spend time managing groups that couldn’t keep up, I should have declined.

I should have protected my team’s time and my own time so we could do the work that actually mattered.

When Lucent started spinning off business units, I should have fought to keep my core team together. When other groups tried to recruit my people, I should have made it clear that we moved as a unit or not at all.

I should have recognized that once you have a team that works like that, your job is to keep them working like that. You don’t manage the organizational mess you inherited. You don’t try to make prima donnas perform. You don’t bridge incompatible cultures. You don’t sit in meetings about meetings.

You keep the magic alive.

Look, I get it. I’ve built multiple companies. I’ve raised money. I’ve navigated board dynamics. I understand the complexity of organizational politics and inherited teams and managing people who think their credentials mean they don’t need to deliver results.

But here’s what 30 years of building products and leading teams has taught me: the best thing you can build is a team that trusts each other and ships great work together. Everything else is secondary.

If you’re struggling with this, if you feel like you’re losing your team to distractions or politics or inherited problems, I wrote a book about it. It’s called Founders Who Finish, and it’s specifically for people who are tired of startup theater and want to build real businesses with real teams. Check it out at davesaunders.net.

The Framework for Protecting Your Core Team

Here’s what I learned after watching that team fall apart. This is the framework I use now when I’m advising founders or running teams.

First: Identify who your core team actually is. Not everyone reporting to you. Not everyone in your org chart. But the people who make the impossible possible. The ones you’d want if you were starting something new tomorrow. The ones who actually ship. That’s your core team. Protect them differently than everyone else.

Second: Quarantine the prima donnas. If you inherit people or groups who think they’re too important to deliver results, keep them separate. Let them work however they want to work. But don’t let them slow down your core team. Don’t let their process infect your performers. You can manage both. You can’t blend them.

Third: Stop trying to make low performers into high performers. You’re not going to change someone who’s been coasting on their credentials for 35 years. You’re not going to turn prima donnas into team players. Accept that some people will never perform at the level you need and stop wasting energy trying to fix them.

Fourth: Shield your core team from organizational noise. Every request for their attention should go through you. Every meeting invitation should be filtered. Every legacy group that wants to involve them in their process should be told no.

Your job isn’t to expose them to the organization. Your job is to shield them from it.

Fifth: Say no to stupid meetings. If someone invites you to a meeting about planning a meeting, decline. If the meeting doesn’t directly help your core team ship better work, you don’t need to be there. Send someone else. Send a summary afterward. But protect your time so you can spend it where it matters.

Sixth: Fight the battles they shouldn’t have to fight. When someone with multiple PhDs and no results tries to tell your team how things should work, you handle it. When bureaucracy tries to slow them down, you clear the path. When politics tries to pull them in different directions, you hold the line.

They build. You handle everything else.

Seventh: Plan your exit together. This is the part most leaders get wrong. They think their job is to keep people forever. Your job is to make sure when change happens, it happens on your terms.

If the company is heading toward collapse, you see it coming and you move the team somewhere better. As a unit. If an opportunity emerges elsewhere, you evaluate it together. If someone wants to leave, you help them leave well and you stay connected.

The goal isn’t to trap people. The goal is to build something together that’s worth protecting. And when it’s time to move, you move together.

How to Tell You’re Making My Mistake

Here are the signals I missed at Lucent. If you’re seeing these, you’re in the trap.

You’re spending more time managing low performers than leading high performers. If you’re trying to convince people to move faster, mediating between cultures, or explaining why results matter to people who think their credentials are enough, you’ve lost focus.

Your calendar is full of meetings that don’t help your team ship. If you’re attending meetings about meetings, strategy sessions with no decisions, or alignment discussions that never align anything, you’re wasting time that should be spent with your core team.

You can’t list the three most important projects your core team is working on right now. If someone asked you to describe what your best people are building today and you’d have to check with them first, you’re too disconnected.

Your best people are having important conversations without you. If decisions are being made, problems are being solved, and work is getting done in channels you’re not in or meetings you’re not attending, you’re no longer leading. You’re just managing up.

You’re more worried about keeping everyone happy than about whether your team is doing their best work. If you’re trying to bridge incompatible working styles, make prima donnas feel valued, or blend cultures that can’t be blended, you’ve lost the plot.

People are leaving and you’re surprised. If someone resigns and your first thought is “I didn’t see that coming,” you weren’t paying attention. Good people signal their discontent long before they quit. But you have to be close enough to see it.

The Cost of Looking Away

I can’t tell you exactly how many millions that core team could have built together if I’d kept us intact. But I can tell you we would have built something.

Some of those people went on to start their own companies. Some joined early-stage startups that became significant. Some ended up at major tech companies doing work that mattered.

What they didn’t do is stay together. And that cost all of us something.

When you have a team that works, that trusts each other, that ships impossible things, you have something rare. Rarer than funding. Rarer than good ideas. Rarer than market timing.

You have the foundation for building something that lasts.

And if you lose that while you’re distracted by inherited problems or trying to manage prima donnas or sitting in meetings about meetings, you don’t get it back. Those people move on. The magic dissolves. The opportunity passes.

I let it pass once. I won’t do it again.

What to Do This Week

If you’re leading a team right now and any of this resonates, here’s what you need to do.

Monday: Write down who your core team actually is. Not everyone in your org chart. Not the people with the most impressive credentials. The people who ship. The people you’d want if you were starting something new. That’s your core team. Everything else is secondary.

Tuesday: Identify the low performers and prima donnas. The people who have credentials but no results. The ones who think process matters more than shipping. The groups that slow everything down. Name them. Accept that they’re not going to change.

Wednesday: Audit your calendar. How many meetings are you attending that don’t help your core team ship? How many hours are you spending on organizational politics instead of clearing obstacles for your best people? Kill everything that doesn’t serve them.

Thursday: Block your calendar. Schedule two hours every week with zero meetings. Just you and your core team’s work. Review what they’re building. Understand where they’re stuck. Remove obstacles before they become problems.

Friday: Draw a line. Protect your core team from the noise. Say no to requests that don’t serve them. Decline meetings about meetings. Push back on process that slows them down. Make it clear that your best people work differently than everyone else. And that’s not changing.

That’s the work. Not the politics. Not trying to make prima donnas perform. Not sitting in meetings about meetings. The work of keeping a great team together.

You have a team right now. Maybe it’s a great team. Maybe it has the potential to be great. Stop looking in the wrong direction. Stop letting distractions pull you away from the people who actually ship.

The team you have right now might be the best team you ever get. Act like it.

Founders Who Finish is available at davesaunders.net. It’s a field manual for entrepreneurs who are done with the startup unicorn nonsense and ready to build real businesses with real teams. No theory. Just what actually works.