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A snowstorm over the Sierras delayed a roadtrip home this weekend which meant I didn’t have time for my normal dedicated writing effort (I know, I know excuses).

Instead of the standard full post, here’s a primer of a question that has been on my mind which I plan to write about in full next week. If you have thoughts or an answer of your own send it my way so I can incorporate it into the post!

Question: How can you distinguish a team of amateurs from a team of professionals?

I’ve been thinking a lot about this question lately within the context of my work. I like to use the following four qualities to assess where any team lies on the spectrum from amateur to professional and refer to it as my, “going pro framework.”

1. Documented standards

2. A team trained consistently to those standards with no single points (e.g. one person) of failure

3. A system to hold the team accountable to those standards

4. An approach to automate and outsource administrative work which distracts the team from their primary mission

How do you tell whether or not a team is an amateur or a professional one?

See y’all next week.