23-04-2025
Small Teams, Big Impact: How No-Nonsense Teams Outperform Their Size
Focused on the ball.
In the popular imagination, entrepreneurship is often a one-person show: a daring visionary toiling away in a garage, forging the next big idea from scratch.
But that stereotype doesn't capture the deeper truth of how real startups actually run. In fact, the stereotype fails to reflect how it all works at any scale, given how a sense of entrepreneurship is essential to any company that wants the best out of their employees.
As Margot Machol Bisnow, author of Raising an Entrepreneur points out, 'When you look at successful ventures, whether it's a fast-growing tech startup or a family-owned retail chain, there's usually a culture of shared entrepreneurship. Often that begins with the founder, but it rarely ends there.'
Bisnow also observes, 'We tend to think of an 'entrepreneurial mindset' as something you either have or don't, but I've seen it develop organically when leaders encourage curiosity, risk-taking, and a willingness to learn from failure.'
By shifting the focus from a single 'visionary' to a collective ethos, organizations of all sizes can tap into the creativity and resourcefulness that traditionally define a great startup.
'People feel empowered to spot problems and try new solutions on their own, not just wait for orders from the founder,' Margot adds. In other words, the most resilient and innovative companies often aren't built around a single charismatic figure that embodies entrepreneurship; they foster an environment where everyone adopts an entrepreneurial mindset.
Observe any nascent venture on its path to success and you will find that a culture of distributed ownership, where every team member feels like an 'intrapreneur', drives stronger motivation, agility, and resilience in rapidly changing environments.
What does all of this look like in practice, particularly for companies that run the show with compact teams?
Building on the insights of a distributed entrepreneurial approach, three core principles that keep small crews effective, innovative, and enthusiastic emerge, namely an aversion to nonsense work, choosing missionaries over mercenaries, and trust.
Inside a corporate giant, it's easy for 'busyness' to masquerade as productive business.
Meetings multiply, emails double, and Slack channels balloon, often adding friction rather than fueling meaningful outcomes. This is the opposite of what early-stage entrepreneurs bring to the table, which is a deep aversion to nonsense work.
Instead of scattering energy across a dozen tangential tasks, a highly entrepreneurial team zeroes in on a well-defined set of high-impact goals, often out of sheer necessity. There simply isn't enough time to spend typing meeting notes when there's a client to be sold or a case to be closed.
There's real science behind cutting the clutter.
Cognitive science shows that context switching, the act of jumping between tasks, reduces mental efficiency and hobbles our productivity even in the simplest of tasks.
And for small teams, every ounce of efficiency counts. In a Fortune 500 setting, if one person's attention is diverted, the slack may be picked up by others. But in a 10-person startup, that gap can halt progress across the board.
Margot Bisnow's research on entrepreneurship in families underscores this point: kids who became successful founders often had parents who encouraged them to focus deeply on tasks they were passionate about, rather than dabbling superficially.
That same principle of 'deep work' applies to grown-up startups. Margot notes, 'A sense of flow and mastery emerges when individuals can hone in on what genuinely moves the needle, unburdened by frivolous tasks.'
Alyssa Convertini Lindquist and Kellie Pean, co-founders of Brand New, an integrated, cultural marketing agency, understand the power of focus.
Leading a smaller, focused core team, they've learned to keep everyone's eyes on the key deliverables for major clients, from 1800 Tequila to Live Nation. Lindquist says: 'Early on, we made the decision to avoid meaningless busywork. If a task doesn't serve our clients' goals or our own strategic growth, we cut it. Being focused allows for us to get the job done, while saving our client's money in the long run.'
Pean adds that the 'no-nonsense' mantra also applies to scaling decisions: "Whether we are driving new client growth or expanding our team, we always ask whether this decision is driving real value back to the business or if it's a nice-to-have? That central lens helps us focus our decision making and saves us from a lot of extraneous spending and complexity.'
By eschewing administrative bloat and tangential initiatives, Brand New's small team remains agile and free to react quickly to clients' needs and cultural moments like Coachella or Fashion Week.
This minimalism doesn't just deliver cost efficiency. Instead, it ensures that every ounce of energy available goes toward outcomes that matter.
Hilary Xherimeja, founder of sondr, a platform connecting Gen Z talent to the creative industry, emphasizes no-nonsense work because her employees 'hate wasted time.'
She explains: 'Gen Z wants a sense of meaning in their roles. They're entrepreneurial by nature and crave direct impact. If you bog them down with pointless tasks, you lose them, mentally and emotionally.'
Xherimeja's solution to the challenge is simple: kill the busywork even if it means changing the entire way you do business.
'Everything we do is pivoted around the central question of what am I moving forward today and how do we make that count?,' she explains, before noting how 'Gen Z is defined by its desire to challenge and change the infrastructure of work and how we do business. Many older leaders say Gen Z is adapting poorly to the workplace, but maybe it should be looked at the other way around.'
'If Gen Z was so much worse than the previous generations, how come they are so entrepreneurial', Xherimeja concludes, asking a question that can only be answered when we acknowledge how entrepreneurship is much more than the act of founding a company.
Ask any CEO about talent, and they'll likely bemoan the challenge of finding employees who see the bigger picture rather than just their paycheck.
A 'missionary' is someone passionately aligned with the company's purpose. A 'mercenary' is there for a short-term gain, financial or otherwise, and often checks out if immediate benefits fade.
Both have their place in the modern workplace, but when it comes to small and mighty teams, missionaries are the ones you want to attract and retain.
Behavioral psychologists often cite self-determination theory, which suggests that people are most engaged when their work aligns with internal motivations, and missionaries are created when their workplace enables their innate passion to contribute to something meaningful.
For small teams, this alignment is critical. A single mercenary attitude can dilute morale, undercut team cohesion, and create friction.
Margot Bisnow highlights that entrepreneurs are often raised by encouraging them to chase problems worth solving. She notes how 'in many ways entrepreneurship is a mission itself, centered around a core belief and goals accompanied by the confidence that it can all be accomplished'.
Cheryl Sutterfield-Jones, the new CEO of Cars for Kids, sees this missionary energy as essential in the nonprofit world in particular.
'We have a small but mighty staff, and many have been here for years. Our staff doesn't clock in just to do a job, they come to work in order to help at-risk students graduate.'
In a philanthropic context, it's relatively easy to spot if someone's heart isn't in it.
As Sutterfield-Jones puts it, 'When a team is small and every donation matters, a mercenary sticks out like a sore thumb because they're not invested in the cause.'
To reinforce that mission-driven culture, Cars for Kids begins by carefully selecting those who are aligned with its mission in the first place.
A glimmer of an entrepreneurial spirit, and the willingness to do whatever it takes to get the mission accomplished, goes a long way in the hiring process, and as Sutterfield-Jones notes, 'The sense of purpose our staff comes in with keeps them engaged through the inevitable funding ups and downs.'
In fact, carefully hiring for mission alignment is what allows the team to function as a cohesive unit.
'We're a platform for doing good, and everyone on my team is driven by that. If someone only cared about their salary, I doubt they'd fit in with us for long,' Sutterfield-Jones adds, before explaining how she looks for intangible traits, like a genuine curiosity about youth culture or personal experiences of feeling marginalized in creative spaces.
She says, 'These traits tell me someone wants to help fix the system, not just punch in and out.'
When resources are tight, trust is the glue that keeps a small team from fracturing under pressure. It is also what keeps a group of entrepreneurial spirits together when the going gets rough.
Trust in a colleague's competence, in their intentions, and in the organization's strategic direction fosters speed and autonomy. Without it, bottlenecks multiply with every decision second guessed or delayed.
Studies in neuroscience suggest that trust fosters an environment where the hormone oxytocin can flourish, helping people feel bonded and collaborative. It also short-circuits our fear responses, which in turn are productivity killers because it leads to defensive behaviors, such as hoarding information or avoiding risk.
In a small team, this negative cascade can be devastating, which is why fostering trust stands out as a crucial requirement particularly for them.
Margot Bisnow's insights about raising resourceful, confident children also apply here.
Parents who trust their kids to make small decisions and bounce back from failure nurture autonomy and creativity. Similarly, a manager who trusts an employee's judgment encourages them to proactively solve problems rather than waiting for top-down direction.
For Alyssa Convertini Lindquist and Kellie Pean at Brand New, trust underpins not just the co-founder relationship but the entire agency:
'When Kellie and I were starting out, my dad, a successful business owner for over 30+ years, provided us lots of sage advice. One thing that stuck out to me was his guidance that 'as long as one of you is the gas, and one is the brakes, you'll do great,' Convertini recalls.
'And that's trust in action: how can I drive expansion while Kellie can strategically control progress. Both are equally important– as is our ability to constantly balance each other out.
By modeling that trust at the top, they encourage employees to collaborate organically.
If an account manager has a big idea for an experiential marketing campaign, they don't have to jump through hoops to pitch it.
Pean explains:
'We keep formalities to a minimum. If someone has a good concept, we say, 'Awesome, run with it, keep us posted.' That autonomy is only possible because we trust they'll deliver.'
At Cars for Kids, Sutterfield-Jones leverages trust by ensuring new hires don't feel micromanaged. She says: 'I want them to feel like they can make a decision on how to handle a donor's issue without my immediate approval. That sense of empowerment, knowing you're trusted to do right by our mission, makes us nimble.'
In a startup environment—or any resource-constrained setting—the weight of success doesn't rest on the founder alone, as long as entrepreneurial mindsets are allowed to blossom at every level.
The founder's job is to cultivate an environment that celebrates deep focus (no nonsense), fosters a shared mission (missionaries over mercenaries), and cements trust as a cultural norm.
So the next time you wonder how to scale effectively while staying lean, remember these three principles and the leaders who live them.
After all, big problems don't always require big teams, just the right entrepreneurial mindsets, harnessed in the right way across the entire team.
