If you were starting out in a rapidly growing company would you start by embedding some best practice and then start to build out a team or start by building a small but mighty team and tackle it as a group?

I am a firm believer that what you need to grow and what you need to scale are two different things - including leadership, team processes, and strategy. This means that I have found it easier to start with a small seed group to build your framework for operating. This has a couple of advantages, including reducing biases for certain processes and ensuring multiple perspectives are included from the beginning. 

When starting out in a rapidly growing company with a small team, the main focus should be on building the team. While there may be some best practices that can be embedded right away, such as documentation and customer feedback, it's important to establish a strong foundation of team members who can work together effectively.

As the team grows, especially during times of rapid growth, some processes may need to change in order to set the team up for success. For example, a well-defined onboarding process can help new team members get up to speed quickly and ensure that they are aligned with the company's vision and priorities.

Once the team is established, it is important to empower them to define their best practices as a group. With a diverse team, this collaborative effort may result in new best practices that are not yet known to me, as their backgrounds and experiences are different from mine. Allowing the team to take ownership of their work and decision-making can lead to a better understanding of what makes sense in terms of the company's maturity and focus. By fostering a culture of trust and teamwork through this collaborative approach, the company can ensure its success as it continues to grow and evolve.

I would work on doing both. When you start out in a new role it's important to get quickly up to speed, create a plan and start adding value.

Most likely you'll see many opportunities to make things better now that are a light lift. So, I would add these best practices (could be simple things like getting a new tool, email updates, adding a new ceremony to the team), while you figure out the ideal team composition and start filling those roles.

A potential way to think about this might be to pick several best practices you can embed in the first 3-6 months and start on those while you work on hiring and building the team. Do that in parallel and hopefully within those 6 months you'll have some new additional people you can work with on this.

My bias is always to start building a small but mighty team of A players. A players will make magic happen despite a lack of process. Process is helpful in larger organizations (and to help get more production out of less skilled players), so put more process in as you grow and things get more complex, and don't worry about optimizing for a team that's not there yet.