Business
A lot of companies refer to their work groups as teams. Let’s talk about that for a moment.Imagine you’re at the World Series, and you saw the outfielders staring at their iPhones while the opposing team was at-bat. Or, what if the quarterback of your favorite football team wandered onto the field while yawning at the beginning of a game? Or, if you’re a basketball fan, what if, during a playoff game, half the team stood around with their hands on their hips talking to each other while their other teammates were hustling on the court?I’m quite serious. Statistically, there is greater than a sixty percent chance you have people like this on YOUR team – coming in every day doing less than the bare minimum to get a paycheck.So, how about a real-life example. Several years ago, in one of my roundtable groups, there was a business owner who often talked about the struggles she had with her business partner. They had opposite personalities, which should have benefitted the growth of the business, but unfortunately, it was a detriment. Her partner was brilliant in terms of industry knowledge and the ability to bring in new business, but his alter ego was that of a bully for his style of leadership. Morale at her company was low and the turnover was high. She had reasons to believe some of the key players and top producers would resign if things didn’t change.I was hired to do an internal culture assessment, and after numerous interviews with her people, her fears were confirmed. The culture was very unstable.When the two partners were presented with the evidence, they agreed to restructure their relationship so that she would be in charge of managing, leading, and nurturing all employees. He was going to play to his strengths in growing the business by focusing more on sales, managing vendor partners, corporate strategy, and being the visionary for the company.Once the employees were aware of the change, I provided a strategy and framework for building a culture of high-performance, accountability, and continuous improvement. Here are the components:1. Replace the dreaded annual review with ongoing face-to-face, in-person, real-time feedback. 2. Keep employees in the know about what is going on at the company through newsletters, summits, an intranet, and town hall meetings. 3. Invest in training. A few thousand dollars and a couple of days out of the office for sales, service, leadership, technical, industry or human resources training generates a very nice ROI. 4. Invest in modern tools and systems to improve efficiency. 5. Implement a culture of learning from failures.6. Organize semi-annual appreciation days. The only way people can understand and respect the role of their counterparts is to spend a day in their shoes. Once every six months, production spends a day with salespeople, and salespeople spend a day in production to understand each other’s challenges and struggles. 7. Clean house. Going through the office to declutter is both healthy and invigorating. 8. Subscribe to a process for solving problems efficiently and effectively. One of my favorites comes from Jake Knapp, the author of “SPRINT” – a book that provides a method for solving big problems and testing new ideas in as little as five days.