A Case for Teamwork

Your team members are your most valuable asset - but how many businesses recognise this?

Over the years I have been involved in the planning processes of many firms, both in New Zealand and overseas.  Too often I have found that a company's team members are its most neglected asset.

A successful business is one where the managers and team members feel no need to "withhold the truth" and can talk about sensitive subjects.  Stated more practically, the team members' happiness is ranked No 1, customer happiness is No 2 and cash flow No 3.  If No 1 and No 2 are right, then No 3 will follow as a natural consequence.

In building a great "team culture" there are four important factors:

Knowing team members' goals (and assisting with their development

Happiness is a state of mind.  If you don't know what makes your team members happy then how can you as their leader help them meet both their individual and the firm's goals?

Your team member's appraisal form should be structured to cover all the matters that they are accountable for.  This includes the firm's purpose for being, the team's well-being, the firm's core values, personal and firm goals, self-development and being pro-active.

Your one-to-one meeting with team members is your opportunity to ascertain their aspirations for their future and how the firm can help.

Involving the team in charting the firm's direction

From my observation and involvement with companies over the past 30 years, I suspect that less than 10% of them have any sort of business plan, let alone involve team members in its construction.  No wonder many firms struggle when charting a new course in the business development field.
Most team members want to be involved when a business plan is being formulated.  They are looking for new challenges.

How do you get team members fully committed?  Here are some suggestions:
Ø Employ a mentor or facilitator to identify the team members' key frustrations and great loves.
Ø Hold a planning day where the firm's strengths and areas for improvement are openly discussed in workshops.  Workshop team leaders then report findings to the whole group.
Ø Team members decide priorities that need to be worked on in the short and long-term.
Ø Back in the business environment, working parties work on specific objectives, and are set key tasks to perform in respect of these priorities.
Ø Progress on the recommendations is monitored and team members informed (good AND bad news).
Ø Once the team members see that managers are prepared to "walk their talk" they become more interested in the journey.  When they observe that their suggestions are being implemented they will eventually become committed to the process.
Ø If the managers haven't developed a clear direction of where they want to go, ie. their purpose for being, vision, core values etc, then this needs to be sorted out near the beginning of the exercise.

Encouraging team members to achieve both their own and the team's goals

Adopt a policy of catching team members doing things right (instead of wrong).

As leaders, managers must be aware of this responsibilities to the people they are entrusted to lead.  Encouragement as a leader is about toughness and tenderness, guts and grace, firmness and fairness, fortitude and gratitude, passion and compassion.

Monitoring progress

Chartered Accountants are usually pretty good at monitoring the financial key performance indicators (KPIs) of businesses, but seldom monitor the non-financial key performance indicators.

Some of the most important non-financial KPIs include:

Ø Performance appraisals with individual team members.  Encourage team members on the journey to their destiny.
Ø Culture - yes you can measure the factors that make up the culture you are trying to nurture.  For example, if one of your firm's values or unifying principles is teamwork, devise a series of questions that relate to that.  Get team members to rank the principles (anonymously) from 1 to 5 (1=poor, 5 = excellent).  Work out the average for each question and an average overall.  The results will show you which aspects of teamwork you need to improve.  Also, in six months' time you will know whether the overall score has risen or fallen.
Ø Communication objectives - what, who, when and how.  Specific objectives in each of these areas can be monitored.
Ø Customer service - client advisory boards or surveys of customer satisfaction can be undertaken at least six-monthly.