Building your team
How to build a solid management team.
“Alone we can do so little; together we can do so much”. – Helen Keller
When I look up the definition of team, I found the following: “A group forming one side in a competitive setting whether a sport, game, business etc”.
Have you ever been inside a company, checking out the culture and the style of leadership, and witness people watering artificial plants? These are not bad people, or lazy people. For me these are team members working in a non-performance-based company. In these companies there is no real accountability, performance goals or any “competitive setting”. In a non-performance organization there are less measurable outcomes and more “paragraphs or subjective measures”.
Imagine you own a hockey team and you missed tonight’s game, so you catch up with your coach and asked “did we win”? The coach responds with a paragraph, lots of words, explaining that everyone tried hard, the other team goalie was really good, etc. Heads up, paragraph answers are bad. The true and most simple answer should have been, “We lost”! There is a reason for the scoreboard at the hockey game. In a performance-based organization there is a reason that after every game there is measured performance feedback. Each player, physiotherapist and coach on the team have a defined role and everyone knows what winning is. Otherwise we could take away the scoreboard and just give every player a puck! “Dieting is the only game where you win by losing” – Karl Lagerfeild. So, when building a winning team, I look to recruit both attitude and aptitude. But of these two, the attitude matters most. Having a skilled colonel who has a bad attitude just gets our soldiers killed faster.
I have been involved with over forty companies in the last thirty-five years and have witnessed what made winning teams. I boil it down to these five basics:
Aligned and very well communicated purpose... repeat - strong communications
Role clarity
Regular and measurable performance feedback
Creative abrasion
Feedback and sharing the winning
Each member of the team knows three things:
What is the purpose of the company?
What is winning for the company?
What is winning for my role?
“When building a winning team, I look to recruit both attitude and aptitude. But of these two, the attitude matters most.”
Building successful teams means the team knows what success is. The purpose statement is one of the most important. Paul Leblanc writes about Finding your “Why” in a separate Blog. This does matter! People want to know why are we storming that hill?
Regular communications of all kinds are so important to your team. I am a fan of “walk arounds” where informal visits and connections happen. Also, regular town hall meetings, email updates and what are on the walls always reminding our team of what is important and who we are. The vital importance of role clarity cannot be overlooked. What exactly do you do? Each team member should know what their respective role is and what they do supports our company winning and have measurable targets. I am not a fan of intangible or subjective targets but rather real measures. Remember the coach who responded with a paragraph... come on, we lost the game! The scoreboard does not lie.
New England Patriots Coach Bill Belichek and Quarterback Tom Brady are the most winning coach and quarterback combination in the history of NFL football. They are known for their mantra to everyone on the team: “DO YOUR JOB”. In sports, there is feedback after every game. When it comes to regular and measurable performance feedback, I am a huge fan of monthly reviews of each team member performance and a formal performance feedback quarterly...yes, 12 performance meetings plus four very serious ones. These are two-way meetings. Does our team member have the tools to win? No winning team I know of does only annual performance evaluations. The greatest asset of any company is its people, and this is where leaders need to spend the time.
“Leaders live by choice and not by accident. Well, the members of the team live by choice too. Do they perform like owners or renters? I want owners.”
Now number four is Harvard Business School’s “ Creative Abrasion”. I love this one. This is about the truth. If we have a high maintenance, low results performer, everyone knows. Everyone also knows that we are allowing them to be here. That affects the entire team, our team morale and also reflects whether we are serious about winning. Always look for the Three A’s in your team member. When they make a mistake, they ACKOWLEDGE they made a mistake; they own it and it’s on them. They APOLOGIZE in person, eye to eye. Then they ACT to fix the mistake.
With each company that I am a partner, owner or on the Board, I always want to review the organization chart monthly with each person’s name, their compensation all in and two simple bullets on what do they do for the company and for the team. These are numbers wherever possible. Numbers do not lie and this simple one-page illustration should form the basis of a raw conversation of who are our keepers (let’s tell them we love them), who may need help (let’s help them and ensure they know we have their back) and those who may be best with a different company.
When it comes to feedback and sharing our success, never provide negative feedback to any team member in front of any other team members. We want our people to be successful and we always want to treat everyone with respect. Be very clear on how your company provides and receives feedback, and how you share the wins. It’s not complicated, if the company is not successful, then it does not have the money to share.
I have been part of start-ups, traditional small to medium established companies and very well established large public traded companies and with all, our team knowing how compensation was structured, how it worked and why it worked that way, was very important. No different than our hockey team analogy, our top players make more money. When the team is winning, we have more to share.
It is deeply satisfying to win with a team.