ABOUT CORPORATE PERFORMANCE, How to create a winning team

By Michalis Tsarbopoulos

One of the most popular topics for decades has been that of organizational or corporate performance. I have read several studies and experienced several approaches on the topic, most of them focusing on organizational design, performance measurement and incentives, promoting a team oriented culture, or change management. The mere fact that this topic has been around for ages, proves that this is not an easy one to tap. At the same time, it is one of high importance. There are hundreds of studies as well as consulting and industry papers that claim organizational performance and employee engagement are the critical success factors that separate winners from losers, best performing companies from laggards.

In this context, I have come to realize that there are some key principles that if adhered to, increase the chances of creating a winning team.

First of all, you should identify the critical roles within the organization and make sure that you employ the best people for those positions. This is absolutely critical and there is no way around it, as there is no substitute for getting the right people.

Secondly, you need to carefully assess the capabilities of the rest of your staff. In most cases you will not be able to change a big number of your employees, and even in those cases that you would have the resources to do so, you shouldn’t. Instead of replacing your low performing employees, rethink your business and operating model, and do a proper process reengineering tailored to the strong skills and weaknesses of your people, in order to maximize the output of your existing staff. In other words, instead of changing your people change the way your organization operates.

The third principle is to make sure everyone is engaged. Yes, everyone can and should be engaged, to a lesser or greater extent. This last bit is probably the most difficult to achieve as it requires a combination of actions.

Finally, and most importantly, you need to implement all of the above consistently and with discipline unless you want to jeopardize the ambitious project of turning your organization into a top performing one. For example, you may adjust your setup to make the most out of everyone’s skillset and you may even get them engaged in the beginning, but unless you put top brass people in the critical positions to lead the organization, you will not achieve much, and soon enough employee engagement will also start falling, creating a vicious cycle.

There is no substitute for getting the right people

During my first years in management consulting, a very wise experienced corporate veteran from one of my clients once told me: “Don’t tell me how to improve our performance by substituting our people. Anyone can do that. Tell me how to best use our existing staff to optimize efficiency and effectiveness”. This is very true, and more often than not it is the case that we do not have the luxury of getting everyone we need. However, you need to realize, other things being equal, any team is as good as its members. For any team or organization to succeed they need to have at their core a number of people that have all the right attributes to create a winning organization, otherwise they are destined to fail. The core team members need to be capable leaders, that are self-motivated, with a high degree of judgment, always acting in the best interest of the teams, even if that is at the cost of their personal priorities in the short term. In other words you need to find a number of highly-skilled “givers” (ref. “Give and Take: Why Helping Others Drives Our Success”, by Adam Grant) that have a “can-do” mentality.

Professional sports teams are a good area to look for relevant cases. There are many examples and stories of underdog teams that upset the favorites and won championships against all odds. Usually what is highlighted in those stories is the element of teamwork along with that of inspiring everyone to become engaged and committed to a common vision or goal. However, if you examine these cases more carefully you will realize that apart from those two elements, the common denominator in all those success stories was that these teams had a number of high performing team players comprising the core that inspired the rest of the players and helped create cohesion and collaboration. On the other hand, there have been many examples where teams consisting of super stars fell short of expectations as a result of poor team play. So, my point here is that you need the right people, not necessarily the top (individual) performers, but the right people. Good, solid performers that think how to act in the team’s best interest first, before anything else.

Make room for everyone

For every team and every organization to function properly you need a number of different people doing all sorts of tasks. Much like when you build a high performance car, a hand crafted watch, or a high end computer. Eventually, all parts must be in place, working together seamlessly, regardless of their individual value or function. You may get the fastest microprocessor, the best motherboard there is to find, install the best operating system, and yet if something as timid as the memory malfunctions, your PC will break down. The same is true about human ecosystems. Every team member needs to perform their role adequately and every unit needs to deliver according to expectations. As much as you need to find the best people for the core of your organization, you also need to ensure that everyone is properly utilized. There is no better recipe for this than to put the right person on the right job. Especially when managing large organizations, there is usually enough leeway to adjust the business and operational setup of your organization, in order to ensure that you make the most out of your workforce. Instead of trying to turn your people into something that they are not, try to tailor the tasks to their core competencies (yes every person has some) so that they can maximize their output. In order to highlight the above I will use two fictional examples: Jack Rabbit and John Dough.

Jack is a very outspoken and extrovert person. He likes being around others, is very good at networking, and excellent at selling. On the other hand, he has a hard time following up with clients or business issues in general, unsuitable for managing critical situations, has relatively poor judgment, and is not a big fan of supporting others’ causes. He is also the typical type of professional that anyone could characterize as superficial or even reckless, because he tends to act first and think last. In most cases, Jack would land a sales job at any organization, and would even do great in the beginning. However, with time and as more would be demanded from him in the context of consistency, teamwork, and prudence, he would become the typical scapegoat. The kind of employee that people are reluctant to work with, and he would probably be among the first to be relieved of their duties should the need for downsizing emerge. Letting Jack go and looking for a more balanced and rounded professional to fill his position, is not necessarily the right thing to do. Jack can be a very valuable resource as long as you make him responsible for the things he can do well, such as opening doors and closing deals, while at the same time you complement him with a couple of sales support colleagues to assist him in doing the follow up and maintaining the relationship with the clients.

John on the other hand is the typical employee who will stick to their 7-8 hour workday, will work very meticulously, but will not bother to go the extra mile. He would never act proactively, think outside the box, or take any initiative to divert from standard procedures one bit. I know some would rush to characterize him as bureaucrat, slow, or even lazy. On the other hand, large organizations are full of “John Doughs” and that may not necessarily be a bad thing. Try to think of all the tedious tasks that need to be performed by your organization, that are necessary to be executed in time and without errors. John Dough is the ideal candidate for such tasks. John Dough will do for your team – and he will do that within his comfort zone – all the things your star performers or your “thinkers” would refrain from doing.

So, before you rush to let anyone go, reassess their core strengths, examine if there is room to exploit their capabilities and if necessary redeploy them.

Get everyone fully engaged

Employee engagement is probably the most challenging topic of all. A lot of companies try to accomplish this by establishing proper incentive mechanisms, or by doing extended internal communications that emphasize the importance of employee engagement. The truth of the matter is that very few organizations manage a high degree of employee engagement. As a consequence of that, managers tend to design complex matrix organization setups, with very detailed and exhaustive processes in order to ensure that their staff will do their jobs the way they are supposed to. Unfortunately, complex organizations and exhaustive procedures help create a vicious cycle whereby employees that are by nature proactive, self-motivating and self-confident (exactly the type you want to have on your team) get disappointed and gradually disengaged, while those that tend to be slow, bureaucratic, and hesitant find the perfect shield for their comfort zone. In order for people to get engaged with their work and with their employer they need to feel involved, they need to feel secure and they need to feel appreciated. Aristotle, in his work “Nicomachean Ethics” more than two thousand years ago, outlined the steps that any individual needs to undertake in their journey to achieve happiness. It is exactly those steps, or the principles behind those steps, which will help any manager create the proper engaging business environment for her staff.

To cultivate an environment where everybody feels involved and important you need to focus a lot on internal and continuous communication. You need to communicate a common vision across all members of the organization, no matter the task or the level, and to properly disseminate every important piece of information that is directly or indirectly related to their mandate. People that are kept outside the loop start distancing themselves from the team and soon enough they are fully detached.

Furthermore, you need to make everyone feel safe and secure, relieved from any stress related to target setting. Obviously target setting and performance measurement are important tools for every team that wants to excel, but at the same time your colleagues need to feel adequately protected. There are people that when confronted with challenging targets and pushed to their limits, increase their performance, but these are usually the exceptions. Most people reduce their output due to increased pressure and stress, and some may even break down. The challenge for every manager or team leader is to strike the right balance between pressure stemming from target setting and the feeling of security and support. People can usually take the heat as long as they feel that they will be judged in a fair way, taking into consideration their own efforts, the things under their control as well as all exogenous factors that are beyond their control. Hence, all leaders should reassure their teams that they have nothing to fear as long as they do their best, no matter the stakes. Laying out such a security net around your people will help them unfold their talents and maximize their output even in the most critical situations.

Showing adequate appreciation for your staff’s efforts is probably the most important driver of employee satisfaction and engagement, and managers should remind themselves to do that more often than not. As much as it is important to provide constructive feedback to people about how and in which respect they should improve, it is equally important to praise their efforts and actions when they either achieve a good level of performance or when they try their best. People are who they are and, although with proper training and continuous efforts they can improve their performance and enhance their skills, they can do so only to a certain extent. Some can go a long way, while others can only achieve marginal improvements. You should carefully study the personalities and potential of each and every one of your team members and adjust your feedback and pressure accordingly. For example, if you are dealing with a colleague that is lacking analytical capabilities and keeps jumping to conclusions it does not make sense to keep pushing her to become a good analyst. Chances are you will waste your time, and you will make her feel sad, disappointed, helpless, or even angry – depending on her idiosyncrasy. Instead, you should identify her core professional strengths and put her in a different role where analytical skills would not be required.

In any case, you should focus on assessing actions and behaviors in the context of aiming for a constructive, transparent, sincere, and balanced functioning of your teams, praise and reward the right behaviors and openly criticize and even penalize the wrong ones. If you want your people to become and stay engaged, it is critical that everyone feels they are judged in a fair way for what they do and not for who they are. Reward those that are proactive and try their best for the organization’s common interests, forgive their mistakes and, at the same time, show zero tolerance to those that think only of themselves. If you tend to penalize people for making mistakes they will end up not making any decisions or applying any judgment. The best asset any organization has is its people. Instead of spending too much time on designing the perfect organization and processes (which, by the way, do not exist in reality) focus on motivating your people to use their brains and judgment. Nurture an environment where everybody feels secure and motivated to take initiative, be proactive and, if necessary, go beyond the rules, processes and the silos of the organization, in order to best serve the common interests of the team, the company and so on. Otherwise, you might be better off replacing you staff with robots.

Conclusion

Corporate performance as much as it is important, it is a very challenging and complex issue to address. Any manager that wants to have a chance at creating a high performing team should make sure that she has enough talent on her team, that she has put the right person in the right role, and that she cultivates an environment that reinforces the engagement of her staff. All of this is easier said than done, but you need to start somewhere, and the sooner you put this at the top of your priorities list, the better.