Month: May 2020

Categories
Business Strategy Small Business Recruitment

Chapter 2 of Building a High Performing Team On Purpose — Your Business Strategy

This is Chapter 2 in the 8 part self-guided series, Building A High Performing Team On Purpose.


There is a scene in Seinfeld where Jerry and George talk about how people like to say “salsa”. 

In business, “strategic” and “strategy” are in the same bucket. A lot of businesses believe they have a strategy. Most management teams use this term loosely and will reference their plans or a set of initiatives designed to improve the business as their strategy. They may describe “strategic goals” as achieving 20% growth year on year or similar generic outcomes.  It is usually when they are talking about improving a part of the business, but this doesn’t mean they are working on a strategy. It could just be an operational improvement, which can be valuable but is not a strategy.  

It’s important to get the language right because this reduces the chance that we are kidding ourselves and confusing others. One of the simplest definitions of business strategy is “where you are going to play and how you are going to win?”. What I believe is just as important is where you are not going to play and what is not going be pivotal to winning.

I’m not going to go into too much depth about strategy here, because there is a lot that would need to be written and that’s a different topic. However, strategy in building a high performing team on purpose is highly relevant. This is for three distinct reasons:

  1. If you have the discipline to say what you are not, then you have a better chance of being what you want to be
  2. If you only deal with customers who value what you do, then the measures of success will be aligned to your strengths
  3. If your organisational design is aligned to your strategy, then the trade-offs will allow you to have better talent in pivotal areas

I’ll explain this as we work through this chapter.  


1. If you have the discipline to say what you are not, then you have a better chance of being what you want to be.

Defining what you are not is more powerful than defining what you are. Companies will often talk about being the best such-and-such company in the world. For instance, we are going to be the best motor vehicle company in the world! What does that actually mean? That’s like being the best runner in the world. A sprinter is vastly different to a marathon runner. Running the steeple chase is different from the 100m hurdles. Rather than saying you are a 100m sprinter, say you are not a marathon runner.  

It’s not about being generically better than everyone, it’s about being specifically better in a specific way to a specific group of people.

There is a very simple exercise that I conduct with business leaders in order to get the discussion going on strategy. It goes like this:

You have three areas of focus below:

  • Operational Excellence: How consistently your processes deliver your product or service to your customers.
  • Customer Intimacy: How much you know the intricacies of each customer and deliver value to their specific needs.
  • Product Innovation: How innovative your products or services are when compared to the rest of the market.

You have 11 points to allocate based on what you want your business to be best at.  

For example, you could go: 

  • 3 on Operational Excellence
  • 5 on Customer Intimacy
  • 3 on Product Innovation

This means that your execution and products are at the standard of the industry, but you are highly tailored in your approach to meet the specific needs of customers. If you switched the 5 from Customer Intimacy to Operational Excellence, you would then be reducing your tailoring to lead the industry in excellent delivery.

So, what do you choose? If you have several business partners, it would be worthwhile completing the exercise separately and then comparing notes.

There are many models and to develop a proper strategy you need to go much deeper than this. Completing this exercise doesn’t mean you have a strategy. It is a simple way to look at what you are not going to be.  

The message is to define what you are not and have the discipline to apply this. This gives you a better chance of being what you want to be.


2. If you only deal with customers who value what you do, then the measures of success will be aligned to your strengths

Another simple exercise I like to perform is to draw a picture of your target customer – down to the level of detail of what they had for breakfast. Now do the same with your “enemy” customers who kind of look like your target market but give you a world of headaches. What your target customer value should align to is what you are striving to be best at. What your enemy customers value should be irrelevant. Energy trying to please your enemy customers takes away from building capability to serve your target customers.

Some of you might be nodding your head right now but are wondering how this relates directly to building a high performing team?  Well, the first is that a high performing team is a generic term that needs to be applied to the specific. A high performing team in what? Basketball? Football? Even within the same sport, is it a run and gun team who plays at a fast pace or is it a team that has strengths in hustle and defence. Whilst all teams need to be somewhat proficient in everything, the better teams are outstanding in one or two areas and all players are geared towards this strategy.

Transferring this across to business, if you have a team who are all great at selling high value products and deeply understanding customer needs and if you have processes that are set up to deliver to the high end market, then if you take on a lot of low margin high volume deals then this is likely to cause stress and frustration for your team and not play to their strengths. 

Who likes doing their best and finding that no matter what they do, they can’t seem to win? Well, not many people I would think, but certainly not high performers. High performers cannot stand to be in a position where they are not able to be a high performer no matter what they do. Those people will become disengaged and eventually leave.  

If your strategy is not clear and/or you are not disciplined enough to focus on your target market, then you will have dilution. If your business is diluted across a broad range of customers that includes your enemy customers, your people will be feeling increased stress dealing with unhappy people.  

Here is the kicker: 

One thing that causes stress for your people is dealing with unhappy customers. Who likes dealing with people telling you that you stuffed up? That you are no good? The additional re-work that takes place also causes stress, because people are working longer hours and working on things that sap their energy. The role that they signed up for may not be the role they want.  Fixing the issues may also not be their strength, as opposed to delivering value to your target market.

The stress that this creates for your employees will build tension between them and your managers. If your managers feel powerless to change it, they will become disengaged. Your business will be less profitable, and you will not be motivated to invest in sourcing more business in your target market because you’ll be busy putting out the fires caused by your current unhappy customers and employees. 


Conversely…

If you are delivering value to your target market and not trying to please your enemy customers, you have a competitive advantage in attracting and retaining talent. You can offer talented employees an experience that is taking full advantage of their talents, without placing them in situations that highlight their weaknesses. You can offer an enjoyable workday filled with happy customers who love what they do. This is what a good Employee Value Proposition should always include, which I will touch on in later chapters.

Having a clear strategy that allows you to deal only with customers who value what you do, gives your people a better chance of being high performers and gives you a better chance of attracting and retaining high performers.


3. If your organisational design is aligned to your strategy, then the trade-offs will allow you to have better talent in pivotal areas

The first two concepts of this chapter are on having a clear strategy, focusing on delivering value to your target customers and avoiding your enemy customers. If you have bought into the concept of this being an important part of building a high performing team on purpose, then what are the steps you need to take to enable your team to deliver on this value?

Some of the questions worth asking to help define this are:

  • What value do we want to provide for what type of customer? What is the pain we alleviate and why do they care?
  • What does my business need to do specifically in order to deliver this value? What are the deliverables and in what way?
  • What capability does my business need to have in order to achieve these deliverables?
  • What part do my people play? What do my people need to be best at? What can I live with them not being best at? What do they not need to be good at at all?  
  • What are the positions that are going to be most pivotal in delivering my competitive advantage?
  • What are the behaviours I am looking for in my people that helps them be the best at that thing? What do they need to know? What else do they need?
  • How do they need to best work together? How do they best work with customers and suppliers?

To give you an example, I founded a recruitment company called Inject, which focuses on hiring talent with the right attitude, aptitude and behaviours. The target market is small-medium business owners who are challenging their industry or delivering a premium solution to their customers. The capability required is to have strengths in analysing people, thinking outside the box in terms of sourcing strategy and knowledge of what constitutes high performance. 

There is zero requirement to be good at cold calling, as this is not what the business does at all. There is no requirement to be able to sell a candidate. There is a requirement to present a complete assessment of a candidate accurately and transparently. The way they need to best work with their customers to learn deeply about what it’s like to run a business and how the impact of one poor performer can bring down a small business. To properly empathise with the business owner and present information that gives them confidence there is an alignment.  

The talent strategy at Inject is starkly different to most recruitment companies, therefore the target market for talent is completely different. What people are hired on, what they are trained on, what they are measured and rewarded on is completely different. There is no competition for talent because the overlap of what they do is so small. There is nothing particularly wrong with traditional recruitment companies, it’s just that there are thousands more like them.  

Are you utilising your labour force in a way that creates an inimitable competitive advantage, or have you become much the same as everyone else?

The capability to deliver your strategy comes from your people. If you don’t have a clear strategy, then you are just trying to hire generally good employees. You aren’t looking for them to be great at a smaller number of things. Then if you place these people in situations where your company is not best at any of those things, then they are constantly dealing with unhappy customers. When you are dealing with angry people each day and feel powerless to do anything about it, you end up unhappy yourself and don’t deliver great service.

Your talent strategy also needs to be a “strategy” and that means trading off one thing for another. It’s not about generically good. Work out what you are turning up and what you are turning down, what you are investing in and what you are leaving to one side. Having a talent strategy that supports a business strategy gives you a much better chance of building a high performing team on purpose.


I recommend you take the following three actions:

  • Clarify what your strategy is and make it crystal clear. Beware of confusing your strategy for your plans, initiatives and tactics. Be clear on the trade offs you are making.
  • Be disciplined about who your customers are and as much as possible only deal with those who are truly in your target market and are equipped to serve. Doing so will set your employees up for success (subject to making sure the business operations are actually set up to properly deliver on your strategy).
  • Build your organisational design off your strategy and by doing so define the capabilities you need to be great at to deliver your strategy (more on this in the next section).


You can read the first chapter of Building A High Performing Team on Purpose here.

Categories
Business Strategy

Chapter 1 of Building a High Performing Team on Purpose —Transitioning Your Workforce Back After COVID-19


This is Chapter 1 in the 8 part self-guided series, Building A High Performing Team On Purpose.

As we emerge squinty-eyed from the cocoons that were our WFH stations, the question on a lot of minds now is when can we go back to normal? For many business owners, the end to the COVID-19 crisis cannot come soon enough. The stress, financial pressure and workload have been enormous and in a lot of cases without the financial return. It would be understandable if business owners just wanted to go back to how things were as fast as possible, pretending the crisis were over and it was business as usual.

There is no normal though. There may be a new normal coming up, but we don’t quite know what that is yet.

The return to work is a “moment of truth” for your employees.

A moment of truth is a point in the customer journey that has the potential for heightened emotions, whether those are positive or negative. The employees who work in your business also happen to be people (for the time being). So, as employees they also have moments of truth that have a heightened emotional potential. Returning to work amid a global pandemic due to a silently contagious virus that has killed hundreds of thousands of people might just be one of those situations. How you handle the return to work will be remembered by your staff. This entire period we are in will be studied for decades and perhaps centuries. Your kids and grandchildren will ask you what it was like. 

She’ll be right mate.

Possibly. But maybe she won’t and that’s when the steps you took to look after your team will come under the microscope. More than that, it’s how your team perceives your approach and what message this sends to them about their value. This is not just about them; it is about their colleagues and their colleague’s families. Especially in times like these, words mean less than actions.

You cannot build a high performing team if your team doesn’t trust you or think you are looking out for their well-being. If they don’t think you have their best interests at heart, then when you need their help to outperform the competition, they may be a little less present – or not present at all. It is worthwhile putting in the effort to have the right plan for returning. 


There are three leadership challenges from COVID-19 coming up that I liken to the Three Bears. There is what seems like a little challenge, which is to get everyone back to work. But we all know that if we get bitten by a little bear it still hurts. We have a medium-sized challenge, which is how can we find the most productive way to work ongoing now that we have had a taste of working from home en masse. Finally, this situation creates an opportunity to look at your business in a completely different way than we have never seen before — the big, grizzly bear.


The Little Bears

We have two lifts in our building and to adhere to the 1.5m rule, only two people are allowed per lift. With four levels and 25 people per floor, if everyone arrived at 8.30am it would be chaos. Fortunately, taking the stairs is an option. But what if you were in a skyscraper and on the 30th floor? 

This is just one, small problem that you will face with having your team return to the office.

This transition period ahead of you is an opportunity to demonstrate to your people what type of leader you are. It is a time where there can be significant apprehension and it is easy to show no empathy if we don’t have the same concerns. Empathy is an important part of being a good leader and so each business leader is on center stage right now, whether we like it or not. 


To keep things simple, from a practical level, think through the following questions:

  1. What is our plan for returning?
  2. How do we make our workplace safe in the circumstances?
  3. When, how and whom should we consult with?
  4. In addition to physical health, what is our approach to supporting the mental health of our people?

To help you with this process, I have fleshed each one out a bit more below.


Little Bear #1: What is our plan for returning?

Every workplace is different, and every employee is different. So, you need a plan that factors in these differences before they become issues for you.

Think through the steps that your employees will take to return. 

  • What are the potential issues? 
  • What might be the concerns of each employee and/or group? 

Rather than just listing “employees”, consider each person and/or group. Look at it through multiple lenses. It’s not just finance or sales. It’s parents, non-parents, those who look after an elderly parent, those with anxiety and those who have had their head in the sand this whole time. Once you sort all the different groups, you can then start to flesh out what to do.

Consider even just one topic around the lifts. To avoid the lift chaos described above, you could consider different start and finish times where you can. On top of the lift fiasco, there will be an increased number of cars on the roads due to people avoiding public transport. You could also consider bringing people partially back a few days a week as this could mitigate issues because people aren’t at the workplace as much. 

What about different shifts? If there is one person who is tested as positive, you reduce the likelihood of infection to fewer people. 


Little Bear #2: How do we make our workplace safe in the circumstances?

Making the workplace safe is so often one of those statements that is hard to refute (who wouldn’t want a safe workplace?) but doesn’t always follow in practice. It’s like how people who smoke don’t actually think it’s good for you. They just haven’t prioritised quitting or else don’t care about their health. My message to you is to do something and access the resources available. Get some people around a virtual table and talk through what might be some of the risks or challenges. 

To get you started, below are some thought starters. You should do what works for your business and people.

  • What is our approach to hygiene based on surfaces (e.g. doorknobs) and people (e.g. hand sanitizer)? 
  • How does the 1.5m rule impact our current desk spacing?
  • How do we keep good hygiene top of mind for people without eyes rolling?
  • How do we manage people who may have symptoms, both reportedly when absent and if someone were to show up with symptoms?

What about when working offsite? Think about the following:

  • How do they deal with practices at a customer’s site that is not the same as your office? 
  • How do they deal with the handshake? 
  • What if too many people get into the lift? 


Little Bear #3: When, how and who should we consult with?

As a business leader, you might often feel like the weight of the world is on your shoulders. People are coming to you for answers. It might seem logical to think you need to have all the answers – you don’t. Go to your team with your initial thoughts earlier than what you feel comfortable with. This means your plan won’t be perfect and it can allow others to fill in the blanks. Not only it is a legal requirement to consult with your staff on health and safety matters, but it will also help them feel part of it as well.

Consider the following:

  • Who in my business is vulnerable due to their age, pre-existing illness or other factors?
  • Do I know my team well enough to ascertain who has vulnerable people they live with?
  • How capable are my leaders with responding tactfully to the concerns raised by staff, no matter how ridiculous they may sound to the person hearing it?
  • How do I have the conversation with an employee whose concerns have been addressed and I need to now ask them to follow my direction to attend work?
  • How do I encourage people to download the COVIDSafe app, without breaking the law around mandating it?


Little Bear #4: In addition to physical health, what is our approach to supporting the mental health of our people?

This is something that can often be left behind because we often can’t “see” mental health issues. As much as we are now taking a precautious approach to a virus you cannot see and, in some cases, without symptoms, mental health needs to be treated as a significant risk as well. 

Consider the following:

  • How should my disposition as a leader be to allow people to be alert, but not alarmed?
  • How do we create an environment free from racism and incorrect assumptions?
  • What are our support structures to assist people to seek help?
  • Given I am so busy running a business and dealing with the practical matters of COVID-19, how do I remain observant as a leader and not lose sight of how my people are feeling?
  • To what extent are the leaders in my business skilled at resolving conflicts constructively?
  • Do we have people working in roles that allow them to do what they do best every day, or has that now changed?
  • Do I have a clear view of what the workload is like and whether or not people are starting to spiral into dysfunctional patterns?

Sometimes managers are hesitant to ask questions for fear of what the answer may be, so they don’t ask the question in the first place. But if managers have the skill and motivation to be able to deal with any questions that come their way, they will be more likely to do so.


The Mid-sized Bear: Keeping people motivated and productive

We used to work in a co-working space, whereby we had our own office and a lot of shared spaces. One morning I was conducting a workshop and couldn’t get the projector to work properly. I found one of my employees in the office and asked them if they could help me. I really appreciated their assistance and then later that day, I had to remind her of our work practices. She had come into the office early to work on a Frog (a task that saps your energy), but her mistake was sitting in our office. So, I’d found her, and received help for my problem, but she didn’t get to get done what she wanted.  Fortunately, we have a great rapport and could joke about it not letting me find her in the office.,   

The whole concept that we should come into the office at the same time each day and sit at the same desk, whilst performing significantly different tasks has always been ludicrous to me. I know it is hard to avoid sometimes, but mostly we do it due to preconceived views on what working actually means. 

This is a mid-sized bear that requires both practical and cultural reflection.


How should you be thinking about this?

Our company values include one that reads “1 + 1 = 3” in that “a scattered effort is a wasted effort. Focus on a few combined actions to deliver a superior outcome.” We know that interruptions are right up there when it comes to productivity killers. Yet if we all sit amongst each other without an approach to make the social interaction flow, then this increases stress. That is, being social and interacting with others positively can improve social ties and decrease stress. However, when that becomes dysfunctional and stress levels go up, not the least bit due to less time to achieve more. Whilst there are techniques to politely excuse yourself, you also don’t want people thinking you have a bladder problem because you were “just on your way to the bathroom” every time you needed to end a conversation.

Now that people have been working from home and you have trusted them to do so, do they now become less trusted? 

But we can’t see if people are slacking off.

Clearly, there are people who are more disciplined than others and whom you saw produce more work than others. You knew this even though they were working from home. So, the indicators were actually there. If you don’t find a way to integrate the good from working from home with the good from working at the office, you might find that people are less engaged than before because they have been shown what it is like (think about when you first went to a Gold Class movie, how can you go completely back to regular?)


Tips on how to approach this challenge

Ask yourself these 7 questions:

  1. Where and when can people perform deep work? This is concentrated work that must be free from interruptions. Do you tell people that they can work from home or the café downstairs, but don’t actively encourage it? 
  2. How do you go about grouping interruptions? What are the little paper cuts to everyone’s day that is giving them adult-induced attention deficit disorder?
  3. Are your leaders equipped to deal with coaching your people on effective time management techniques? Or are they the worst culprits when it comes to be inefficient?
  4. Do you have issues with one or two employees that results in you having policies designed to not let them get away with things, which results in restricting the freedom and ultimately the performance of the others (especially your high performers)?
  5. Can you measure the right activities that result in high performance, regardless of where the employee is? Do your people even know what they are?
  6. Do you have a culture of unrealistic email responses whereby if you don’t respond to emails in an hour, you get asked why you haven’t responded?
  7. Do you have a death by meetings culture where the meetings run for too long and they drain more energy from people than they give back?


The Big, Grizzly Bear: How does my business need to look to build a team that provides me a competitive advantage?

There is a perfect storm of change that is happening that we have never seen before. Even before COVID-19, the anticipation of 2020 was around how super trends were influencing the world of work. This situation gives you an opportunity to look at your business in a completely different way to what you did before. I don’t necessarily see this as being a whole bunch of new knowledge that makes you feel like you’re in the dark. No-one is going to sound the gun to get started, you need to get on the bike now before others do.


How to think or approach this challenge

You need to turn up the dial on the fundamentals of executing a clear business strategy and high performing culture.  What is important to remember is that the areas discussed in this series have a multiplying effect. Doing one in isolation is not enough.

For instance:

  1. The more targeted you are on your business strategy, the clearer your organisational design becomes
  2. The clearer your organisational design is, the more specific your role design can be
  3. The more specific your role design is, the better chance you have of identifying what is teachable versus what you need to hire for (i.e. the type of talent needed)
  4. If your approach to learning and development is training the right things in a way that has an impact, then you can afford to hire based on talent
  5. If you have a clear Employee Value Proposition (that is actually true) then your search for talent can target a particular segment of the employee population who only want to work for you
  6. Finally – and most importantly – you need to be at least an ok leader for the above to not fail. If you can become a better than average leader then that’s even better.

In this series, I am bringing together a combination of three sources of data.

  • What I’ve studied and researched
  • What I’ve observed
  • What I’ve done, both personally in my businesses and alongside business leaders

The best way to digest the information in this series is to start with a blank sheet of paper. Approach it with an open mind to reset your thinking. It’s not that you don’t already know some of the topics in this series. It’s that I haven’t seen anyone as yet layout the framework for building a high performing team on purpose. People give bits and pieces, I’m giving the blueprint.


To view the Introduction to the eBook, click here.


Categories
Small Business Recruitment

My team is returning to work… now what?

recruitment-advice-for-business-leaders

What last week’s announcement means for business owners and their employees.

The three bears

With the prospect of teams returning to the office after working from home for the last two months, there’s a lot of people who think pre-Coronavirus habits and routines will just fall back into place like before. 

As a business leader, there are common problems we’ve found, questions that you should be asking yourself as the transition from survival back to growth begins. 

You’re going to have little questions that need a big focus from employees. Questions that might seem little to you, but could be keeping one of your team up at night with worry.

You’re going to have bigger challenges that require time and a slower, more in-depth focus.

And you’re going to have questions in between. Those nagging questions that keep niggling in the back of your mind, that if you don’t give time to now, you’ll potentially miss the boat to take full advantage of the opportunities that have arisen from this crisis.

We’ve likened these questions to the three bears and compiled three, escalating areas for you to consider. You’ve got the large bear, the middle bear and the baby bear. 


Baby bear: The small, one word answer questions

Starting with the baby bear, one question we’ve been hearing a lot from clients is what if people don’t want to come back? What if they’re too cushy at home and what does this mean for their businesses? For example, what date are we returning to work, and, what if we don’t want to come back to the office?

Whilst it’s not a big issue in our mind, as an owner, it might be a large one in their minds. There’s these little questions that are going to be impacting your employees’ mental state. 

The first thing is to be mindful of the fears or perspectives of employees coming back. If they say that they are scared to come back, saying ‘I don’t want to come back,’ your initial reaction might be to dismiss it. However, you’re better off pausing and listening to them, seeking to understand where their fear is coming from. It makes sense to find out why they’re uncertain or worried, and influence their decision rather than to have a heavy hand and tell them directly. 

For the sake of your employees’ peace of mind, you’re better off actually treating that smaller bear like it’s a big bear because that’s how they view themselves and making time to answer their questions, however minute they may seem to you.


Middle sized bear: Making the most of the changes

You might be transitioning back to coming into the office after many weeks working from home. So, how do you optimise the changes for the long haul? How do you extract the efficiency that many people have said they’ve gained with less interruptions and more thinking time when working from home.

At the same time, there is increased isolation and the brain drain from video conferencing. How do you maximise the best of both situations so that people are still getting the social interaction from work whilst also getting time at home, where they’re more efficient?

There’s no doubt that the rules around working from home have changed. There were many that used to be unsupportive of it. But the restrictions from the pandemic have normalised working from your kitchen table or home office.

Set aside some time in your calendar to think about how you’re going to balance the two. Are you going to let it evolve on its own? Or are you going to deliberately implement a particular approach which utilises the best of both environments for your team?


Big, grizzly bear

The last question can often be grizzly, but once you’ve confronted it and formed a plan… Well it’s probably still grizzly but a lot less likely to kill you or someone else.

From the last three months, where is the opportunity for your business model, your industry and how you serve your customers?

You may have had to fundamentally change to keep operations afloat or the environment has changed and you haven’t realised. It’s time to reflect on what opportunity is out there for a business model adjustment, or a pivot, as they call it in the entrepreneurial world. Now, it’s more challenging for a larger business to pivot so we’re calling it an adjustment instead.

But how does a business model change and what does that mean for your employees or your organisational design? 

Do you have the right roles and capability to actually fulfil that business model?

Maybe you have the right people, but they’re not equipped. Maybe you don’t have the right people. 

There’s questions here that are big ones to tackle and can be scary to start thinking about. But if you don’t think about them now, your competitors are going to be thinking about them and they’re going to be taking advantage. Enough with the bear analogy, but you might find yourself in some trouble.


What are you going to tackle first?

We’re considering three matters: small, medium and large issues to think about post COVID19. 

The small matter is how to get people to come back into the office. Which sounds simple, but could be the biggest issue in your employees’ minds.

The mid-sized matter is around how you find the balance between working from home productively and building the social connection that comes from being present in the office.

Finally, our big, grizzly matter is to not ignore your organisational design. Do you have the right capability in your business to serve your customers in future?


If you enjoyed reading this piece, you might also like our blog on Building a High Performing Team on Purpose.

Categories
Business Strategy

Building A High Performing Team On Purpose

building-high-performing-teams


An 8-part self-guided series for small to medium business owners and their leadership teams.


If you believe that your people need to be a source of competitive advantage then this read is for you.

There is often a debate about the greatest of all time in various sports.  

I’ve been watching The Last Dance on Netflix, which has hit number one as the most watched documentary at the moment.  The show chronicles Michael Jordan and the 1998 Chicago Bulls in their quest for winning their third championship in a row and sixth in eight years.

This program has reignited the debate about who is the greatest basketball player of all time, which most people say is still Michael Jordan.  Although in recent times, some had been pushing for LeBron James as the greatest.  The eras were very different though.  The competition was different, the way the game was played was different and the lens was different. 

Take cricket for example.  If we compare eras, David Boon in the 1980s didn’t need to be an athlete to be great, but if he were born in 1990 instead of 1960, we would either not know his name at all or be witnessing a slimmed-down version of Boonie.  In the AFL, the top 10 highest single player, single-game goal scoring records are from 1995 and earlier. This is because the game has moved away from scoring through one full forward. The best performance of the 100m sprint in the entire year across all events in 1985 was Carl Lewis at 9.98 seconds.  He would have come 7th at the 2016 Rio Olympics.  The list can go on…

The debate about who the better player was from different decades will always remain a debate, because you cannot compare eras of sporting greats.  This is simply because people get better and the game changes. It’s not that people wanted to run slower back in the 80s.  It was also not that it was considered a good idea to have a beer gut as a professional cricketer.  It’s that people got away with it because the standards were different.  



How is this relevant to you?

The game you’re in is also changing and your competition is getting better.  The year 2020 seemed like a long way away not that long ago.  You can’t expect to be successful when you are doing what you or your competitors did 30 years ago, 20 or even 10 years ago.  And if your people practices haven’t substantially improved since back then, you will be left behind.  On top of that, the rate of change externally over these past few years has been exponential. Take the Gig Economy, the fourth industrial revolution, the four different generations in the workforce and now this global crisis that has us all working from home – your playing field is starting to look very different.

In some sports, players performing like they did only 5 years ago would see them benched. Similarly, in business and with your people performance, if you play like you did back in 2019, then as we enter into the post-COVID-19 era you could get benched.


You can no longer afford to be left behind if you want to survive this next wave of change and exploit the opportunities presented to move ahead of your competitors.

I’ve had the pleasure of working with business leaders and senior executives structuring, hiring and building high performing teams as a part of their strategy. The businesses I worked with who are challenging their industries or those offering premium products, shared a common belief: the growth of their business and their competitive difference cannot work without their people delivering outcomes aligned to their strategy. 

These are the people who:

  • Consistently produce your desired outcomes towards your strategy.
  • Genuinely and pro-actively display behaviours in support of the company, their own learning and to help their colleagues.
  • Are committed and aligned to the business for the foreseeable future

We call them high-performers.

You’re probably sensing that where I’m heading is that people are a pivotal part of your play in this changing landscape.  But I’m not just talking in the generic sense that you hear all the time like that “people are your greatest asset” or “there is no business without people”.  These statements don’t get to the heart of what you need to do.  Sometimes, some people are your greatest liability.  Sometimes, your business is better off with less people. You cannot have a motherhood statement approach to your people strategy and expect it to deliver a competitive advantage. You need to act with precision. 

This is an 8-part series that’s going to help you navigate the transition back to work after this global crisis, and then rebuild and position your business to win. 

We’ll delve into the prominent questions that are in every business leader’s minds: “we’re returning to work after COVID, now what?”,  “what’s really changed?”,  “what will remain the same?” and others.

I will answer all of the above questions so that you can hopefully avoid the pitfalls and take advantage of the opportunities. 

I’ll also remind you of the three biggest trends influencing humans at work that should not be forgotten, simply because we are dealing with a global pandemic. 

The name of the series, Building a High Performing Team on Purpose, comes from knowing that sometimes a manager of a team or business has an accidental high performing team.  As Carl Sloane from Harvard Business School once said,

One of the biggest mistakes a leader can make is “confusing the size of the enterprise or success of the enterprise with the individual’s persona.

There are managers who inherit an already high performing team, only to fail next time when they haven’t had that head start. There are those who have had fortunate timing resulting in their numbers being inflated.   

The series is about giving you deliberate actions to take that allow you to repeatedly build a high performing team, no matter what the starting position is or how lucky you have been that year.

Every Thursday for the next 8 weeks, we’ll cover one part of the series:

  1. Transitioning after a COVID-19: what are the small, medium and big challenges ahead?
  2. Your Business Strategy: is it still relevant?
  3. Your Organisational Design: is it right to support your strategy?
  4. Your Leadership: are your leaders equipped to deal with the challenges they are about to face?
  5. Your Talent Management: do you have the right talent and are you nurturing them to strive?
  6. Your Learning and Development: how should you invest in your people?
  7. Your Employee Value Proposition: is your EVP compelling and real, in order to attract and retain talent?
  8. And finally, how to bring it all together so that the sum of each part provides greater combined value overall.

I’ll share stories, lessons and offer you guides to help you self-assess your business and how to think through some of the challenges ahead.


Stay tuned.

Categories
Business Strategy

COVID19 restrictions are lifting… what’s next for business owners?

covid19-business-owner-advice

Reflecting on the last couple of months, many of our thinking styles, choices and actions are likely to be the result of intuitive, flash decisions made quickly. It triggered a comparison to the book by Daniel Kahneman, Thinking Fast and Slow. 

The book talks about the conflict between your intuitive, fast brain and the slow, analytical brain. You may currently be experiencing some conflict, what you’re having to do within your business, how you meant to be thinking and what the external forces are doing as well.

This blog draws three ideas from the book, discussing how they relate to business owners thinking about their people and their business in the context of COVID19.

1. Fast brain vs slow brain

This is the crisis management that business owners have been in over the last month or two. You have the intuitive brain thinking, ‘I need to make these fast decisions, make sure that I’m on my toes and making the right call for my business’, whereas many of these decisions require a slower, analytical brain and need a lot of thought behind them.

Decisions around redundancies or standing people down, moving to part time, whether to go onto Jobkeeper… For some businesses, it’s not simple. You’re thinking about whether to use the Jobkeeper enabling directions or not, thinking ‘What’s going on with my staff, how are they feeling? 

These questions are seemingly intuitive decisions, but actually when you stop and consider the implications, they require slower and more analytical consideration. 

The example in Thinking Fast and Slow gives this idea of the bat and the ball. 

The bat and ball cost a dollar and 10 cents together. The bat is $1 more than the ball. Therefore, what does the bat cost and what does the ball cost? The answer, of course, is the bat costs a dollar and the ball costs 10 cents… or does it? 

For many of us who haven’t read the book and who aren’t mathematical geniuses, we will come up with the same result.  However, the difference between a dollar and 10 cents is, of course, 90 cents so that’s not correct. The correct answer is a dollar and five cents. A dollar and five cents for the bat is a dollar more than five cents for the ball.


It’s time to slow down your thinking

Think about the business decisions that you’re making now.

If you use our intuitive brain, you might be coming up with the wrong decision whether to do something or not do something. A question to ask yourself is, do you have space in your calendar, in amongst all of the craziness that’s going on out there, to slow down your brain and to be able to think analytically about some of these really big decisions? 

Whether you decide to do something or not, you need to be able to slow things down amongst the crisis. 


2. The path of least resistance 

The second idea is around cognitive ease. This is when the brain takes the path of least resistance to conserve energy. In the Stone Age, cave men and women would survive better if they were in a familiar environment, which makes sense. 

It’s a similar concept when a new starter joins an organisation. Typically, managers tend to talk at them on their first day. The fact is, the new hire is not taking in anything the manager says.  Giving them important information is a waste of time because they’re taking in the fact that there’s a photocopier by the wall and a coffee machine in the open plan kitchen. 

They’re not listening to you because they’re processing the unfamiliar surroundings. 

However, once they realise that these things are all there and they’re familiar with their environment, then they’re ready for you to talk to them about strategy and their role. 


High value activities for business owners

Similarly for business owners right now, there’s so much information coming your way. Whether it’s the stimulus package announcements from the government and Jobkeeper, or information coming from your business about revenue performance and how your people are feeling. 

Even having more video conference meetings is more tiring than normal meetings because of all the things you need to set up and plan for. It can sap your energy and drain your brain.

You may find yourself doing the equivalent of sitting in the corner doing a crossword puzzle or whatever that looks like in your job because your brain is saying, ‘I’m just going to focus on this because I can’, when there could be other things you should be working on. 

So my question to you is: Do you have a list of five to seven high value activities for your job as a business owner that you should be spending time on, scheduled in your calendar at a time when you have the most energy? Because if you don’t, you will find that you spend that time on those trivial tasks that don’t create value.

 

3. Sunk cost fallacy

There’s an example in the book about a conference. You book the flights, take the time away and spend your energy to attend this two day conference. You get there and day one is terrible, the speakers are no good and the content is not useful. 

You think, okay this was a bad decision, but you’ve gone all the way there so you might as well go to the second day and see what happens. Lo and behold, the second day is just as bad as the first. 

That’s a sunk cost fallacy. 

You knew Day 2 was likely to be just as poor as Day 1, but because you spent all that time and money, you decided to attend anyway.

What you should have done is look at that second day and go, how should I best spend that day to create the most value to myself and my business? 

Similarly, right now we’re making decisions to change our businesses to deal with this crisis. You may have gone down a particular path but at some point, your environment is going to change again and the business will have to adapt. 

If you succumb to the sunk cost fallacy or the fact that you’ve invested all this time and effort in one direction, you might not make the right decision based on what is right at the current point in time. 

Maybe this isn’t something you’re faced with right now but we’re flagging that this could be the case down the track and to be aware of it when it does occur.

 

We always welcome questions, so send any our way through here.