Maximizing the Human Potential

Maximizing Team Performance

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andrew shaffer consulting maximizing team performance
Photo by Jopwell from Pexels

Are you maximizing team performance? How do you know if your team is working at maximum capacity? Here are some of the symptoms of a team that struggles with low productivity.

  • Difficulty meeting deadlines and goals
  • Flat or decreasing revenue or profits
  • Increase in product quality issues (increased defects, customer complaints, returns, fewer repeat orders, etc.).
  • Increasing or unacceptable employee turnover and absenteeism

When a company, or team experiences these symptoms for too long they generally think they can’t do anything about it. This week, I am going to talk about how you can maximize the performance of you team and see real impacts on your bottom line!

Maximizing Team Performance

Businesses either grow or die. Keep in mind, if your business is growing slower than your competition, you are in the process of dying.  Some business owners might think this is acceptable, as long as they can ride it out until retirement. But think about it, if your business is dying, how well are you really servicing your clients? Are they getting the high level of service they expect or deserve? You’ll have to answer that question. Today I am going to talk about how to maximize your team performance, and make sure you stay in front of your competition today an in the future!

Talent Development

An employee development system is not an annual performance assessment. It is not long drawn out conversations about why someone needs to improve. I have 2 boys that play sports. I do my best to coach them both. When a player strikes out, as he’s walking back to the dug-out I often give him a quick piece of advice. Adjust your hands so you can get the bat around or shift your balance so you can get a more level swing. Something quick and immediate. I didn’t wait until the end of the season (like an annual review). We try to make corrections now so we can see improvements at his next at bat.

To continue with the coaching analogy, there is one coach, one piece of advice, and one conversation. I don’t overload the ball player with three for four pieces of advice. It’ll clutter his head, and he’ll certainly fail again next time. We don’t have every coach giving advice at the same time (I do see this at times). Again, keep it simple, direct and understandable. Normally the change doesn’t come immediate in a game, and that is OK. But at our next practice I remind the player what we needed to work on, then we practice it until we get it right.

As a coach I develop my players on a game by game, day by day system. I work to elevate performance, so at the end of the season we are better ball players. Hopefully at the end of each practice we are a little better. When creating an employee development system, these same fundamentals apply. A quick, simple, timely  process for feedback, with the intent of elevating talent, will improve productivity, lower retention, and drive profits that you will see in your financial statements.

Employee Engagement

Companies pay consultants to come in and do employee engagement surveys. (find out how ours is different).  Based on the results of the survey, leaders are encouraged to create action plans with their teams. The idea is to work on something that will get your team engaged and working towards a common goal. Most of the time, teams would pick something easy to do, something they knew they could accomplish without too much interference with their “real jobs.” As you might imagine, this didn’t really get teams engaged and had very little impact on actual engagement.

In most cases I observed that “focusing” on engagement often had the opposite result from the intended effect, and many times company leadership completely missed the point. The word “engagement” lost its true meaning and become a chore. Engagement isn’t about one more thing to do. Engagement is about building commitment and loyalty to a project or a company. Engaged employees give that discretionary effort needed to see a plan succeed under any circumstances.

Accountability

Believe it or not, your people like to be held accountable. Holding them accountable for doing their job is a sure-fire sign that their job is important. Accountability leads people to strive to do better. It isn’t necessarily the fear of being held accountable that motivates someone to succeeded. Success builds confidence and momentum. People genuinely like to be successful and it makes them feel good. We can all appreciate this, as we’ve all had days that were successful and others that just went down the drain. Which one makes you feel better at the end of the day?

Holding people accountable means, you, as the leader, need to hold yourself accountable. Hold regular meetings, or whatever form you use for accountability and stick to it. If you ask someone to finish a project by the end of the month and wait until the end of the month to check for status, don’t be surprised when your team member lets you down. They let you down, because you didn’t tell them the project was important. Therefore, develop a schedule and a system for accountability, follow it, and watch your engagement soar.

This Week’s Challenge

Is your team working at maximum efficiency?  In which areas could you improve performance? Do you know the root cause of the lack of performance?

Give us a call for an assessment and consultation and see how you can start improving your bottom line.

If you would like to discuss more ways to help your business grow or if you feel you have a specific problem that needs to be addressed, please reach out to me.

Team Integration

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andrew shaffer consulting team integrationMany companies I meet with struggle with the team performance. Their teams aren’t integrated and operating at maximum efficiency. What does a lack of team integration look like?

A lack of integration in business is evident by infighting. For example, production blaming supply chain when they don’t have necessary parts. Or, a sales teams blaming marketing for lousy marketing material. Perhaps, managers blaming employees for lack of production or, employees complaining because management doesn’t get it. Sound familiar?

Scroll down to read this week’s blog post all about team integration.

Team Integration

There is a lot of information to be found on team building. Some of it is good, and some of it is not so good. Most businesses inherently understand team building, and some companies spend small fortunes on team building exercises and off-sites to leverage the benefits of team building.

Team building and team integration is something different. To illustrate, I’ll turn to my experience with youth sports. Every coach builds a team. The coach identifies the needs (the positions needed to play) and, assigns players to play those positions. The coach and their staff will work to develop the players skills to be successful at that position. This is team building. Come game time, the coach has a team.

Team Building vs Integration

I have had the experience of coaching teams with and without integration. The team that wasn’t integrated struggled during each game to be successful. Each player knew his position and responsibilities. However, some of the kids didn’t trust or rely on their teammates. As a result, kids wouldn’t pass the ball to each other, offer help on defense. As a result, when we lost (which was almost inevitable) they would blame each other and never take responsibility for their part in the loss.

When I had a well-integrated team, my players relied on each other, and did everything they could not to let each other down. There was more comradery, the season was more fun, and we won a lot more! When the team was integrated, they were in it for more than personal success. They were there for the team.

Vision

There is an old story about President Kennedy visiting NASA during the early days of the Apollo program. President Kennedy was doing a tour of the facilities and met a janitor wearing coveralls and holding a mop. The president asked the man what he was doing there. The janitor replied, “I’m helping to put a man on the moon.”

Now I can’t believe that story happened, but it does make a point. This janitor felt integrated as part of a team. He saw the vision of putting a man on the moon and he was doing his part. His part might have been moping the floors, but it was a necessary job that enabled the engineers to do their job.

Teams that are integrated are working for something larger than them their actual job. They see a bigger picture. Therefore, it is important that leaders share their vision with their employees, so everyone knows how they are contributing, and why their job is important to the company. Many times, people get so focused on the day to day aspects of their jobs, they lose focus of the bigger picture. When this happens teams will start to dis-integrate.

Outcomes

Well integrated teams see much more success than other teams. Again, when you look at sports, players that practice together in the off seasons are more “in tune” with each other than players that don’t. That translates to more victories on the field.

Integrated business teams tend to be more entrepreneurial.  This helps companies find faster cheaper better ways to compete. The entrepreneurial spirt helps companies see beyond the horizon and develop the “next best thing.” Integrated teams develop and retain the best people to help ensure success both in the short and long terms.

This Week’s Challenge

Is your team working at maximum efficiency?  Are you seeing finger pointing and blame in your company? Do you see other signs of a lack of team integration?

Give us a call for an assessment and consultation and see how you can start improving your bottom line.

If you would like to discuss more ways to help your business grow or if you feel you have a specific problem that needs to be addressed, please reach out to me.

Leadership and Engagement and the Bottom Line

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andrew shaffer consulting leadership and engagement

When I talk about employee engagement or leadership, people tend to think it is a soft skill. Engagement isn’t something tangible, or that shows up as a line item on the P&L statement. I must admit; I had the same thoughts. In fact, when I started by consulting business, I tried to avoid the words leadership and engagement. Yes, I tried to avoid the words that describe what I do, precisely because they sound like soft skills.  As you can imagine, that made things a bit of a challenge when explaining what I do, and probably wasn’t good business practice.  This week, I want to get into some of the hard results I experienced when focusing on leadership and engagement, that made it important enough for me to focus a business around it.

Leadership and Engagement and the Bottom Line

In EVERY business I’ve worked in or with, there were always inefficiencies that impacted the bottom line. Whether it be people that weren’t properly trained in their jobs and inefficient, or unnecessary bureaucracy, or frequent re-work because of errors and lack of communication.  These things add to labor costs, and most of the time are the cost of doing business. What would happen if they weren’t part of the cost of doing business? What if you had trained and efficient employees or if decisions weren’t bogged down by bureaucracy? Could you minimize mistakes and do it right the first time? Those are the opportunity cost associated with leadership and engagement.

Today I am going to share a few examples of hidden profit killers that I have seen throughout my working life.

Process Inefficiencies

At one point in a previous career, I was responsible for the testing of some complex engineering systems. We were the final test before the units were shipped to our customer. Because we were almost the last step in the process, there was rarely any slack in our schedule. By the time the systems showed up, we had to turn them around quickly to meet customer need dates. From set up to tear down, the whole process should have taken 3 hours.  Meaning we could easily test two systems in a typical 8-hour shift.  When I started this almost NEVER happened. Rarely could we get through a test in 3 hours.  Typically, it took almost an 8-hour shift to complete a test. Why? There were terrible inefficiencies inherent in our process.

Showing Leadership

How does this situation apply to leadership and engagement? Last week, I talked about complacency, and this is the way it is. And before I took over, that is the way it was. The difference was that someone on my staff approached me and said this was terribly inefficient, and he wanted to do something about it. He saw a problem and had a vision of a better future.  He knew there was a better way.  So, he shared that vision with me and the other members of my team, and elicited help. This is leadership.

Creating Engagement

At this point, creating engagement was easy. A better future was laid out to the team, and people wanted to be part of this process. So, I assigned a team to review our testing processes and inefficiencies to create a more robust testing condition.  I have to say the level of participation was astounding. There were second shift people coming in early, first shift people staying late. We had junior personnel and senior personnel and everywhere in between looking to create a better test environment.  The goal was to reduce testing by 50%, or from 8 hours down to 4 hours.

Results

What was the result?  Well, when I moved on, we didn’t quite get the testing down to a consistent 4 hours. On average, we got the test time down to about 5 hours. So, with two people running the test, we freed up about six man hours each night (30 hours each week) to accomplish other tasks. With the same amount of staff, we reduced testing costs, and increased productivity. Both of those were metrics any manager will be happy to see.

I could share a story where there was a recurring problem where there was a lack of leadership and engagement. But that would be boring, because they are probably still having the same problem!

This Week’s Challenge

Are you curious if there are hidden operational costs in your business?  Give us a call for an assessment and consultation and see how you can start improving your bottom line.

As a loyal reader I am offering a 25% discount on our motivational assessments. Do you want to know what motivates your employees? Contact us now and let’s have a conversation.

If you would like to discuss more ways to help your business grow or if you feel you have a specific problem that needs to be addressed, please reach out to me.

 

Complacency in the Workplace

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andrew shaffer consulting complacency

While meeting new people over the last few weeks, the common question I’ve been asked is “Why did you start your business?” Great question. While the answer can’t be boiled down to just one reason, there was basically one motivating reason. To help companies reduce complacency in the workplace.  This week I am going to share with you some of the common symptoms of complacency I saw in the workplace, offer some insight into how to combat them.

Complacency in the Workplace

Businesses either grow or die. And remember, that if your business is growing slower than your competition, you are in the process of dying.  Some business owners might think this is acceptable, as long as they can ride it out until retirement. But think about it, if your business is dying, how well are you really servicing your clients? Are they getting the high level of service they expect or deserve? You’ll have to answer that question. Today I am going to explore a few examples of complacency that I saw and offer some solutions to help reinvigorate you and your team!

That’s just how it is

I’ve also worked with teams that struggle with the same problem from project to project for decades.  DECADES!  I have watched people work themselves to burn out because they just keep fighting the same problem repeatedly. Eventually these people just accept the problems as the normal course of life and continuously live on the edge of burnout.  This is not healthy for your company, and not healthy for your employees! As the famous infomercial line goes, “there has to be a better way!” There is!

Comfort

The second symptom of complacency I have seen is the talented employee who had early success in their career only to flatline early only to stop growing. I get it. Early in our careers, we don’t have a lot to learn and a whole lot to gain by taking risks. As careers progress, our reputation is on the line, maybe we have a family and can’t risk losing a paycheck. Whatever the cause, I have seen talented people basically do the same job, year after year for twenty years, or more! I don’t know about you but doing the same thing for that long just doesn’t sound exciting to me.  These people peak in their early 30’s and from there are just waiting to retire.  Even though these people are filling a need, are they helping your company grow? Are they realizing their potential? No, and that is sad.

What can you can do?

The good news is that both these conditions are curable, and your company can still thrive.  The bad news is there isn’t a singular solution. You are dealing with human beings, and now two humans are exactly alike. When I work with companies dealing with these conditions, I teach leaders to connect with their employees. Not in a superficial team building way, like happy hours or lunch outings, but in a meaningful way. Take time to talk to every individual on your team. Understand their journey, where they have been, where they are, and where they want to go. Learn what motivated them. It isn’t your job to motivate employees, but you can help create a culture, job, assignment, career path etc., that aligns with their motivations. Meet with your team and co-create a development and career plan for each employee and help them achieve it.

When you do this, your team will be more motivated, creative, and innovative.

This Week’s Challenge

Find time to meet with your employees and talk about their journey and aspirations.  Help them create a development path that is inspiring to them and aligns with your company’s mission. When you do this, you’ll begin to challenge the status quo and your business will begin to thrive.

As a loyal reader I am offering a 25% discount on our motivational assessments. Do you want to know what motivates your employees? Contact us now and let’s have a conversation.

If you would like to discuss more ways to help your business grow or if you feel you have a specific problem that needs to be addressed, please reach out to me.

First Impressions

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andrew shaffer consulting first impressions

When new employees are hired, many companies go out of their way to make sure the employee’s first day is a pleasant experience. I’ve been talking a lot recently about the need to retain and attract high performing employees. As I’ve been having these discussions, I was reminded of a true story of an engineer’s alarming experience on his first day at a new job. This week I wanted to share that story with you as a cautionary tale about who is making your first impressions. The employee names and companies are changed.

First Impressions

Eric is an engineer that I know, who just relocated his family for a new job. To take this job Eric had to uproot his family to relocate to another part of the country and start all over. Eric and his wife had a young child, and were both working. So, this was a sacrifice of a pretty high level for Eric’s career.

Eric flew out to the company for an interview. The interview went well, the management team he met was friendly, and he was even able to meet some of his future colleagues at lunch. After receiving a job offer, Eric and his wife decided this was the right opportunity. Eric relocated with his family leaving their support network behind them to start fresh someplace new.

The First Day

When Eric showed up for work on his first day, he went through the typical indoctrination and onboarding. This was pretty much as you’d expect. However immediately after the onboarding things started to shift rapidly. When he reported to his direct manager, they didn’t seem ready for him.  Eric was given a temporary desk, secluded from anyone else, with a pile of paperwork to complete. Occasionally his boss would check on him, but for the most part he spent the first few days secluded filling out paperwork.

After those initial few days Eric was finally introduced to a fellow engineer and assigned some tasks. This was temporary work, because the project he was hired to do, once again wasn’t ready for him. So, Eric was given a temporary cube to do some work. And, by a temporary cube, he was told he could sit at someone’s desk while they were on vacation. Eric still wasn’t able to have a place to call “home.”

To add insult to injury, the employee in the cube next to Eric spent pretty much the entire day talking on the phone complaining about the company. She complained about EVERYTHING.

The Result

Now imagine you are Eric. You relocated your family to move to a new part of the country. You left a support network, your wife left her job, all for the promise of a brighter future.  When you finally arrive at work, you feel like they didn’t know you were coming, and all you hear is complaints from the people you will be working with.  What kind of impact would that have on your new employees? How do you think Eric felt about his decision to accept the job?

Eric no longer works at that company.

This Week’s Challenge

Your corporate culture has a dramatic impact on your ability to attract and retain talent in your organization. It is important that your company maintains a culture that is leadership and people focused. Take time with your leadership and review your onboarding processes.

What is your company doing to attract and retain talented professionals in your organization? Once you think you understand it, seek outside validation. You might think everything is OK in our business, only to later find out that your best employee just left for your competition. Can you afford that?

If you would like to discuss more ways to help your business grow or if you feel you have a specific problem that needs to be addressed, please reach out to me.

Staying Productive in the Summer

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andrew shaffer staying productive in the summer

My wife and I like to take advantage of the kids being out of school to do some activities with the kids. When we start planning our activities and our summer is busy! By the time we schedule camping trips, vacations, weekends at the beach, camps for the kids, and time with friends, the summer just flies by! On top of all that I’m still expected to work!  And, everyone I work with is juggling the same crazy summer schedules! How is anyone expected to stay productive?

Staying Productive in the Summer

Do you find it harder to stay productive in the summer months? I know I do. People that take family vacations. And, they use vacation time to take off Fridays to make long weekends for beach trips or camping weekends.

I have heard many times that people just like to ride out the summer and expect to get busy again in September, once the kids are back in school. While the summer months are more difficult, it doesn’t have to be a slow time. This week I am sharing some tips for staying productive through the summer months, while still being able to enjoy yourself!

Plan for it

We know we are taking vacations and we must plan for it. Most of us have a last-minute push before we go on vacation. We create a list of things we must do before we leave. We do this so we don’t leave any loose strings while we are gone. But do we plan for what needs to be done before we get back? Planning for work to get done while you are away, will benefit you in many ways. First, when you get back you won’t have as many unfinished tasks to attend to. Second, there will be less impact on those that are still at work.

We know our colleagues are taking vacations. We have a last-minute push to get our tasks done before we leave, and maybe even some tasks that need to get done while we are away. But how often do we consider our colleagues vacation schedules. Have you ever been in the situation where you needed input from a colleague on a project, only to find out they are on vacation? Then, you must wait until they get back to get your answer! Perhaps you could have prioritized your tasks differently so you could get what you needed from the colleague BEFORE they went on vacation!

It takes a little coordination and up-front effort but knowing when you and your colleagues will be out of the office, and planning for it ahead of time, can help your productivity this summer.

Ask for help

Planning can help, but it isn’t perfect.  There are tasks that need your input when you are out of the office. It is a good idea to ask for help from a colleague, while you are out of the office. Delegate your authority to someone while you are out of the office.  The key here isn’t just to list a point of contact. For example, “If you need immediate assistance contact Jim.” If I call Jim and all he can do is take a message and let me know when you’ll be back in the office, Jim isn’t really a delegate is he?

Find someone competent that you TRUST. Then, delegate full authority to them in your absence for any decisions or input needed on your behalf. The key here is to trust your delegate and allow them to make decisions. This might mean you have to brief them on project status or objectives before leaving. And, you’ll have to live with any decisions make on your behalf. Delegating authority can help others remain productive while you are away and relieve some of the stress when you get back!

This Week’s Challenge

Taking a vacation over the summer is important. Spending time with family and friends this summer can help you recharge your batteries and stay fresh and focused. Too many times our vacations are interrupted by work. Or, you dread of all the things you must do when you get back. Before your next vacation, take some time to plan for getting your projects done while out of the office, and delegating someone you trust to fill in while you are away. Now go enjoy the summer!

If you would like to discuss more ways to help your business grow or if you feel you have a specific problem that needs to be addressed, please reach out to me.

Effective Communication

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andrew shaffer consulting effective communication

How well are you able to communicate your ideas to another person? Think about it. How many times have you argued with a spouse or significant other because of a communication problem, or lack of communication? What about your children? Have you ever asked a colleague or a member of your team to do something only to be totally disappointed because they did something completely different? The whole “bring me a rock” exercise. Most of the time ineffective communication is the cause of our disagreements and disappointments. This week I am going to share some takeaways from a recent workshop I participated in to learn effective communication.

Effective Communication

I recently had the opportunity to sit in a two-day workshop on communication. I am always willing to explore options for improving myself, and I understand the benefits of being a more effective communicator. However, as you can imagine, two full days seemed like a lot. I have participated in communication training, and by extension leadership communication training before.  Usually they were hours upon hours of hypothetical examples and role playing for scenarios that never actually happen.

To my surprise my expectations were completely wrong! We didn’t participate in role playing with over the top, unrealistic hypotheticals. Instead, during the two days we broke down and explored the causes of miscommunication, and how our own uniqueness contributes to it. It amazed me that just after day one, the workshop participants were sharing how they were taking what they learned and applied it at home that night! I cannot recreate the same impact in a blog that the workshop had over the two days, but I’d like to share some of the takeaways that might impact how you communicate.

How We Communicate

In today’s world there are almost an infinite number of ways to communicate with one another. We have email, text messaging, instant messaging, social media feeds, phones, video calls, pre-recorded videos, and good old-fashioned face to face conversation. Those are just the mediums we use for communication, that doesn’t even consider the message we are actually trying to convey!

When it comes to messaging it gets even more complicated. Have you ever said something (in any of the mediums above) and someone took offense, and you immediately had to clarify because your intent wasn’t understood? Yeah, me too.

Body language, tone of voice and other contextual clues add meaning to the words you’re saying. Most of us don’t put much thought and effort into the messaging and how we are communicating with others. We make assumptions based on our beliefs, what we think is commons sense, and our understanding of specific words. We have mental pictures or conclusions in our mind, and we assume others will have the same. This is far from the case.

When we communicate with others, we all need to be careful to make sure we are clear on what we are trying to communicate, and that our approach (message and medium) are appropriate and can be clearly understood by our audience.

 Language

“The United States and Great Britain are two countries separated by a common language.” – George Bernard Shaw

Did you know there are 645 meanings to the word run? I was surprised too, so I googled it. It’s no wonder why non-native English speakers say that English is the hardest language to learn! In this workshop we played a word association game. The facilitator gave us a word and we each wrote down the next ten things that came to mind. It was a relatively common word, and we all knew the definition of it, but in the entire group we didn’t have one word in common.

The language we use while communicating can, and likely will, conjure different understandings in different people. In the workshop, we had the opportunity to do some group work. We had to answer some simple questions individually then meet as a group and find common meanings. Even with these simple questions, we all interpreted them slightly differently and answered them differently. The questions were about communication, but many people would have different answers if they applied the question to work situations or personal situations. The questions didn’t specify, and we interpreted it based on our experiences.

Clarity

We don’t ask enough questions. I have read Jeffrey Gitomer’s Little Red Book of Selling probably close to a dozen times. In this book he dedicates a whole chapter on asking questions? Why? Because asking questions (he says smart questions) is the only way to get information. I once listened to a talk on successful interviewing. One of the most common mistakes interviewees have is they don’t ask questions. Ironically this was more common in men than women. Why? I suspect we believe by asking questions we admit we might not have all the answers. If we don’t have all the answers the other person might think we’re not qualified.

On the contrary, we must ask questions. Asking questions shows curiosity and a desire for understanding. I’ll never know what you are thinking, how I can help you, or who you are without asking questions. Earlier I alluded to the bring me a rock exercise. You know when your boss asks for a rock, you bring a rock only to find out it was the wrong rock. We’ve all been there I am sure. What would have happened if you took a few minutes to find out what rock your boss wanted in the first place? Would it have been time better invested than to have to go find another rock? I bet it would. Asking questions is an investment in getting the job done right the first time.

This Week’s Challenge

Today’s article isn’t going to make you a better communicator all by itself. I wanted to share with you some of the takeaways that I took from this workshop. You may already know and understand these things. For this week’s challenge, I recommend you look at how you communicate and find ways to be more effective. A small investment in becoming a more effective communicator can help your productivity.

If you would like to discuss more ways to help your business grow or if you feel you have a specific problem that needs to be addressed, please reach out to me.

Recruiting Talent

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andrew shaffer consulting recruiting talent

Last week I talked about the need for having “ball players” or superstars in your organization. What if you don’t have any ball players? What if you have some, how can you stop them from leaving to work at your competition? This week I am going to share with you three differentiators that will help you in recruiting talent and retaining superstars in your organization. Spoiler alert… it’s not money!

Recruiting Talent

Identifying and retaining talent these days is difficult. In today’s work force highly skilled individuals are in high demand, and can often pick and choose where they want to work. When recruiting top talent, you don’t always have to be the highest bidder (i.e. pay the most) although you do have to be competitive. Today’s employees are looking for more than a paycheck, they are looking at what the company offers above and beyond the pay. College level athletics recruit talent all the time, and are unable to use pay as a differentiator. Let’s look at some of the strategies used by top athletic programs for recruiting and how that applies to your business.

Be a Winner

Everyone likes to win. I know we tell our kids things like; it doesn’t matter if you win or lose, it’s how you play the game, just do your best. But honestly, if you do your best and play fair it still hurts to lose. Right?

When colleges are recruiting athletes, they will boast their winning records. If they cannot boast about a winning record, they’ll talk about a history and a plan to start winning. We’ve hired new coaches, we recruited new players etc. When talented athletes have a choice of where to go to school, they will want to play for a winning team.

The same is true when recruiting talent to your company. They will want to see you have a winning organization, or at least the potential to be a winning organization. Boast about the growth you’ve seen recently, new large contracts or expansion. Let potential employees know about any awards you may have received, and company history. These things will send a message to your prospects that when they come work for you they will be joining a winning team.

Culture

Everyone wants to fit in. We are tribal by nature, and we want to be surrounded by people with the same values and motivations. Have ever worked at a company, or joined an organization, where you just didn’t fit in? How hard was it to make friends? Did you feel comfortable? Even if you did, did you really enjoy yourself? Probably not.

Again, it isn’t uncommon for college recruiters to have prospects visit for a day or more. Typically, they’ll shadow someone from the team and see what it’s like to be part of the program. The idea here is to get the prospect a “feel” for what it’s like to be part of the team. The coach, and the player will want to know if they will fit in, if they can be part of the culture or if they’ll be an outsider. Those that fit in can thrive, outsiders tend to hold back.

The same is true in your work place. Although it’s not typical for a company to invite a prospect to shadow another employee during a job interview, but there are other ways that prospects can learn about culture. When you bring in a prospect for an interview, how are they received? Websites like indeed.com or glassdoor.com often have employee reviews so candidates can get an idea what it’s like to work at your company. What do prospects see when they look you up online?

Development

Prospective athletes understand that they are investing time to play at the college level, and in return want to know that they will become better during that process. In college sports, this is an easy discussion. Coaches can talk about the number of players that went on to play professional sports. If that isn’t an option, they will talk about graduation rates, and successes that former athletes have had in professional careers.

Your prospective employees will have similar questions:

  • If I work for you, what will the future look like for me?
  • Do I have career advancement opportunities, or will I be stuck doing the same thing for my entire career?

Top performers didn’t get to be top performers by accepting the status quo. Top performers achieved success by learning, developing and growing. Having a proven employee development system will help you attract and retain high performers and high potential employees.

This Week’s Challenge

I know there are still some employees that will go to the company that pays the most. Most of the time it’s best to let them work somewhere else. Eventually someone else will offer them more money and they’ll leave. Save yourself the headache and cost of losing talent. Create an environment that attracts and retains talent. Develop a strategy for:

  • Competing and winning at a high level
  • A welcoming and inclusive culture
  • A proven effective employee development system

If you would like to discuss more ways to help your business grow or if you feel you have a specific problem that needs to be addressed, please reach out to me.

Evaluating Talent

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andrew shaffer consulting evaluating employees

I was coaching my 7 year old’s baseball game last week when one of the kids asked me if I was a “real” coach. When I asked him what a “real” coach was, he said someone that coaches Major League Baseball. For the record I am not a MLB level coach, but I was flattered that he thought so highly of my skills. It did get me to think about how many different seasons I have been coaching. This week I am going to share with you some of the things I’ve learned about evaluating players, their impact on the team, and how this relates to your business.

Evaluating Talent

In the more than fifteen seasons I’ve coached various sports (some as head coach others as an assistant) I have noticed there are three types of kids that play sports. We have the kids that are there because their parents want them to. These kids go through the motions of playing, but don’t really enjoy it. There are those that are there to play. These are the ones that show up to practice, do the drills, contribute in the games.

Good players only think about the sport when they are practicing or during a game. Then there are what I call the ball players. Ball players are the first ones there, last to leave. They always give it there best, and they practice between practices. They play ball outside, not on a video game. These players give any team a competitive advantage.

Businesses have the same three levels of employees.

  • Paycheck Collectors: Paycheck collectors show up just for a paycheck. They do the bare minimum, and complain about doing that.
  • Work Horses: Then there are your work horses. Work horses come in, do the work needed. They do solid work, but rarely go above and beyond.
  • Superstars: Then there are your superstars. These are the people that are there early, stay late, and get the job done no matter what.

If your company has people there just to collect a paycheck, you might want to consider why you are still employing them. This article will talk about the difference between your work horses and superstars and why developing superstars impacts your bottom line.

Level of Competition

My boys play sports, and there are basically two levels of sports. There are the recreational (rec) leagues and there are the competitive leagues (or travel teams). The rec leagues are filled with kids that play ball, and occasionally a player that is there because their parents want them to play. In rec league we can have some intense games, and decent players, but we don’t really play at a high level. Occasionally a team will have a ball player (we’ll call him/her a ringer). This is a person we consider that should be playing at a higher level of competition.

Ball players play at a higher level of competition. These players are the ones that are on travel team, all-star teams, or play in the little league world series. Ball players elevate the level of performance for the entire team, and when surrounded by other ball players, the team competes at a whole different level.

Your employee base is filled with those that play ball (work horses) or ball players (superstars). Identifying potential ball players on your staff, and developing them to their highest potential will give you a competitive advantage. Even if you are not the business owner, and work for someone else, learning to become a ball player, and elevating your level of play will take your career to the next level.

Retention

In most little league organizations, the older the kids get the less kids that actually come out and play. For example, in my local organization, when my oldest started there were eight teams in his age group. Today there are three teams. That means roughly 60% of the kids that played a few years ago have stopped playing. Now, the competitive teams, the travel teams, are generally still intact. They might lose a player here and there, but they don’t have the 60% turnover that the rec leagues experience.

Employee retention is expensive for companies. Studies show that to replace talented employees can cost 150% of their salary. Not to mention the impacts of lost production and morale on your team. Developing your talent to ball player status, and creating a company that plays competitive ball, will help you improve retention and avoid unnecessary costs associated with losing good people.

Productivity

When a rec team has a ball player on the roster, the other teams take notice, and quickly. Why? Because they are more productive than anyone else on the field/court. This is the basketball player that scores more than your entire team combined or the baseball player that always hits the ball to the fence and pitches harder than anyone in the league. This is the kid that is faster and kicks harder than any other soccer player. They give you a competitive advantage because they produce more.

I read a statistic the other day that high performers produce 400% more than their mediocre counterparts. Wow! That means if that person left your company, it would take four people just to get the same level of production that you were getting for one! Let me ask you, how would your company benefit from having someone that was that productive? Maybe two or three people like that? These are your ball players. They come to work and produce. They are engaged, motivated, and energetic about their work.

This Week’s Challenge

Take a look at your company and the competitive landscape. Are you playing rec league, or are you playing competitive? Do you have employees that are there to play ball, or even worse employees that are collecting a paycheck, or does your team develop and attract ball players?

If you want to get real results, you must be playing competitive ball, AND must identify and develop your talent to maximize their potential.  Next week, I’ll talk about how to retain and attract ball players to your company, and it’s more than just a hefty salary!

If you would like to discuss more ways to help your business grow or if you feel you have a specific problem that needs to be addressed, please reach out to me.

Team Building Ideas and Misconceptions

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team buliding andrew shaffer consultingDuring a conversation over coffee with my friend Steve Morris, founder of Catylator, we had an interesting discussion on some common techniques for team building and why they fall short of the goal. One thing we both agreed on was that some techniques for team building, while fun, don’t actually achieve any objectives of team building. Steve has a unique, interesting and effective method for team building and problem solving. If you think you could use his help or want to learn more, I encourage you to check out his website. This week I am going to share some ideas and misconceptions of team building.

Team Building

Most of us agree that working on a cohesive team improves productivity, engagement, and business outcomes. The terms “team” and “teamwork” are ramped in job descriptions and prospects inevitably boast about being team player or team leader. Many organizations I know will attempt team building through some social activity as a way to get to know each other outside of work. They might invite teams to a happy hour, lunch outing, or bowling. Is this the best way to build a team?

While these activities are fun, and can help build friendships, they don’t always build teams. I mean think about it, how is bowling or a beer going to help you be more productive at work? Personally, I prefer to have a beer or go bowling (actually golfing) AFTER I’ve established a relationship with someone.

Common Purpose

For a team to be highly functioning, they have to have a common purpose. Sports is the best and simplest example of this. The common purpose of any sports team, at least the good ones, is to win a game or championship. That’s it. Everyone in the organization from the owner, to the GM to the rookie that just signed this morning, all have the same goal. To win games.

In the business world, the common purpose could be a project completion, customer satisfaction score, or sales goals. The best teams I’ve ever worked with was when we were ALL focused on the same goal. The team was diligently working to complete a task. The team leaders were actively removing obstacles that impeded progress. Everyone knew what success looked like, everyone was keeping score, and everyone participated in achieving results. I’m actually getting excited just remembering these successes!

Belonging

Being part of a team, is more than just having a role to fill. Being part of a team was a sense of belonging. I’ve been coaching little league baseball for several years now. One of the most exciting days for the boys are when I hand out the uniforms. Actually, from the first day of practice I generally have someone asking when we’ll be getting uniforms. Why? Because when we all have our uniforms on, we feel like we’re part of something. I make sure the coaching staff is always dressed like part of the team as well. Again, we ALL belong and it makes a difference.

When someone belongs to something, they recognize they are part of something bigger. Being part of something bigger tends to help us be less concerned about “me” as we are about “we”. When we’re concerned about “we” then we can help each other and the team improve.

Trust

Trust is a foundational aspect of any team. I need to trust that the other members of my team will be there when I need them. Going to back to my hobby of coaching little league. Sometimes my pitchers get focused on getting a strike out, and will get frustrated when players get a hit. When this happens, I’ll remind them that it’s OK, and there are 8 other players on the field that are there to make a play. Actually, the other players are hoping the batter hits the ball so they have something to do!

Trust is essential to everything in business and in life. My kids trust that someone will pick them up from school each day. My wife and I trust each other to uphold our responsibilities in the family. I trust my employees to do the jobs they say they are going to do. When the trust breaks down, the team breaks down and sooner or later you stop winning. Once trust is broken it is very hard to repair.

This Week’s Challenge

I want you to think about what you do to build a team at your company. Does it help you work towards a common goal? Does it foster a sense of belonging? And, does it help build trust?

If you would like to discuss more ways to help your business grow or if you feel you have a specific problem that needs to be addressed, please reach out to me.