Maximizing the Human Potential

Corporate Growing Pains

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andrew shaffer consulting corporate growing painsI once heard someone explain life as a series of challenges.  Life tends to throw a problem your way and continue to throw that problem at you until you figure out how to solve it. Once you solve the problem you never have to solve it again, BUT you will be presented with a new problem. For example, at one point in my kids’ lives, they wanted to learn to ride a bike. When they were learning they would often fall or run into a tree. I don’t know why they’d run into the tree it didn’t move, but they did. Eventually they learned to ride a bike – problem solved. The next problem was learning to do a wheelie or jump off a ramp. Then the falling started all over again.  As you can see life is never without problems.  Just like in life, your business has a series of problems to solve, like corporate growing pains. Today I am going to share some of these problems so you can look forward to what comes next!

Corporate Growing Pains

Most of what I am going to talk about today is my takeaways from the book Managing Corporate Lifecycles by Ichak Adizes. This book is eye opening and I highly recommend it.  In this book, Adizes highlights the fact that at each growth stage of a company there are normal and abnormal problems. Understanding and overcoming the normal problems helps you advance to the next stage of development. When you don’t solve the problems of any given stage as you advance, the problem then becomes abnormal and can and will threaten the survival of the business. On your way to becoming a prime company, here are some of the stages you must survive.

Infancy

Infancy is that stage when the business is born. As an entrepreneur, you decided to take a risk and start a business. You are full of optimism, hope and the future is looking good through your rose-colored glasses. In this stage of development, cash is king.  It is all about making sales and brining in cash. Cash is the life blood of your business and without it the business will go under. There are investors to pay back, there is likely bank loans and the entrepreneur needs cash to feed his/her family as well. During infancy the business owner’s commitment will be challenged. Negative cash flow is the norm, and the investors are always asking questions to protect their interests.  In this stage the business owner is focused on product development and brining in revenue!

Toddler

Once you as the business owner finally makes it past the infancy stage and is generating cash, you enter the toddler stage, or “Go-Go”, as the author puts it.  In this stage you want to try everything they can get your hands on.  Expand into this market or buy this other business. You are chasing just about every shiny object that catches your eye. And why not? After all you have survived infancy and have proven your business can generate cash.

This creates a problem where the company can become spread too thin. Perhaps you lose focus a little on what the company’s core competencies are. Your energy is too widely dispersed, and you lack appropriate controls to aid in decision making and process improvement. Often you are reluctant to instill the discipline necessary to manage all the new aspects of the business and resist any attempts by anyone to exert those controls.

Adolescence

Those owners that finally do recognize that they need to have controls, discipline and processes in place are ready to move into adolescence. Just like your teenage years, adolescence is a turbulent time. This is when your business moves from the wild, “let’s try everything” to “now I have to create structure so I can execute effectively.”  This is frequently when you, or your business’ board begins to hire professional managers. And, if you’ve ever read the book The E-Myth by Michael E. Gerber you’ll know that a manager and an entrepreneur are at odds with each other.  The manager likes to create order and the entrepreneur is always looking for the next thing to go do.

In this stage there will be conflict throughout the organization. The founders will resist the manager, and the manager will resist the founder. The workforce will be divided with some people wanting and needing the structure that the administrator needs, while others will desire the freedom they had before “there were all these rules.” However, whenever a company can successfully pass through each of these stages, they will enter their prime, where there is the right mix of entrepreneurship, administration, controls, and processes for the company to reach its full potential.

This Week’s Challenge

I must caution you that I just summarized about 400 pages if information into less than 900 words. My intention was to highlight some of the normal problems have on their way to prime.  This week’s challenge is to understand the problems your company has, and if they are normal or abnormal for whatever phase your business is in.  Identify and solve those problems and your company can begin to thrive!

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.

Creating Innovation

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andrew shaffer consulting creating innovationAre you continually frustrated by repeatedly dealing with the same problems? Are you tired of running into the same problems on every project? Does the inability to see new solutions to existing problems frustrated you? Are you fed up with “This is the way we’ve always done it?” If your employees are not as innovative as your competition, your destined to mediocrity or worse! You might go out of business! So, how do you go about creating innovation in your business?

Creating Innovation

Your business is will either grow or die.  I’ve said that several times in my writing, and it is true. In order to grow, your company must innovate. I have worked with companies that were stuck in the “This is the way we’ve always done it?” mentality. Because of that the competition was growing in market share, and customer satisfaction was plummeting. When this started having severe impacts on the business, we were able to turn it around by focusing on leadership and engagement. Here are some simple things you can do to help improve your company’s innovation and market domination.

Proactive Leadership

Proactive leadership means looking forward and not backwards. Leaders cannot spend their time dealing with fires all day and never take time to prevent fires. A proactive leader anticipates future struggles and is prepared when they come.

Performance Management

Performance management is one of the fundamental responsibilities of a leader. Teach leaders how to do this on a continuous basis. And, show leaders how that actually benefits the employee, the company, and customers.

Talent Development

When your team isn’t growing, your company isn’t growing. When your company isn’t growing, the gap between you and your competition closes. Investing in developing the talent already on your team will sharpen your competitive edge.

Employee Engagement

A 360° approach to employee development creates positive and meaningful interactions between leadership and employees drives employee engagement. Engaged employees are more loyal, productive, and provide a better customer experience. In short, engaged employees help you stand out from your competition.

Accountability

Accountability means having people do what they say they will do. People have to be accountable to themselves, to their leaders, to their direct reports and to their peers. Leaders cannot tolerate a culture without accountability. It is a morale killer. An employee development system has to incorporate aspects of accountability for it to work. ASC brings metrics for accountability that ensures your success.

This Week’s Challenge

How does your company foster innovation and creativity? Are your employees fully engaged? Or, are they just checking boxes? Do you have a culture to help you succeed?

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.

Business Core Values

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core values andrew shaffer consultingIn preparation for our upcoming seminar, Ben Kimbrell (see blog, A Better Way) and I were discussing the importance of core values with respect to business success. I’ve been to many companies where they might talk about core values, and you may see them on posters as you walk through the hallways. Core values are often posted on websites for everyone to know what a company stands for.  But how many times are these business core values just hollow words?  Do your core values impact the way you do business?

Business Core Values

Almost every company I come across has a set of business core values. Why? Because a company’s core values dictate the culture. However, there is often a disconnect between the core values posted in the break room and on the company website, and the behaviors of the workforce. When was the last time you looked at your core values and did an assessment of how well they are reflected in your culture? Here are some reasons why having a consistent set of core values will help you create a culture that helps your business thrive.

Standard of Behavior

Core values set a standard of behavior of what is important, and what is not tolerated. I discussed my core values in my blog Four Rules for Winning. In a nutshell, they are:

  • Listen to those who are trying to help you.
  • Give 100% effort to everything you do.
  • Show respect to EVERYONE – ALWAYS
  • Have Fun

On more than one occasion I have found myself doing business or working with someone that doesn’t adhere to these same values. These things are non-negotiable on my opinion. When these “rules” or standards of behavior are violated, there is either a change in behavior or I terminate the relationship. This applies to clients, partners, or employees. As a result, I have confronted bosses, clients, and even quit jobs over a lack of adherence to these principles.  That is how important core values should be.

Customers

Company core values are becoming increasingly important to consumers these days. Customers want to know what a company stands for.  In fact, evidence points to trends that if a company is involved in a social cause that consumers identify with, then they are more likely to purchase from those companies. Chick-Fil-A, as an example, has core values centered around family and Christian beliefs. They are unwilling to open their stores on Sunday, even though they have a store in the Atlanta Falcons football stadium. This loyalty to their core values attracts customers, as well as protests. Ben and Jerry’s ice cream also promotes a social mission for everyone involved in their business, helping them maintain brand loyalty.

Leadership

Leaders in an organization are responsible for the culture. You must lead by example. Core values cannot be just a slogan on a website, or posters on a wall. Integrate core values into everything your business does. Your core values must be evident in everything you do, in and out of the workplace, otherwise they are not really core values. It is incumbent upon leadership to hold people accountable for adhering to core values. Remember that these are your values, as a leader, and if you cannot enforce them it reflects poorly on you.

Your employees will appreciate consistency in your leadership style. It sets clear expectations for behavior. Your core values will impact your customer and client experience. And if your values align with those of your customers and potential customers your business will thrive!

This Week’s Challenge

Identify your core values. Does each member of your team know what your core values are? How are they evident in everything you do?

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.

Business Slumps

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andrew shaffer consulting business slumpsMy boys are full swing into fall sports.  I have one boy that plays baseball, and another that plays soccer. My baseball player found himself in the middle of a hitting slump. It started late in the spring season and lasted through the summer. We worked on a few things to get him out of the slump so he can start hitting again. Last week, was the first game of the fall season.  At this first at bat, he broke out of his slump with a solid double to right field. He looked at me from second base, with a huge smile and said, “I’m back!”. This week I am going to talk about some strategies we used to get out of the slump and rejuvenate a ball player.

Business Slumps

It doesn’t matter if you are a professional baseball player, a professional salesperson, or a CEO, we can all get into a slump from time to time – a period when we just can’t get anything right. No matter how hard we try we just come up short. This can be frustrating! We feel like we’re doing everything right, yet we just can’t seem to get the same results.  First, relax. It happens. Second, there are a few things that you can do to get out of that slump and start hitting home runs again.

Back to Basics

I like to golf. During the spring, I’ll get my clubs out of the basement and head out to the driving range to get back into form.  Generally, the more I play, the better I hit the ball. This makes sense, because of the practice.  Inevitably in the middle of the summer I start feeling confident with my shot and really try to hit the ball hard.  I mean like the pros do. Well, I am far from being a pro, so the harder I try to hit the ball, the worse my shots become. Even when I decide to back off and not hit so hard, I still can’t hit a decent shot. I eventually must go back to the range and focus on the basics until I figure out what I was doing wrong.

Whether it is golfing, selling, or running a company, we can all lose touch with the fundamentals. It’s not that we forget about them, or ignore them, but we get blinded by our own confidence. It isn’t until our performance is impacted that we pay attention to fundamentals. When you find yourself in a slump, find yourself a coach, mentor or a friend. Have them observe you on the proverbial driving range. Getting back to basics is a sure-fire way to get out of that slump.

Keep Shooting

I had a basketball coach tell me that when a shooter is in a slump, he keeps giving him the ball. That seemed counterintuitive, I mean the ball player isn’t scoring, shouldn’t he give the ball to someone else. His rational was all about averages. He might be in a slump now, but he’ll be on fire later.

This is another way of saying, don’t give up. How many stories do you now about  an exceptional leader taking a new assignment only to struggle to find any success? Maybe that story is about a point in your career. Often the leader will decide they “can’t do this” and they regress to a previous position. However, when that leader decides to keep moving on, and adapting skills, or even developing new skills, then that leader once again begins to excel. Don’t give up and keep shooting.

Get out of your Head

In my intro, I talked about my son’s batting slump. We tried to get him out of his slump. We worked on his fundamentals, we went to the batting cages, and we watched videos. I tried everything I could think of to help him get out of the slump. But no matter what we did, or even how he did in practice, he just lost it during a game.

It seemed that he forgot everything we worked on when he was up to bat during the game. What happened? The last thing we had to deal with was getting him out of his own head. When he was up to bat, he lost his confidence. He kept thinking of his failures and not his successes.  This is so easy to do.

When you are in a slump, the worst thing you can do is focus on the lack of results. Change your mindset and think of your past successes. The big deals that got you in the position you are in anyway. Gaining your confidence back will be that added element needed to excel you out of the slump and back to your old productive self.

This Week’s Challenge

Next time your business or a leader in your business is in a slump, remind them of the fundamentals. Encourage them not to quit. Don’t let them lose confidence. All slumps eventually pass when you diligently work to get through them.

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.

Dealing with Change

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andrew shaffer consulting dealing with changeBy now the kids are back in school.  This has an impact in my family.  We have new morning routines. As the kids are starting in their schools, they are meeting new classmates and teachers.  Although it is familiar, it is different. It is a change, and for anyone that has or has had kids, they know that there is an adjustment period.  Even if you don’t have kids, you will notice that there are new traffic patterns as parents with kids are adjusting their schedules and commutes around bus schedules and school drop offs. There is no avoiding it, change happens, and we have to adjust. Today’s post is all about dealing with change.

Dealing with Change

“No plan survives first contact with the enemy. What matters is how quickly the leader is able to adapt.”

– Tim Harford

Every business is constantly dealing with change. Change ranges from problems encountered in new product development, responding to the competition, or it could be a radical shift in your business model. When you think about it, your business has to be in a constant state of change (or evolution) otherwise you’ll soon find yourself obsolete. Competitive landscapes and consumer needs all change and your business needs to change to keep up with a changing landscape. Successful leaders, and businesses become quite effective in dealing with these changes and evolutions. Here are some common characteristics of change, and how to navigate them successfully.

Conflict

When there is change, there is almost always conflict. Conflict can be constructive or destructive. What is the difference?

Destructive conflict is just that, destructive. If allowed destructive conflict will kill careers and if destructive conflict has become part of the culture, it will kill your company. Destructive conflict looks a lot like finger pointing, passing blame, and avoiding blame. It is not a pretty road, and nobody wins in the end, well maybe a consultant when you finally hire one to help save your company.

Constructive conflict is very helpful. I learned early in my management career to welcome constructive conflict. I had one engineer on my team that would “argue” with me about almost everything.  It wasn’t a hostile argument, but he challenged almost every decision I would make. I would ask him to come to my office whenever I was trying to work out any challenging issue. And together, through his challenging questions, and my responses almost always came up with a stronger solution than either one of us would have on our own. Through this “conflict” we were able to improve the productivity of our team by up to 50% in some areas.

Communication

The key success when dealing with change in conflict is communication. I don’t know how many times a company was going through changes (restructure, mergers, buy out etc.) and there is absolutely no communication, or worse poor communication!  No communication and poor communication just lead to rumors and assumptions on the part of your employees.  I can tell you firsthand, that the rumors and assumptions are almost ALWAYS worse than reality. It causes fear and distrust among the employees and leads to destructive conflict, even when it isn’t necessary.

Trust and Respect

I had the unfortunate position of being in a job where we lost a significant amount of our workload. Suddenly I was faced with having not enough work for the number of people I had on my team. Uncertainty was everywhere, and there was the constant threat of layoffs.  People came to work everyday not knowing if it would be there last day. Ironically, during this same time, my team’s morale actually improved. How? I was constantly communicating, openly and honestly with my team. And, prior to that I had a developed a relationship based on mutual trust and respect.

To ensure you have effective communication there has to be a level of mutual trust and respect. When you think about this, your best relationships with a spouse, best friend, children, whomever is based on mutual trust and respect. When that trust is broken what happens to the relationship? It deteriorates and eventually disintegrates.  Why would companies treat their employees any different? Companies often demand or expect loyalty from their employees on one hand, and then hide information or poorly communicate company strategies on the other. The rationale for this is because “we don’t want people to panic.”

This Week’s Challenge

How is your company culture structured? Are there silos and finger pointing, or communication based on mutual trust and respect? Are all stakeholders brought in for decisions or are people just told to live with decisions being made?  Creating the right culture, and integrated culture, will dramatically improve your bottom line!

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.

Corporate Silos

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Seandrew shaffer consulting corporate silosOver the last few weeks I have had several individuals express frustration about how their business was siloed or stove piped.  This basically means that everyone works within their specific function and ignores everyone else. In fact, in one specific case, it had an employee considering leaving the company. Well integrated, high performing teams and companies cannot operate with this model. Today I am going to talk about the dangers of corporate silos to your business and offer a suggestion for a solution.

Corporate Silos

A few weeks back I talked about Team Integration.  In that post, I discussed the importance of teams working towards a common goal.  I feel this is important to keep everyone focused on the results, and helps people work together better. However, even when everyone in the company and the team is working toward a common goal there can still be corporate silos.  This is evident with statements like:

  • Don’t tell me how to do my job!
  • What do you know about …
  • Stay in your lane!

These are not a sign of a well-integrated, high performing team.

Communication

Companies operating in silos inevitably do not communicate well.  Marketing isn’t communicating with sales. Design working independent of manufacturing. Accounting isn’t communicating with anyone. When communication breaks down, there is a lack of mutual trust and respect. Poor communication will cost your business money.

I have seen where a lack of communication has caused projects to overrun budgets by up to 200% or more. On a project I was working on, one engineer worked strictly in his own silo.  He’d communicate weekly about what he accomplished. But the other engineers, who were using this design, would regularly find things that didn’t work.  Why? Because they didn’t communicate effectively up front so that everyone understood the path forward. They all went about their tasks, and when the two were integrated, it didn’t work and there was a ton of expensive re-work.

Complexity

Siloed companies are plagued with complexity. Why? Because they must add processes and procedures to everything to compensate for a lack of communication.  Does this sound familiar? In these types of organizations, when something goes wrong like supply chain didn’t order the right parts slowing down manufacturing. Suddenly there is a new process for ordering parts requiring four or five signatures inevitably from people too busy and layers away from the actual work. Time is added to the process, and there are more questions which mean a longer process.  Eliminate this with effective communication.

To add to the complexity, managers and leaders will start protecting themselves so they aren’t blamed for the delays. Infighting backstabbing and more bureaucracy can also enter in the picture.

Solution

Change your decision-making process. Include more communication. Develop decision making teams, at the appropriate level, that include a cross function of support. Any and all stakeholders should be included, and if they are not the meeting should be put on hold. Work all scenarios up front. Set expectations and make plans. Many times, especially on time sensitive projects, people just dive in and get started. While initiative is something that is admirable, jumping in without proper preparation is a formula for rework, exceeding budgets and missing deadlines.  Create a culture where people work together, communicate with mutual trust and respect.

This Week’s Challenge

How is your company culture structured? Are there corporate silos and finger pointing, or communication based on mutual trust and respect? Are all stakeholders brought in for decisions or are people just told to live with decisions being made?  Creating the right culture, and integrated culture, will dramatically improve your bottom line!

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.

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.

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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

By

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.