HR Consulting

What Makes A Great Team

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While assisting a client redefine his organisation structure, I got to thinking “what makes a great team?” I have a passion for sport and have been fortunate to coach both individual and team sports from juniors to seniors, and from local club level to international. I have always believed that a great team, whether in sport or business, is characterised by 3 consistent traits.

1. Leadership The first trait of a great team is strong leadership – the coach and the captain. A good leader will get the most from his or her team by making sure that each team member clearly understands their role and how that role contributes towards the success of the business. A good leader takes ownership of the success of the team by “leading” not just directing.

teamwork-skydivers

2. Vision The second trait of a great team is vision – the game plan. A clearly defined vision allows a team to pursue greatness because it gives everyone a common goal. When team members know the “rules of the game” they are free to be as creative as possible within those boundaries. All of your team members should know your company’s vision and more importantly, believe in it. But don’t stop with your employees; tell your customers and vendors as well. It will give them confidence to know that your company will be around for a long time.

3. Communication And finally, a great team communicates well – every player knows there role within the game plan and what is expected of them. Great teams communicate; up, down, sideways, it doesn’t matter. A great team knows that each person has a responsibility to communicate with every other team member about anything that affects the success of the business. Of all the corporate roles I’ve had, the most enjoyable were also the one’s where the company, and I, were most successful. Not surprisingly these were the companies where everyone knew where they were going, what the individuals’ role was and we were empowered to make it happen – and the management team bought into the vision. Your team can make or break your business. So develop a strong vision, foster communication within your team and most importantly; lead them.

HR Consulting

The Mark of a Good Leader

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Often I come across some really good information on business that I like to share. This was sent to me by a colleague of mine, but without details of the author, so it is posted with “acknowledgement to anonomous”

A mark of a good leader is to be able to provide consistent motivation to his team encouraging them to attain excellence and quality in their performance. A good leader is always looking for ways to improve production and standards. Here are six management skills you can develop as a leader in working to create a quality effective team.

1. Observation
This is an important aspect that often gets neglected due the demands on a leader’s time and schedule. Observation and regular visits to the work environment are a priority and should be scheduled into the calendar. Observing employees at work, the procedures, interaction and work flow is foundational to implementing adjustments to improve results. To have credibility, a leader needs to be seen and be known to be up to date with what is happening in the work place.

2. Monitor Employee Performance
Employee performance needs to be monitored in mutually accepted ways. Policies and procedures need to be clear. Conferencing should be on a regular basis and not just when there is a problem. Assessments and evaluations should not be merely all formality or viewed a necessary paperwork to be done and filed away. Individual and group conferencing should be undertaken not only to monitor performance, but with the expectation of ongoing professional development and support. There should be frequent encouragement and clear criteria for ongoing goals both for the group and individual.

3. Implementation of Professional Development Programs
A good leader evaluates weaknesses and provides training and development strategies to strengthen the weaker skills in the team.

4. Demonstrates Working Knowledge and Expertise
Good leadership comes from a place of strong knowledge and experience of the production and process leading to results. If a leader does not possess all the expertise and knowledge personally, then regular consultations with experts involved in the departments should be held. This is important in order to maintain an accurate and informed overall picture.

5. Good Decision Making
Good leadership is characterized by the ability to make good decisions. A leader considers all the different factors before making a decision. Clear firm decisions, combined with the willingness and flexibility to adapt and adjust decisions when necessary, create confidence in the leadership.

6. Ability to Conduct and Evaluate Research
Ongoing review and research is vital in order to keep on the cutting edge in business. While managing the present to ensure ongoing excellence in product and performance, a good leader is also able to look towards the future. Conducting and evaluating research is an important way of planning and being prepared for the future.

Excellent leadership is always pro active rather than reactive. By developing these six managerial skills builds a solid foundation for success.

Business Process Improvement

Growth Requires Change

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Businesses need to change if they want to grow. Change can be proactive or reactive, but without it everything stays the same and growth is impossible.

Many organizations have found to their detriment that it’s unwise to fail to anticipate changes in the external environment and suffer the consequences. Change has to be carefully planned and implemented with strict controls on both its extent and the pace at which it takes place.

First let’s look at changes that can happen to a business. These might take place over an extended period of time, often so slowly that management is unaware of the extent of the changes until it has been confronted with the unpleasant financial results.

  • Team morale decreases and productivity declines
  • Customers depart and sales decrease
  • Costs rise and profitability suffers

Each of these change paths can happen gradually and unless management regularly monitors key business metrics and ratios they can cause an unpleasant awakening to reality. Isn’t it much better to plan positive changes to an organization and benefit from the outcomes?

Think instead of your business experiencing these kinds of change:

  • Team morale is improved by a program that creates greater job satisfaction and productivity increases
  • A customer relationship management system generates increased turnover and word-of-mouth brings in new customers
  • Active management of costs and better purchasing policies reduce expenses and improve profitability

Plan and implement positive change

Where the first set of changes happened to a business and would be detrimental to growth, the second set of changes are the kind that are planned and create growth. Planning and implanting positive change is an essential element of management.

Yet change for its own sake can be a mistake. It’s important that when considering making changes to an organization the effects are fully identified and carefully analysed.

Discuss the proposed changes with two important groups of stakeholders – your customers and team members. The first group has to accept the changes or your sales will decrease; the second group has to accept them or they won’t happen in the manner you intend.

Betty Krecji of the Purdue University Department of Consumer and Family Sciences says that how one views change is dependent on many things:

The number of changes occurring at once – individuals can only handle so much change. The greater the number of changes occurring simultaneously, the more likely it is that they will be viewed negatively.

The pace at which change is occurring – the faster the changes come, the more difficulty we have in adjusting to them and the more likely we are to view change as loss.
The amount of control in times of change – the greater the involvement individuals have in making change, the greater their sense of control. The greater the sense of control, the more likely the change will be viewed as an opportunity.

Remember the human element

Communicate the planned changes internally before they happen. Change should never take place suddenly or unexpectedly; to do it this way is to invite rejection. All team members need to know what’s going to happen and why it’s a good idea.

Business owners often ignore the human element of change because they believe it can be created through giving orders. Positive and lasting organizational change isn’t like that; it’s ‘owned’ by the team and they get behind it to make it happen.

Don’t expect change to go as quickly or as smoothly as you’ve planned. No matter how much planning has gone into the process there will always be unforeseen forces that impact the success of the change effort.

Harvard Business School’s Todd Jick conducted a study that identified these problems that were experienced by a majority of firms implementing change:

  • change took more time than allocated
  • unforeseen problems surfaced
  • coordination of implementation activities was ineffective
  • competing crises distracted attention
  • insufficient capabilities and skills of those involved in the implementation
  • inadequate training was given
  • uncontrollable external factors had a major adverse impact (eg. Competitive, government, economic)
  • inadequate support for change
  • failure to define expectations and goals clearly
  • failure to involve all those who will be affected by change

Change for the right reasons and done the right way can be a powerful growth stimulant for any organization. Done badly, change can become a business disaster. Consider change carefully, analyse it as critically as possible, and implement it only after you’ve gained the support of stakeholders.

HR Consulting

A New Look At Your Workforce

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The implications of what has been termed the ‘skills shortage’ need to be understood by every business owner. The ways we hire, train, remunerate and manage people will have to change, and so will the way we run our businesses.
Most countries have an aging workforce and a declining birth rate. What we call ‘baby boomers’ – a significant percentage of the workforce, are reaching the end of their working lives and are already beginning to retire. At the same time the declining birth rate means that fewer workers will be available to replace those who leave the workforce.
The Australian government identifies the following as the primary reasons for the growing worries about a shortage of skills:
the technology used in an industry changes
new technologies emerge
old industries move into different regions with a different skills base
job seekers’ interests in industries and occupations change.
A skills shortage does not necessarily mean that there are plenty of jobs for anyone interested in that area of work. Often there is only a demand for experienced workers with highly-specialised skills. The demand might only exist for a relatively short period of time; it might not be possible to train people to fill these positions before the demand falls once more.
But overall it means that it’s probably going to be harder to find skilled people for the jobs in your business. You’re going to have to pay more to get them and you’ll have to spend more to ensure they have the skills you need and to retain them. You’ll also have to make changes to the business itself.
The generations after the ‘baby boomers’, now called generations ‘X’ and ‘Y’ in the media, have entirely different attitudes towards work than their predecessors. They’re not as financially-driven and demand much more from their employers than just a regular pay-cheque and the occasional pat on the back.
Younger people want to choose not only the type of work they do but also to work for an ‘employer of choice’. They want to be part of an organization that reflects their own personal values and gives them opportunities to grow and develop in their work. Their skill sets are different from trades-trained workers of past generations and they have little interest in doing the same thing day after day.
How to keep the people you have
Research shows that an increasing value is being given by employees to their relationships with their employers. It is up to the employer to develop and nurture this relationship, as well as to keep it positive. The key requirement is that the employee feels they can trust their employer and that they are respected for their contributions to the organization.
This places unexpected demands on employers used to simply paying for what they get. In the future they’ll also have to create a workplace where their people feel good about where they are and what they do; they’ll have to share information about the business and offer forms of remuneration that motivate employees and reward them for the part they play in the organization’s growth and achievements.
Managers will have to be worthy of respect from their subordinates and not just lead by decree. They will have to improve their own skills to motivate and retain skilled workers, or risk losing them to employers perceived as being more desirable and progressive.
How to recruit good people
As skilled workers depart businesses around the world employers will have to change their recruiting practices from the prevailing use of third-party resources – recruiting firms and contractors. The days of employers being able to dictate terms of employment to get around industrial legislation are truly numbered.
Employers will have to take more responsibility for finding the right people for every position. They will have to exercise greater care in defining skills requirements and provide for more flexibility in job structuring and reporting relationships so these can be adapted to suit the people recruited.
To get the right people employers will have to be able to clearly articulate their organization’s values and project these into their business practices and their products. They will have to become more attractive to the decreasing pool of talent as well as differentiate themselves above their competitors.
How to be a better employer organization
According to a number of studies conducted to identify the characteristics employer organizations will need to have – or develop, these are some of the most important:
A system in place for gaining feedback from employees
Excellent communications with employees about the business and about their own performance
A willingness to develop employees’ skills, even if not directly related to their current position
Ethical and honest behaviour at all levels of the organization
A clearly articulated vision for the business
Work that is interesting and presents employees with challenges enabling them to grow
Managers and supervisors with demonstrable talent and abilities that create respect and trust
So, not only is it going to be harder to keep the people you have working with you; it’s also going to be harder to get new people to join your organization. Your future success or failure could well depend on your policies of recruitment and staff development and on how you respond to the challenges of restructuring your workplace.
HR Consulting

Team motivation

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What is team motivation?
Motivated team members enjoy coming into work and work hard, yet always have time for a laugh. Team motivation is a combination of workplace culture, organizational strategy and management style.
The benefits for employers are increased productivity, reduced absenteeism and turnover, and higher profits.
So why don’t all employers do it? Because they don’t know how to do it, don’t make time for it, or mistakenly think it gets in the way of real work.
It is essential to strike the right balance in motivating a workforce. In order to be effective, motivational strategies must be incorporated into a company’s business goals and its philosophy.
A motivated workforce is driven by strong leadership and a committed management.
Creating and sustaining motivation requires open communication, honesty and respect.
This approach includes developing a culture that encourages team members to participate in organizational activities and share in workplace success.
Essentially, motivation is about bonding with the people who report to you.
This includes making an effort to know them, listening to them and valuing them for their particular contributions and potential. If this is done, they are more likely to help you in meeting the challenges faced by your business.
Benefits of motivating your team
Much research has been undertaken to identify both the visible and invisible benefits of a highly motivated team.
• The findings show that teams who love their work and their workplace typically:
• look forward to coming to work
• actively and consciously contribute to the business
• get more done and have more ideas
• focus their energy on the positives rather than the negatives
• reinforce the organizational culture
• treat clients, co-workers and vendors with more respect
• weather the \”tough times\” with you
• serve as positive ambassadors for your business.
It is easy to see how these can benefit your business.
Apart from creating a harmonious day-to-day working environment, a highly motivated workforce can deliver financial gains through lower team turnover and recruitment costs, more satisfied clients and a more productive workforce.
This is why many large companies constantly monitor team morale. A happy company is a productive one – and more profitable!
How to motivate your team
While many businesses look to incentives or bonus plans to motivate their team, such plans only provide short-term superficial incentives, which fail to provide true motivation.
Research has repeatedly found that the prime team motivators are achievement, recognition, the work itself, responsibility, advancement, and growth.
In other words, although adequate salaries, incentive pay and bonus plans can avoid dissatisfaction, they do not lead to either job satisfaction or high motivation.
The best way to motivate your team is to recognize that people are motivated by their own individual goals, values and desires.
Get to know people and understand their needs, then give them project assignments in which they can become motivated by satisfying their needs.
People are motivated more by feelings and sensitivities than they are by facts and logic. It is common for people to quit high-paying jobs because they don\’t feel appreciated, don\’t feel challenged, or don\’t like the work environment.
Tips for motivating team members
There is no single set of activities that act as a magic formula for creating a highly motivated team.
However certain concepts and practices have proven to be winning combinations if used properly and sincerely. The seven best tips to improving team motivation are:
1. Give your team something to cheer about
Create and communicate an honest vision and mission for your business. Studies show that most people want to believe that there is some purpose and meaning to their work. If your team understand the purpose and direction of your business, and their role in making the desired outcomes happen, they might gain the sense of purpose and contribution that they seek.
2. Encourage team members to grow
Training, professional development, opportunities to try new skills or apply old skills in new ways and cross-training are mutually beneficial business tools. The organization deepens its \”bank of knowledge and know-how\” and the morale among the team soars.
3. Hear their voices
Welcome and provide venues for team feedback and participation and take appropriate action to consider and respond to their comments. When people don’t feel heard, or they have the perception that their ideas aren’t valued or at least acknowledged, morale will suffer.
4. Be consistent
Consistency breeds trust. Policies, roles, expectations, inspired leadership and effective communication are many of the areas that require consistency in order to achieve a high level of team motivation in your business.
5. Communicate
Keep team members informed and build their understanding of what is happening in the business, and why.
6. Reward and recognize
Arguably one of the most powerful ways to increase team motivation is to recognize and reward actions and behaviours that are outstanding or in line with the vision and mission of your business.
7. Remember, it’s not all work
Because the majority of your team will spend most of their waking time each day at work it is important to recognize the social aspect of employment. Morning teas, lunches, and celebrating birthdays can be fitted into the regular routines. Out-of-hours social activities are another way in which you can create a stronger sense of teamwork and a more motivated team. And don’t forget to celebrate your successes! At some level every team member performing a job enables the organization to achieve its wins. It is important to celebrate those moments as a group.
HR Consulting

Improving Productivity Starts with Improving Management

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Although being a few years old, the 2007 report covered businesses in the U.S., Australia and Europe and from my recent experience the finding still hold true. It reports a disturbing average of 18% of working time wasted among the surveyed businesses. The U.S. came in as most efficient with ‘only’ 14.1% of working hours wasted while Australia topped the charts at 19.4% wasted.
Analysis of contributory causes revealed that more than three-quarters of inefficient working in 2006 could be attributed to just three causes:
Inadequate workforce supervision (31% of all wasted time)
Poor management planning and control of work (30%)
Poor communication (18%)
The remainder of wasted time recorded was the result of IT problems, low morale and a skills absence or mismatch.
When managers were asked to select from a range of actions they considered could increase workplace productivity the top 2 they chose were investment in workforce skills and investment in management skills. But this may be putting the cart before the horse.
The interesting thing is that all three major contributors to time waste are directly referable to internal management practices. Wasted time may be up, but as the report recognises, the root cause for that is inadequate management supervision, disjointed planning of production processes and inadequate communication of the information employees need to work at their most productive level.
Managers can’t dodge their share of responsibility for the amount of time wasted each year by under-producing employees. When it comes to improving productivity the first area to attend to should be reforming poor management practices and getting managers up to speed in some basic skills.
Workforce Supervision
How to supervise a group of people effectively is a basic HR skill for anybody in a position of leadership or management. Managers should have at least some training in critical HR areas such as employment law, selecting people with the right workforce skills, setting compensation packages, training and developing employees and carrying out performance reviews. These HR skills underpin your ability to get the best out of your employees and improve organisational performance.
Management Planning
The ability to work to a business plan that sets out the broad goals to be achieved in a given period of time, organise all the inputs required to achieve the goals, coordinate the activities and monitor progress towards them are all essential managerial skills necessary to achieve business growth, yet the ability of many managers in these areas is problematic.
Inefficient practices are rarely improved by simply automating them. Introducing technology before optimising the process it is intended to improve merely results in automated inefficiency. But how many managers take the time to analyse just how efficiently their key processes, such as supply chain operations, are working? How many take the effort to develop procedure manuals to ensure employees do things in a consistent and approved manner?
Communication
Managers often have issues with formulating and delivering clear verbal instruction. This can be addressed to a large degree by having the right support resources in place: a clear organisational structure; well defined job descriptions to avoid confusion about responsibilities; policies and procedures manuals to provide a definitive answer on the approved method of doing things; and investing time in inducting and training new employees. Implementing measures like these will reap huge long-term productivity benefits.
Employees do usually try to achieve what they think the job requires of them. To get them achieving the right things you need to be very clear in the instruction you provide, whether that be at the level of explaining how to perform a process or what goals the business is trying to achieve and their role in contributing to their attainment.
Poor productivity can be the result of just plain time wasting by employees but more likely it’s the result of poor planning, inefficient practices and an inability to clearly communicate what needs doing. Whether through coaching, talking to a business advisor or putting themselves through one of the many SME management short courses on offer, a manager has a responsibility to make themselves the best they can be before laying problems of poor productivity at the feet of their employees. At Business Roadmap we can help you determine the skills training required by you or your managers and either directly or through our partners, deliver suitable courses.

HR Consulting

Employee Incentives

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If you are a business owner or a Company Director, you have probably realised that your employees are very, very important to the success of the business. There is a chance you have been thinking how you could motivate these employees so they give their very best to your business.

One of the most efficient ways to achieve this is to introduce an incentive that would motivate them by the prospect of a reward if they and the business perform well.

An employee incentive plan aims at increasing employee productivity and therefore profits for the company (financial objective), or aims at giving back to them (a well being, non-financial objective such as job satisfaction), or both. Read more →

Business Process Improvement

Practical Business Skills Training….TAG it!

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It is common knowledge that in today’s complex business environment, good is frequently not good enough. TAG Team is a Business Skills Training System that stimulates Systems Thinking and encourages team members to ‘think outside the box’.

We all know that running a business requires that we have an input, a transformation process, and finally an output that we sell and deliver to our customers. If we do this efficiently, then the income generated from sales exceeds the operational expenses, and we make a profit.

But can it really be that simple?

Perhaps not…

Puzzle

TAG Team is designed to improve the understanding of business principles by simulating a typical business environment. The game is not a computer simulation, but rather a practical ‘hands-on’ game where groups or teams compete against each other in an attempt to generate the maximum profit for the team. The game highlights how common market and operational conditions impact on the profitability of any business.

TAG Team….

• Highlights the impact that market constraints, quality problems, lead times, operating efficiency, and process design have on business profitability.
• Is ideal for all levels and any mix of employees, from senior executives to operational staff members.
• Is fun, interactive and great for team building
• Is ideally suited to a total group size of 12 to 25 people.

Business Strategy Consulting

Bridging Business Silos

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My colleague David Burgess recently wrote on Optimal Organisation and made the comment – The argument that organisational structures can form “silos” which leads to dysfunctional outcomes simply highlights that the procedures are not developed to link the organisational structures to provide the desired outcome.

Now didn’t that strike a chord with me. I had a client who wanted help defining his business strategy and putting this into a business plan that could guide his management team. I started by chatting with his managers and quickly realised that none of them had the same understanding of the businesses direction, or their role in it as the CEO. This surprised the CEO as he had lunch with members of his management team every day, generally meeting each of them in this way over a fortnight.
Of most concern was the fact that some of the management team believed one of them was a “protected species” – roles had been created for him to move him out of areas where he had not succeeded. Worse, this particular manager would redefine his role to suit what he was comfortable with, rather than what was required by the business.
Now we can all see that this was something that should have been addressed by the CEO, but it wasn’t.

This took the planning project off on a tangent as it was obvious we needed to define the critical functions and related roles within the organisation so we would have a management team able to implement the plan. A functional organisation structure was needed.

Functional Organisation is arguably the most effective form of organisation, because it is designed around functions, rather than people. Each function has its own responsibilities, separate and distinct from any other. The functions don’t overlap, and the scope never changes to fit an individual. Individuals are chosen to fill functions based on their ability, knowledge, training and experience.

Once we established a functional management structure team spirit improved because each department became a team with all personnel within the department reporting to a single person who has complete responsibility for the performance, training, guidance and direction of the department, and who also has the authority to make the department fully effective in accomplishing its goals. While each department must communicate, cooperate and coordinate with all other functions in the company to achieve the company’s overall goals, each individual now reports to only one person, and all directives, orders, requests etc., will be funneled through that person.

Like so many things in business it sounds so simple, but you may be surprised how often it is not the case.