THE IMPORTANCE OF TEAMS

Is Your Biggest Cost being Fully Utilised?

Are you spending time prioritizing the building of teams, that are fit for purpose?

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Are your managers empowered and do they have the correct level of decision making?

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Are they clear on what their outcomes are? And are able to comprehend the results of their decisions?

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Are they fully engaged in the company's vision?

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As a company one of your biggest assets and revenue generators is its teams and the leaders who manage them. Conversely, they can be the biggest barrier to growth and also the biggest cost the company incurs.

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As a leader, you may find yourself answering negatively to these questions, as you have had team meetings, maybe held an offsite team building session but you still find that your approval is requested to make decisions or a strategy is not implemented in accordance with your expectations.

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This may sound familiar and as an extremely busy leader – you feel you are required to give your staff a lot of your time in helping them deal with situations but are they learning and developing from the input?

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By necessity a team is a complex entity consisting of a group of individuals required to function as a unified collective that recognize and are driven to achieve the company’s goals and objectives. Each team member is an individual with individual aspirations, personality, ambitions, creating a functioning team requires considerable time, patience and management. 

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Staff are your single biggest cost, you need to make sure you get the biggest ROI on this cost. To achieve this you need to ensure they have the following in place;

• Clear company vision – this should be their mantra.

• Team Leaders that have the correct level of autonomy – trust their judgement/decision making – distributed decision making.

• Great company systems – the spine of the organization.

• A clear understanding of what is required of them as individuals and also their role in the team.
   

Implementation of the above, ensures you have engaged and confident teams and staff, that understand their boundaries, know who and when to ask for help, thereby alleviating you from this burden and giving you back the time to focus on matters requiring your attention as a leader.

Whilst it is difficult to simultaneously implement all these at the same time, they can and should be worked on in parallel. For the transformation of your company, it is crucial to have these in place to allow you to move onto a new growth phase. Otherwise, you will spend a great deal of your time and energy running on the spot, or worse!

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Members of engaged teams cooperate in synergy, pulling together in a uniform direction, supporting each other to achieve the common objective.

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NB. When building teams do not be afraid to remove negative or out-dated thinking – ultimately not removing an unproductive element from a team  will cost you much more in the long term, by disrupting team motivation, that results in a slower uptake of new systems and restricts innovative thinking.

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NB. Exceptional teams will embrace change and understand its importance, it is for the good of the company and not to preserve one’s own position or influence.

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