Did you ever play any team sports? What makes a good team good? Is it simply a matter of recruiting superstars, or is there more to it than that?

All good teams have the following attributes in common:

FIXED GOALS

Do you have a stated goal for your business and have you shared this with your team? Just like a sports team, any group needs to have an agreed upon goal or objective to perform well. In sports the goal is often winning a division or the championship. Then that big goal is broken down into smaller goals, including right down to individual players’ goals. Those same steps can be followed in your shop.

UNDERSTAND EACH POSITION

Ensure that each person on your team fully understands their job. What is expected of them and why? A team only performs as well as the individual players are proficient at their individual jobs. There has to be a way of measuring the production and performance of each position in a shop, a certain statistic to keep track of that position.

OTHER TEAM MEMBERS

Do your people completely understand how their actions and how their performance affects the performance of the others in the group and the overall performance of the shop? Nobody in a group lives on an island. Each member must understand how their actions and performance effects the actions and performance of the other members in the group.

UNDERSTAND ALL JOBS

Does everyone completely understand everyone else’s job and what it is they do and how that affects the team overall? When individuals in a group do not have a good understanding of the jobs others around them perform, it greatly decreases that group’s ability to perform at peak levels. Complete job descriptions for every position in the business must be available and completely understood by each person for their own position.

TRAINING

Do you take the time to train each employee and go over the shop’s procedures?

A business that does not invest resources toward training is killing itself. A shop has got to have a system and schedule for on-going training of each member of the group. A shop also needs to hold training drills on the various administrative procedures in the shop.

COACHING

It’s not just the employees who need coaching and training. The owner does also. It’s important to get that outside impartial view into what your business is doing wrong and right. That push is important and most successful CEO’s have someone like this on their side.

KPI’s

Like sports, a business must have Key Performance Indicators to gauge its effectiveness and progress toward a stated goal. Understanding the sales-production-profit pipeline of a business and what the key statistics are to measure the success of an executive’s decisions and actions is vital to the achievement of the goals.

GETTING ALONG AS A TEAM

Keeping people winning on their jobs is an important part of managing and leadership. Knowing how to set up bonus plans and quickly handling upsets with employees is all part of knowing how to win the game.

Your business probably has a great start with some terrific team players. So now it’s your turn to examine what you are providing to your employees and take your shop – and its profits – to another level of success…or a championship!

 

 

“Talent wins games, but teamwork and intelligence win championships.” – Michael Jordan

 

 

 

Published in: VISION