Choose your team carefully, turn your team members on and keep them happy by taking great care of them.

“People are made up of 99% emotion and 1% reason. Take care of their hearts and their heads will follow”

Joy Madison

You arrive at work and turn on the machines – they work away day-in and day-out, producing a fixed quantity at a fixed quality. If they break down, it is simple to trace the problem and fix it. When your machines are old and fully depreciated, you simply replace them with new and improved models.

Your people are totally different – they can be complex, moody, temperamental, unpredictable and often secretive and insecure. They are known to report late, steal, break things, strike, sulk or just go slow. That’s just the way it is. And often it has a lot to do with the way you treat them.

On the other hand, you will have people who treat the business as if it is their own, work overtime, care, smile, go the extra mile and dedicate themselves to excellence. These are your stars. When you are lucky enough to get these people, do whatever it takes to keep them, motivate them and reward them. Give these stars all the recognition in the world, stroke them, massage their egos, boost their pay cheques – they are the reason why your business will thrive. Without them, you’re deadmeat – we just can’t say it any simpler than that.

Business-Its a promise, that at least 80% of the problems your business will face will be people related.

One of the defining qualities of great entrepreneurs is their ability to spot and hire the right people — often they work on gut feel. But they back up their gut feel by checking out these people with great care. No-one can give you gut feel, but we can give you some tips on how to check out your most important assets:

* Check references — don’t only check the references given to you, because these people were probably pre-conditioned. Phone and check references not supplied. When you check a reference, be prepared by having a well thought out series of questions you would like answered.
* Consider conducting psychometric or personality tests — These tests are readily available and they are inexpensive. One well- known entrepreneur with whom we have worked even puts all her potential staff and franchisees through a handwriting analysis. When we asked her why, she said it was because she had her own handwriting analyzed and was amazed at how accurate it was.
* Match the personality and culture of the candidate to that of your company — A company is like an extended family to its staff. It is a group of people who behave in a certain way; they have certain beliefs, values and desires; and they live with each other at least eight hours a day. Inother words, every company, no matter how small, has its own culture. Some people may fit in and others won’t. Some people might have all the technical skills but they won’t fit into your company. It is therefore vital to try matching the potential employee’s personality to the personality of your company.
* Master the art of interviewing — The job interview is the most important meeting you will ever have with your employee. It’s where you ultimately decide whether you are going to build a relationship with this person or not. It’s almost like deciding whether you want to marry someone after one meeting. We recommend that you have other staff members interview job candidates. Get a second, third and fourth opinion. And decide on
* what kind of questions you are going to ask the candidate before the interview. Remember: in this country, once you hire someone, it could be for keeps.
* Give the candidate an assignment — One of the most effective ways to choose the right people is to ask them to prepare an assignment or presentation for presentation to you at a second interview. In this way, you will get an actual taste of what this person can do. In effect, you are asking the person to pitch for the job the way you pitch for your customer’s accounts.

Warning:

Small companies often fail to do the basics because they don’t have the resources of a big company. We find that these smaller operations often don’t bother with letters of appointment, leave registers, grievance procedures and other legal and procedural aspects. However, they are not above labour legislation. In fact, smaller companies have to take special care in legalities, since they do not have large in-house legal departments to handle any queries and cases that may come up. As we all know, legal fees alone can bankrupt you. So avoid landing yourself in legal disputes by handling human resources in a professional way.

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12 C's of Team Building....

Executives, managers and organization staff members universally explore ways to improve business results and profitability. Many view team-based, horizontal, organization structures as the best design for involving all employees in creating business success.

No matter what you call your team-based improvement effort: continuous improvement, total quality, lean manufacturing or self-directed work teams, you are striving to improve results for customers. Few organizations, however, are totally pleased with the results their team improvement efforts produce. If your team improvement efforts are not living up to your expectations, this self-diagnosing checklist may tell you why. Successful team building, that creates effective, focused work teams, requires attention to each of the following.

* Clear Expectations: Has executive leadership clearly communicated its expectations for the team’s performance and expected outcomes? Do team members understand why the team was created? Is the organization demonstrating constancy of purpose in supporting the team with resources of people, time and money? Does the work of the team receive sufficient emphasis as a priority in terms of the time, discussion, attention and interest directed its way by executive leaders?
Read more about Clear Performance Expectations.


* Context: Do team members understand why they are participating on the team? Do they understand how the strategy of using teams will help the organization attain its communicated business goals? Can team members define their team’s importance to the accomplishment of corporate goals? Does the team understand where its work fits in the total context of the organization’s goals, principles, vision and values?
Read more about Team Culture and Context.


* Commitment: Do team members want to participate on the team? Do team members feel the team mission is important? Are members committed to accomplishing the team mission and expected outcomes? Do team members perceive their service as valuable to the organization and to their own careers? Do team members anticipate recognition for their contributions? Do team members expect their skills to grow and develop on the team? Are team members excited and challenged by the team opportunity?
Read more about Commitment in Team Building.


* Competence: Does the team feel that it has the appropriate people participating? (As an example, in a process improvement, is each step of the process represented on the team?) Does the team feel that its members have the knowledge, skill and capability to address the issues for which the team was formed? If not, does the team have access to the help it needs? Does the team feel it has the resources, strategies and support needed to accomplish its mission?


* Charter: Has the team taken its assigned area of responsibility and designed its own mission, vision and strategies to accomplish the mission. Has the team defined and communicated its goals; its anticipated outcomes and contributions; its time lines; and how it will measure both the outcomes of its work and the process the team followed to accomplish their task? Does the leadership team or other coordinating group support what the team has designed?


* Control: Does the team have enough freedom and empowerment to feel the ownership necessary to accomplish its charter? At the same time, do team members clearly understand their boundaries? How far may members go in pursuit of solutions? Are limitations (i.e. monetary and time resources) defined at the beginning of the project before the team experiences barriers and rework?

Is the team’s reporting relationship and accountability understood by all members of the organization? Has the organization defined the team’s authority? To make recommendations? To implement its plan? Is there a defined review process so both the team and the organization are consistently aligned in direction and purpose? Do team members hold each other accountable for project time lines, commitments and results? Does the organization have a plan to increase opportunities for self-management among organization members?


* Collaboration: Does the team understand team and group process? Do members understand the stages of group development? Are team members working together effectively interpersonally? Do all team members understand the roles and responsibilities of team members? team leaders? team recorders? Can the team approach problem solving, process improvement, goal setting and measurement jointly? Do team members cooperate to accomplish the team charter? Has the team established group norms or rules of conduct in areas such as conflict resolution, consensus decision making and meeting management? Is the team using an appropriate strategy to accomplish its action plan?


* Communication: Are team members clear about the priority of their tasks? Is there an established method for the teams to give feedback and receive honest performance feedback? Does the organization provide important business information regularly? Do the teams understand the complete context for their existence? Do team members communicate clearly and honestly with each other? Do team members bring diverse opinions to the table? Are necessary conflicts raised and addressed?


* Creative Innovation: Is the organization really interested in change? Does it value creative thinking, unique solutions, and new ideas? Does it reward people who take reasonable risks to make improvements? Or does it reward the people who fit in and maintain the status quo? Does it provide the training, education, access to books and films, and field trips necessary to stimulate new thinking?


* Consequences: Do team members feel responsible and accountable for team achievements? Are rewards and recognition supplied when teams are successful? Is reasonable risk respected and encouraged in the organization? Do team members fear reprisal? Do team members spend their time finger pointing rather than resolving problems? Is the organization designing reward systems that recognize both team and individual performance? Is the organization planning to share gains and increased profitability with team and individual contributors? Can contributors see their impact on increased organization success?


* Coordination: Are teams coordinated by a central leadership team that assists the groups to obtain what they need for success? Have priorities and resource allocation been planned across departments? Do teams understand the concept of the internal customer—the next process, anyone to whom they provide a product or a service? Are cross-functional and multi-department teams common and working together effectively? Is the organization developing a customer-focused process-focused orientation and moving away from traditional departmental thinking?


* Cultural Change: Does the organization recognize that the team-based, collaborative, empowering, enabling organizational culture of the future is different than the traditional, hierarchical organization it may currently be? Is the organization planning to or in the process of changing how it rewards, recognizes, appraises, hires, develops, plans with, motivates and manages the people it employs?

Does the organization plan to use failures for learning and support reasonable risk? Does the organization recognize that the more it can change its climate to support teams, the more it will receive in pay back from the work of the teams?
Read more about culture change.

Spend time and attention on each of these twelve tips to ensure your work teams contribute most effectively to your business success. Your team members will love you, your business will soar, and empowered people will "own" and be responsible for their work processes. Can your work life get any better than this?

ABCs of TEAM BUILDING....

The following concepts are what I consider the fundamentals of team-building:

A is for action. No team can function without a plan of action, even when the final outcome is to take no action at all.

B is for brainpower. If two heads are better than one, I would submit that a cohesive, well-assembled team should have enough brainpower to attack any project.

C is for cooperation and communication. Team members need to cooperate, even if they don't necessarily agree. Clear communication is the roadmap to cooperation.

D is for dedication. As members of a team, you must be dedicated to the goals of the team, or you are on the wrong team.

E is for ears. Use your ears more than your mouth because listening skills are critical for team success.

F is for fun. Work should be fun, and working together is usually a lot more fun than working alone.

G is for the group effort. The motto needs to be "all for one and one for all" in order to be a real team.

H is for help. Ask for it if you need it, and offer it if someone else needs yours.

I is for the ideas that come from brainstorming and picking each others' brains. Let the ideas flow and then choose those which hold the most potential.

J is for juggling. Combining all the company's needs and desired results will often require a juggling act, but a competent team will be able to achieve that balance.

K is for kinetic -- energetic, dynamic team members keep things moving.

L is for leadership. Every team needs a leader, and every leader needs to be able to depend on the team.

M is for motivation. Nothing motivates a team like trust placed in them by management to solve a problem.

N is for negotiate. Give and take is as important within a team as it is with outside clients.

O is for open mind. Team members need to be open to options they may not have considered, and willing to expand their perspectives to find the best answers.

P is for planning. A plan doesn't need to be rigid to be effective, but it must provide enough direction to keep the team on course.

Q is for questions. Asking questions is the best path to finding solutions. Don't be afraid of asking any question. If you don't understand something, chances are others don't either.

R is for results. The whole point of forming a team is to achieve results. The only variation on that theme is that the results may not be what had been originally anticipated.

S is for solutions, which differ from results in that there may be more than one solution to any given problem. Then the team can implement the best choice.

T is for time management. A well-managed team uses their meeting and planning time efficiently, and understands when it is time to finish the project.

U is for unity. Once a decision is made, the team needs to be unified to implement the plans. If the team can't act as a unit, then it may be necessary to reconfigure the team.

V is for voice. Every team member has to have a voice in the proceedings, and it is up to the team leader to insure that all voices are heard.

W is for work ethic. Each member needs to complete the given assignments and should have confidence that others will demonstrate the same commitment.

X is the X factor -- the chemistry that makes a team productive because all members are committed to the same goal.

Y is for yes -- say it as often as you can. "Yes, I can help. Yes, that's a good idea. Yes, let's move ahead. Yes, we did it!"

Z is for zeal. Passion, eagerness and enthusiasm are contagious; share your zeal with the rest of your team.