”Teamwork is the ability to work together toward a common vision.” — Andrew Carnegie
Entrepreneurial ideas frequently emanate from solo thoughts, observations or discussions with a few others. Developing ideas into viable business enterprises, however, requires the concerted effort of a lot of people. As an entrepreneur, you should realise that your business can only grow so fast, so large, and so successfully without a great team. To significantly enhance your chances of success, you have to have great teams working together. Developing great teams, therefore, is a very important responsibility every entrepreneur must take seriously.
1) What is a team? Any group of people working interdependently together to achieve a common objective is a team. Within an organization, you could have several teams. First, the whole organization is essentially really one ‘global’ team itself. Within it however, you will have various groups working as ‘sub-teams’ to achieve some goals, which will push the whole organization towards achieving its overall objectives. A soap manufacturing company may for instance be working towards having the largest market share at certain profitability level. Within such an organisation, there may be a Research and Development team that will be working towards developing new products, based on some input from their marketing colleagues. There may also be a manufacturing group that will be working towards producing various products with the required quality and at certain cost levels. There may also be a sales group that will be working towards the sales of all products. Building each team or group to seamlessly work towards achieving its ‘local’ goals and the corporate objective is one the great challenges entrepreneurs face and cannot be taken lightly.
Features of a team:
- A team must comprise a group of people,
- A team must have an objective or goal they want to achieve,
- Team members should have complimentary skills necessary to achieving the set objectives,
- Team members must work interdependently,
- A team must operate in a time frame within which the set objectives are expected to be achieved.
What are benefits of developing great teams? In any enterprise, the most critical resource that determines success is the human capital. This is more so for the small and medium enterprise with limited resources that must be stretched to create the maximum possible value. Attracting the right people and building great teams is therefore key to gaining traction and creating competitive advantage. Without great teams in your organization, time, effort and resources will be wasted due to incompetence and infighting. Furthermore, lack of great teams will make it difficult or even impossible for you to seize emerging opportunities. A team with competent members of diverse backgrounds can generate better ideas in resolving business issues. Members will also provide support to each other and can bounce back from set-backs much faster than if they were operating individually.
2) How do you develop great teams?
Recruitment: The potentiality of your succeeding in developing a great team starts with the recruitment process. We have discussed ‘Staffing’ elsewhere and you can check it on www.melyakub.com/staffing/. Review your existing team(s) and identify what you need vis-a-vis what you already have. Ensure you have appropriate recruitment policies and process that will attract the right people who can support you in achieving your corporate objectives. Competence and integrity are always key in recruiting personnel and should be specifically checked and established.
Be clear about your corporate vision: Your corporate vision is key to attracting the kind of people you need to attract. Have a clear vision and work to attract people who are excited about it. Talk with your employees and those to be employed about the kind of culture you want to develop, the plans that you have in terms of the role you want play in the market place, the society and obviously with your staff. Discuss the kind of business opportunities and growth you believe you can seize and attain. Ask for their thoughts on such issues and look out for sincerity and excitement in them.
Develop and entrench a desired corporate culture: Developing and entrenching a culture is also very important in attracting the kind of people that will help you achieve your corporate objectives. If your environment is fast-paced and communicative, a person who is slow and lacking social skills may probably not fit. A person immensely suited for back room operations might not fit in for front desk services. The most successful corporations tend to have a very distinct culture that attracts the right people who will further develop it and systemically weed out the ones who wouldn’t.
Be clear about team objectives and context: The smart and hard working people you have recruited want to contribute to the success of your enterprise and further their career development. It is your responsibility to spell out a clear and compelling team objective(s) that fits into the overall corporate picture. Each person must understand how the team’s goals relate to the company’s overall objectives. Clear guidelines and required resources should also be provided to enable them achieve their team targets.
Team members should understand why the team is created, and their performance and expected outcomes must be unambigiously communicated. Let all members understand that the more effort everyone puts in, the quicker the desired corporate results will be achieved and the better the individual rewards will be as well.
Assign responsibilities: Sequel to communicating the team’s objective, the next challenge is to assign responsibilities to individual members. Members have to be very clear about what is expected of them within the context of the team’s objective. In assigning individual roles and responsibilities, you have to take into consideration individual competencies, weaknesses, personalities, interests and potentials. It is always a delicate balance. Frequently, you will have to nil out individual biases in the overall interest of the team’s objective. In such situations, you have to also put measures that will minimize the undesired consequences of your decisions. New team members, especially those that recently joined your organization, should be mentored by yourself or other senior members of the company.
Commitment: Team members must be committed to making the most of their contribution at personal and team levels. This is possible when they see or are made to see the importance of their service to both the achievement of the corporate goals and their career development. Remember, as the saying goes, ‘a chain is only as strong as its weakest link’.
Diversity: On one hand, we have mentioned, above, the need to develop and entrench a culture as a way to both attract the right people and at the same time weed out the ones that do not meet your expectations. On the other hand however, diversity is necessary for the survival, growth, and even beauty of most social systems. This is completely not contrarian. Instead, diversity will inject more life into the whole team as people of diverse backgrounds, trainings, biases work to solve problems together. At the end, a flourishing culture will resolve differences and produce the best results possible in all circumstance.
Involvement and Collaboration: This is really the fundamental essence of teamwork. Involvement and Collaboration. All team members must be fully engaged and be made to play their assigned roles in support of others. Without full involvement and collaboration, you will easily lose the commitment of your team members. And it will normally start with the best hands, who may seek other organisations where they can apply their full potentials. Team members should be made to understand team processes so that they can work effectively and efficiently together through understanding their individual roles and group responsibility. They must establish problem identification and solving processes; decision making and conflict resolution mechanisms etc.
Studying how various teams that work very well should give insight to you and your staff. I personally find military units as epitomes of great teams that work extremely well together. Others are sports teams, airline crews etc. Observe how they work and you can gain a lot of insight.
Engage them in team building exercises: Consider engaging your people in various non-business team-building exercises. There are so many available and you just need to assess which ones meet your cultural requirements and encourage your people to be engaged. Generally, they enhance competitiveness against opponents and team engagement with team members. They are fun and improve our creativity and problem solving abilities.
Also, go beyond the business by getting others such as guest speakers coming to meet with your people. Encourage and support your people to also be involved with other activities such as charity, fund raisers etc.
(The Sergay Group Ltd.)
3) How do you sustain the enthusiasm and commitment of a great team? Recruiting the ‘right people’ is only the beginning. Keeping them sufficiently motivated and challenged is what will keep and extract the best from them. Different people (who make up a particular culture) require different motivational approaches. You should understand your people and your social and business environments. Generally, factors that motivate people may vary with age, sex, level of education, marital status, corporate position etc.
Invest in your employees by further training and development. Support your people to create balance in their lives. There will be the long nights and the busted weekends to meet bid deadlines, but encourage them to have a balance nonetheless. Celebrating minor and major successes is a great way to maintain enthusiasm. Similarly, setbacks and even failures should be honestly reviewed in the light of the circumstances, and internalized properly.
It should be clear to you team that you value them. Show, sincerely, that you care. Give credit wherever and whenever it is due. Remember, sometimes it is what we consider ‘little’ that really matters.
Anticipate challenges: You have to help your team develop the thick skin required in business. They must have the ability to fight good fights. They must be also be mentally and psychologically ready for the set backs and failures that may come. With teams, there will also be challenges. Some people will be difficult to deal with. Others might not be putting in their best. Yet others will not be committed team members. Whatever the case, you must try and understand the issues and see the best way of resolving them. As a general rule, individuals should be given the opportunity to flourish but a team’s objective, once intelligently set, must remain sacrosanct.
4) Be the Boss: Recruiting the right people and creating great teams will only deliver the required results if you provide the right leadership. Be proactive on issues, engage your team positively and be there whenever required. You have to demonstrate constancy of purpose in supporting your teams with your time and attention, interest, effort and depth of knowledge and experience. You should be approachable and friendly to your people, yet responsible and authoritative. Simply put, you must provide leadership.
“If everyone is moving forward together, then success takes care of itself.” — Henry Ford
