5. Employees and Team

Challenge

Your team is not strong enough to solve today’s problems.  You need to upgrade key management and develop a stronger team.

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Three Fundamentals to Consider

To build and develop the strongest team for your company, consider:

1. Clearly communicate the vision, goals and values throughout the company and hold the team accountable to them.
2. Have the right people (through job re-organizations, promotion, and hiring) doing the right jobs (appropriate for the business reality).
3. Develop (coach, teach and train) and engage / motivate the team.

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 Relevant Blog Posts to Read

• Communicate the Vision…Teach the Vision
• Do You Really Know How Your Managers are Managing?
• The Ten Characteristics of an Accountable Business

• Does Your Company Have the Right DNA?
• 12 Stupid Hiring Mistakes to Avoid in 2012
• Are You Hiring “Right”?  (Blog by Mark Herbert)

• 4 Warning Signs that a New Manager is Failing
• Who is Managing and Leading Your Front-Line Managers
  
• The Do’s and Don’ts of Employee Engagement (and Motivation)
• The Beatings Will Stop Once Morale Improves!
  
• Find Someone Doing Something Right Every Day

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 Pertinent Book Summaries to Review

• The Oz Principle: Getting Results Through Individual and Corporate Accountability (Roger Connors, Tom Smith and Craig Hickman)
• The Leadership Pipeline: How to Build the Leadership Powered Company (Ram Charan, Steve Drotter and Jim Noel)
• Leadership and the One Minute Manager: Increasing Effectiveness by Being a Good Leader (Kenneth H. Blanchard, Patricia Zigarmi, and Drea Zigarmi)
• Leading at a Higher Level: Blanchard on Leadership and Creating High Performance Organizations (Kenneth H. Blanchard)
• Winning (Jack and Suzy Welch)

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 Appropriate Book Chapters from Build a Better B2B Business

Chapter 8 – Work Through Your Leadership Team

Chapter 19 – Motivate and Engage Your Team

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Related Quotes to Think About

• “Accountability consists of clear standards, ways of measuring progress to the standards and most important, consequences for failure. The more we are able to say: ‘It’s not my fault.’ The more we keep being mediocre.” Anthony Booker (Mayor of Newark, New Jersey)

• “First get the right people on the bus and the wrong people off the bus – build a superior executive team.” Jim Collins (Author of Good to Great)

• “Let’s look at employee engagement first. It goes without saying that no company, small or large, can win over the long run without energized employees who believe in the mission and understand how to achieve it.” Jack and Suzy Welch (Authors of Winning)

• “Recognition is the most powerful currency you have, and it costs you nothing.” Jessica Herrin (CEO of Stella and Dot)