How tight is your staff? What’s the culture of the team? Do they trust one another? Do they trust you? Do your employees know you have their back? Do they know their peers have their back?
Can everyone on your team depend on the processes, systems and people involved in your business? If you said yes, does every single person agree?
If you haven’t asked, don’t assume the answer is yes.
How well do they jell?
Ask your team about the qualities of the people they want to work with. Use their answers during your hiring process. You can’t allow even the smartest, best qualified prospect to join your team if they’ll create cultural conflict.
A few more questions to ask your team:
- Is there anyone whose call you don’t want to answer? Ask them to think about why they wouldn’t answer.
- Is there anyone whose call you will always take? Ask them to think about why they’d always answer.
- Is there anyone on the team who makes you wonder “Why does management keep that person around?“
- Is there information about the business that you don’t have that’s preventing you from doing your job to the best of your ability?
- If you’re responsible for local sales, do you know what parts of town yield the most profit?
Those last two questions are a clue about the information your team needs to become more effective. It’s not always about the obvious things.
Team members who are ready to grow into more responsibility will start asking (if not only wondering to themselves) if the work they’re being asked to do is turning a profit for the business. It’s critical to complete the circle of communications to your team about sales and profitability. When employees show concern about these things, feed that fire. It’s a sign that they’ve matured beyond taking home a check and are interested in growing their impact on profit.
These things contribute to your culture
While some businesses will hand wave away their culture as a meaningless foofoo thing, culture is what glues your team together. It defines how well they work together every day (or not) and that goes directly to how well they treat your clientele.
It’s essential that you use your culture as a filter for deciding who has the privilege of joining your team.
If you don’t, you’ll likely lose people who are very difficult to replace because they’ll see right through the “culture is important, employees are important” statements you might make.
To be a place where people want to work, these things matter.
To be a business people want to do business with, these things matter.
What doesn’t kill you…
I had an annual meeting conversation with a team this weekend. They’ve been to hell and back over the last year, business-wise. The ones who survived the worst part and stuck around have learned to depend on each other and expect great things of one another every day. They understand the importance of defending one another, covering for one another and expecting the best from everyone as the work together. They understand what’s important, what’s not and that they have to stick together and continue to work together or they will certainly die (employment-wise) separately.
While I won’t mention what business they’re in, I wouldn’t suggest taking them on. After listening to them and speaking with them, it’s clear they’d take punishment for one another. Best of all, they understand that the best culture in the world doesn’t mean much if profitable sales, consistent delivery and service don’t happen. It takes all of these things.
And that’s important because?
I mention this because a trial by fire will either destroy your team or bond it like few other experiences. The differences between teams that get destroyed and the ones that bond include your leadership as an owner, the team’s leadership (implicit and explicit), who makes up your team and what they’re made of. These things define your team’s culture because it defines who they are.
Which team do you lead? Do you know where the strengths and weaknesses are? Are you willing to investing in the proper hiring, training and communication to build your team into one that can take a punch?
Want to learn more about Mark or ask him to write about a strategic, operations or marketing problem? See Mark’s site, contact him on Twitter, or email him at [email protected].