TeamMax Newsletter:

THE STUDENT OWNS THE COMPANY

By Larry Cole, Ph.D.TeamMax®, Inc.
and Eric Hutchinson Hutchinson/Ifrah

Abstract
The CEO hired high performing individuals. The challenge was to let these high individuals perform. Without his awareness, the CEO's leadership style was adversely impacting employees' performance. Once aware of that impact, the CEO became a successful student of his staff.

Considerable courage is required to ask your employees, "What can I do to improve my performance as the Chief Executive Officer of this company?" The CEO listened as employees told him "empower your staff and improve teamwork." The CEO owned a financial services company that had experienced considerable growth over the past 5 years to include multiple office locations and tripling the number of employees. The company is definitely on the technical fast track, but there were questions about the people side of the business.

Like a railroad, an organization has two tracks: technical and people. Also like a railroad, both tracks require maintenance to ensure high performance. The CEO knew the technical track was being maintained as evidenced by the rapid growth. He thought the people track was likewise being maintained as he prided himself employing high performing individuals and allowing them to perform.

On a closer examination of his company, the CEO quickly realized that he, like so many other CEO's, concentrated on developing the necessary systems to monitor the technical growth and financial health of his company, but failed to do the same for the people track. The employees expressed considerable frustration and, without being fully aware, the CEO was strangling the organization with micro management practices. Though the CEO knew that his company's success depended upon high performing people the employees expressed the fact they were not allowed to perform. The CEO recognized that continued growth of his company was predicated on the need for him to remove all roadblocks to high performance. 

The first step in the process was to define the teamwork behaviors that were to serve as the glue to hold working relationships together. Employees throughout the company participated in writing the company's TeamWork Value Statement that identified the specific values and behaviors to be institutionalized throughout the company.

Achieving professional excellence through teamwork characterized by open communication, compassion, integrity, trust and respect while exhibiting a positive attitude.

Professional excellence 
1. Our common goals are defined.
2. We understand our common goals.
3. We are held accountable to achieve our common goals.

Teamwork 
1. We understand what we need from each other.
2. We willingly work to meet each other's needs.
3. We provide the necessary feedback regarding the quality of meeting each other's needs.
4. We are flexible to do that which needs to be done.

Open communication 
1. We encourage each other to openly express their ideas.
2. We are kept informed with the facts needed to complete our jobs.
3. We ask each other for assistance when needed.
4. We readily admit our mistakes.
5. We readily admit the limitations of our knowledge.

Compassion 
1. We are willing to "go the extra mile" to assist each other.
2. We enjoy each other's success.
3. We remain emotionally calm (i.e., patient) with each other.
4. We offer each other support through encouragement.

Integrity 
1. We competently complete our job responsibilities.
2. We do what it is right, because it is right.
3. We consistently apply our policies and procedures.
4. We are receptive to finding a better way, i.e., change.

Trust 
1. We are dependable and do that which we agreed to do.
2. We keep confidential information confidential.
3. We have the necessary authority to complete our job responsibilities.

Respect 
1. We ask each other for input.
2. We listen to understand that input.
3. We try to use that input whenever possible.
4. We are kept informed when our input was not used.
5. We accept each other as individuals.

Positive Attitude 
1. We look for the good in every situation.
2. We view mistakes as learning opportunities.
3. We create the personal environment in which others enjoy working with us.
4. We enjoy the camaraderie of each other's company.

Putting Teamwork To Work

The next step involved institutionalizing the teamwork behaviors into the day to day operations. To do that, the CEO incorporated the use of the MBC Software® methodologies to measure the extent the teams were actually using the behaviors contained within their value statement. The CEO realized the importance to measure the people track in a manner similar to the measurement system used to measure the technical success. He also agreed that bottom-up commitment to improve teamwork within his company was created by top-down change. Thus, the teambuilding efforts began in earnest with the senior management team.

Teams throughout the organization measured their use of the desired behaviors. Doing so identified each team's strengths and specific behaviors that needed improved. Strategies were then defined to improve the measured weaknesses and each respective team measured their success to implement these strategies.

The owner becomes the student

Top down change creates bottom up commitment and the CEO agreed to participate in a mentoring team that consisted of the company's president plus several financial planners and support staff. The primary objectives for the mentoring group were to offer suggestion to improve his behavior and then measure the CEO's performance. The mentoring team suggested the CEO to:

1. Define the level of authority for the down line management staff.
2. Allow employees at all levels to use their authority.
3. Slow down to think through an issue before taking action.
4. Sharing the logic of his decisions with those affected.
5. Continue identifying tasks that can be delegated.

The CEO's performance was impressive. He worked hard to make the necessary personal changes to successfully implement his improvement strategies and the measured perception showed immediate progress. His progress was shared throughout the organization to demonstrate his commitment to create an environment characterized by their TeamWork Value Statement.

The mentoring team then turned their attention to measure the President's behaviors and offered the following suggestions for his continued improvement.

1. Inform affected parties about computer system interruptions.
2. Inform affected parties when he makes a mistake.
3. Identify what was learned from mistakes made.
4. Be more receptive to feedback from others.
5. Take advantage of opportunities to be more visible to clients.
6. Walk around the office to be more visible to staff.

After the CEO's remarkable turn around, there was considerable pressure on the President to do likewise. The President was faced with an additional challenge. He was recently elected to serve in that capacity as the result of reorganizing the company's infrastructure. Fortunately, he too accepted the challenge to improve his interpersonal performance and successfully implemented the suggestions offered by the mentoring group.

The next step in the process was to improve working relationships between teams. The friction between the various teams at the beginning of the company's effort to improve teamwork was intense. The original plan was to measure the implementation of the TeamWork Value Statement between teams, then define and implement strategies to improve the measured weaknesses. As employees completed the effort to improve working relationships among members of the various teams and with their team leader, the working relationships between teams concomitantly improved. Cooperation and communication efforts increased, tensions eased, and inter-team performance improved.

Today, the company is growing faster than ever before, with employee morale and "espirt de corps" at its highest level in the history of the company. The CEO is enjoying the reduced workload due to improved teamwork and less "micro-management." He has more time to focus on doing those things that will significantly contribute to the growth of the company.

The CEO demonstrated the courage to ask how he could improve as CEO and then listen, really listen to the answer. The employees said that his leadership practices were stifling creativity and injected considerable frustration that served to reduce morale and adversely impact performance. Fortunately, the CEO accepted the organizational truism that perception is reality. He agreed with his employees and recognized the need to implement the company's value statement in order for this company to achieve higher levels of performance.

About the authors

Larry has been pioneering the measurement of individual and team behaviors since 1989 at which time he founded his consulting company. As a co-founder of PeopleSystems SoftWare, Inc., he served as the primary architect to create the MBC Software® methodologies to measure behavior change. MBC Software® is an electronic performance support system that is revolutionizing the measurement of people behavior in real time and in a variety of workplace applications.

Contact Larry at lcole@cei.net or 800-880-1728
www.people-systems.com
www.teammax.net

Eric is founder and CEO of Hutchinson/Ifrah Financial Services. Within a period of 10 years the company has grown to a 500 million dollar company. His financial staff strive to be integrated into the personal and professional lives of their clients to provide comprehensive financial advice. In the words of Eric, "we want to be the first place our clients look to for financial advice."

 Contact Eric at eric@hutchinson-ifrah.com or 800-635-9985
www.hutchinson-ifrah.com