'You' as team energiser: How individuals power organisations
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Have you ever been in a situation where your team members are weak and performance is either lower than expected or flat with no signs of improvement?
At the corporate level, a figure of 5 per cent growth may look good, but it doesn’t represent success if the cross-industry growth is 10-20 per cent. Past success can become a weakness for a company, when it feeds complacency among management and employees. The company can assess itself better by benchmarking with strong competitors.
A manager’s duty is to look for the following symptoms of a faltering company and then provide the power to drive the team forward:
_ No one wants to report on problems. Hiding problems is a practice seen when a company begins to decline. The disaster will become evident when it is too late to correct. Just because everything has looked good for a long time, it doesn’t mean that things will remain that way forever. Instead it needs the alertness of management to discover signs of decline.
_ Repeating problems don’t get resolved. Ineffective solutions will result in problems being repeated. This happens when the responsible person fails to pay attention to the root cause of the problem. The result is energy wasted on fixing the same problem again and again.
_ Team interaction decreases. When people don’t talk to each other, it could indicate an embedded conflict or lack of coordination. When we notice that the weekly meeting is often cancelled, or that people are tending to talk via e-mail rather than face-to-face, the management needs to act with a proper investigation.
_ People don’t want to speak up in meetings. For a new issue that needs brainstorming, participants should feel free to express and share opinions so that the best conclusion can be drawn. When members keep quiet, the team benefits are lost. This situation may disclose a deep problem within an organisation.
To take a typical example: during a meeting the production manager is unable to clearly explain the causes of lower productivity, but the other members seem happy with his status report. This situation needs urgent management action to improve the enthusiasm and performance of the team. Ignoring any lowering of standards invites disaster in the future. In such cases, everyone should act as an energy provider to the whole team. The power injection can be delivered in several ways, but it should not be the responsibility of just one individual to care about lower performance level and other signs of deterioration.
Under the traditional silo hierarchical structure, new initiatives are likely to flow from the top down. But today’s fast-paced competitive environment does not allow the top-down approach to run successfully. The company really needs everyone in the organisation to see the same goals with same understanding of strategic impact on overall performance. Whatever one individual thinks, does and decides can have significance for the success – or failure – of the company. This is easy to see but difficult to put into practice. So, how can a company create a culture that nurtures continuous and sustainable growth?
Each person can generate new power among the team and drive progress simply by posing challenging questions to themselves, to colleagues and to the management. The following are basic questions suitable for meetings or informal discussions:
_ What can we do differently to shift from the current status? Thinking creatively and out-of-the-box can create opportunities for trying new things. It’s a challenge to the status quo that everyone needs to embrace.
_ What can we do now to kick-start a new idea? Sometimes people wait too long, and allow a good opportunity to pass. The same fault can mean an important action fails to be taken quickly enough. A “just do it” mindset can prevent slowdown.
_ What are we good at that can be used to turn around the situation? Focusing on our strengths before trying to fix a difficult issue can help break a deadlocked situation.
_ What’s stopping us from moving ahead? By knowing the obstacles that hinder us from trying new things, we can make decisions on what actions need to be taken.
Everyone should be aware that a small action can create tremendous consequences to the company as a whole. By keeping quiet, the company can slip deeper into decline.
So wouldn’t it be better to say and do something that contributes to the whole team and the company?
Step up: You can become a real energiser.
Yanyong Thammatucharee is senior vice president for Accounting and Finance at Central Marketing Group.
