Achieving More with Less - Positively

From Steve Jandrell, Co-Founder CandidAdvisors

This post is a response to today's WSJ Article Employers Hold Off on Hiring - Doing More with Less - http://bit.ly/2A3Sbl

In many ways, the negatives of an economic down turn and the slow recovery from an employment and jobs perspective, dominate the debate. Economists seem to agree that even with a fair wind, getting unemployment back to 5% will take 8 or so years. As operating costs are cut, hiring freezes put in place, budgets trimmed, productivity requirements inevitably focus on doing more with less. The threat of unemployment makes workers more amenable to working fewer hours while still delivering; process efficiencies and changes in work flow add to the productivity gains. But so much is borne of fear.

There is a point however, that seems to be consistently missed. Business process efficiencies, people working harder, intelligent application of technology are all important, but what about employees raising their game based on the positive perspective of developing an individual and collective sense of high performance and mutual support, regardless of the prevailing economic environment?

Most people want to be part of a winning team. Very few wake in the morning thinking, “I want to sub-optimize my contribution today.” Yet it happens all the time. The solution is not a theoretical, “let’s all bond” but a measured and planned effort to leverage the fundamental human need to achieve and be successful. In so many cases it is at the team level where this can occur.

Internal business and work relationships in corporate America are typically superficial and polite. Stereotypes are formed (often quite wrong), and there is a prevailing attitude of leave decisions on how to improve things to the boss, or he and she will not want to delegate (or in their mind, abdicate) responsibility.

It doesn’t have to be like that. If companies organized to ride the wave of human creativity and people’s need to succeed, and thus created focused support networks, the term empowerment is taken to a different level. This economic climate may be the vehicle for this. Not just doing more with less, or even achieving more with less, but creating a work place of support, positive reinforcement and folks really playing to their strengths. Becoming the true winning team.

In the end, winning a Super Bowl is not about, for example, whether the Quarterback and the Wide Receivers like each other; it is about each player knowing their strengths and limitations, finding ways to work together for maximum impact and celebrating the fact that their individual and collective goals are clear and are given the space and encouragement to achieve them. In this scenario, performance is everyone’s responsibility. If a co-worker is not playing to their strengths, shouldn’t this be of concern to the rest of the team? In so many occasions, it is never really addressed – it is apparently safer not to.

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Read the original article at The Wall Street Journal

CandidAdvisors introduces Belbin Team Roles - Achieving More with Less – The Need to Create and Sustain High Performing Teams

Achieving More with Less – The Need to Create and Sustain High Performing Teams

High performance at a team level rarely just happens. Whether it’s planning to win the Super Bowl, delivering team outcomes above expectations or integrating multiple teams, there is the issue of how to maximize the talent and contribution of each team member.

While having clear, measurable and shared team goals is central, it is maximizing team member contribution and building team synergy that often presents the biggest challenge. Typically, relationships within a team are fairly superficial; stereotypes of individuals (often wrong), are easily formed and sustained and discord is not addressed. Teams can develop team dynamic dysfunction, such as a small sub-set of the team dominating discussions.

At CandidAdvisors LLC, we are able to address individual contribution, total team effectiveness and team dynamics to help improve and sustain team performance. We use a sound and pragmatic behavioral approach because behavior is visible; it can be measured, positive behavior can be replicated, and unhelpful behavior for the same reasons can be explicitly discouraged.

To accomplish this, we facilitate a process of individual and group discovery. From each team member’s own experience, we build a picture of what outstanding teaming looks like. In other words, the team creates its own benchmarks to measure itself. The team members then take the Belbin self perception inventory on team roles.

The Belbin was developed by Dr. Meredith Belbin and his team who conducted research at Henley Management College in the UK over a period of nine years and studied the behavior of managers from all over the world. Their book, Management Teams - Why They Succeed or Fail was cited by the Financial Times as one of the top fifty business books of all time.

We use the output of this tool to help the team identify its strengths, challenge unhelpful stereotypes and foster an environment of achievement where each team member’s contribution is not only valued at the individual level, but at the team level too.

For example, the full process is 5 days for a team of up to 12 people:

• 2 days of preparation – understanding specific issues, one-on-one confidential meetings with team members and development of a clear picture of the desired outcome and barriers to that outcome.
• 2 days for the workshop
• 1 day to produce the final team deliverable and record of the workshop.

The result is a focused deliverable of what the team can do to raise its game and how to keep that raised game on track. The workshop creates the energy and direction for ongoing success.

Contact us at info@candidadvisors.com or call us at 404-478-4112 for more information

Creating and Sustaining High Performance Work Teams with CandidAdvisors

CandidAdvisors is pleased to partner with and offer the Belbin Team Roles Workshop

Whether you are building a new team, want to refresh an existing team, or are looking to create a common focus between two groups that desire to collaborate more effectively, CandidAdvisors can help. Using a unique and behaviorally anchored approach, CandidAdvisors offers a one to two day workshop, depending on the size of the team. The key elements are:

• Defining high performance in terms of outcomes and behavior
• Using the Belbin Self Perception Inventory, completed on line, with individual feedback and a collective assessment and aggregated team profile
• Showing the relationship between team work and heightened group creativity
• Understanding the need for a sound team process as well as agreeing what roles individual team members can play
• Exploring the options for individual team member contributions
• Having a framework to discuss and measure what total team effectiveness means

This is a facilitated process where the team itself sets its standards in the context of what the team is mandated to deliver, its measures and agrees the means for self correction moving forward. Part of the process includes insight into what each team member potentially brings to the working of the team and what each team member can reasonably expect from other members, including ongoing feedback and support.

Please contact info@candidadvisors.com for information on how you can bring the Belbin Self Perception Inventory and Belbin Team Roles Workshop into your organization, and read more about our Partners Here.