3 Things You Must Discuss With Your Team Today

Do you feel like your business is stuck in a rut? Do you feel as if you should be progressing faster, but your team isn’t understanding where to focus their time and attention? Do you struggle with similar issues? It’s time to get real and start talking about your business and your goals as a team. And to get started here are three things that I suggest you discuss with your team today, and every day thereafter.

1. Discuss What Creates Value

The first thing you want to do with your team is getting clear on how people create value within your organization and making that part of the conversation.  If your staff, if your manager, supervisors, and even frontline people do not understand how value is created within your company and how they contribute to that, progress will be stifled.  And start the conversation on day one with all your new hires – “of all those tasks that you’re responsible for, here’s the two or three places that you contribute the most value in your role.  And here’s how we measure success in that role. And here’s how you know you’re doing a good job.” Not only will your team appreciate the information, but it really gives them a clear cut path on how to be successful within your company. It’s also important to get clear on what you can do as a leader to create value. Because this information will help you decide where to focus your time and energy within the company.

2. Get Clear on KPI’s

The second thing you should discuss with your team is getting really clear on KPIs.  And almost everyone within the company has KPI’s that can help guide them in their day to day decisions and resource allotment.  Discuss with your team what’s the most important result indicator and what one or two leading indicators that you are currently focusing on will make the most difference. And then check on those KPI’s often. Ask for them in their weekly reports, and how their action items tie in with those goals.

3. Stick With It

The final and single most important thing that you can do with your team has to do with the actual culture of the company: staying with it over time.  You are not going to shape culture over the course of one week, one month, one quarter, or even one year.  But over the course of two or three years, you’re going to dramatically shift and change culture.  The way that you work with culture is you start off with yourself, and move your way up. So if as a company you want to get better about creating value and sticking to our KPI’s start with yourself and report out to your team on a weekly basis. Then ask your executive team to follow suit. Then managers, and finally those on the front lines. Pretty soon, everyone will be joining in and thinking in terms of value created instead of hours worked.

Getting on the same page as an organization can help you grow in ways you didn’t think possible, so it’s worth the effort.