Building
a Team
The importance of employees working together
Last fall during the World Series, USA Today newspaper, printed a
chart outlining how the Atlanta Braves and the New York Yankees had
managed to build such dominant teams in the 1990's. Each team had
been built through the traditional farm clubs, trades, and free agency
acquisitions. In the 1960's, I remember seeing a similar report on
the St. Louis Cardinals.
The Cardinals were able to build their decade dominating team through
farm clubs, and an occasional trade, as free agency did not exist.
Each of these teams were able to solve their needs for team building
by mastering the methods which were available to them at that time.
Several years ago, I remember visiting with a dealer at his store.
I noticed the hours posted on his front door had been changed. "I
thought you were open on Sundays", was the comment I made.
The response was, "I was. But none of my employees would work
on Sundays, so I had to go back to the old hours. You are open on
Sundays, aren't you?" As I answered yes, the surprise was his
follow up comment. "You are lucky. You have good employees".
As the discussion continued, I asked how he could consider me to be
"lucky" when my business had fifteen employees at that time.
"Do you think I have been lucky fifteen times as I have hired
each of them?" Unlike baseball, retailing does not traditionally
have trades available as an option for building a team. The farm club
could be equated to hiring a person who has little experience in the
auto trim industry, but shows certain traits which you believe would
allow you to train them to be an excellent employee.
The idea of a free agent can be accomplished through one of two methods.
The first is the person who is working at another shop who shows up
on your doorstop looking for a job. The second way is to send your
best employee out to shop the competition and when they find someone
whom they believe would make a good employee, inform you so that you
could call the candidate and offer them a job with you.
Either way, we get back to the dealer who had to close on Sundays
because no one would work. He could see the point I was trying to
make about not just "finding" fifteen good employees, but
it did not provide him with the answer to his staffing problem. The
solution to building a team is quite simple. But it is not easy. Let's
take a look at an example business with five employees and one owner.
Ask the owner to create a list of his employees with the first person
being the best employee, and the worst employee being the fifth person
on the list.
Without seeing the list of five, we will be determine the sequence
by asking the owner and each of the employees one question. That question
comes in the form of a test; write down in the order of importance,
from one to ten, what you are to do at this job. As we collect the
answers from each of the employees and the owner, we will determine
what is happening, and what should be happening in this shop.
For example, if there is a sales floor on which each of the five employees
can interact with the customers, the owner may have number one on
his list as, "Interact with the customer". Looking on the
five lists, we may find the person taking care of office duties having
listed number one as answering the phone, doing the books, or taking
care of the money. We may find that the two installers have lists
whose top three answers are ordering supplies, getting the installation
done, or getting the service ticket written.
Of the two remaining employees, one may have waiting on customers
as the top of his list, while the other has keeping the sales floor
and waiting room neat as his top of the list duty. As we have found
only one of the five employees to have the same number one task listed
that the boss has, is it any wonder this would be the person who the
boss has listed as being his best employee?
What we may actually have are five excellent employees, but a group
of five that is out of sync with the employer. It is a lot like the
baseball team and its' manager. You have undoubtedly seen the occasion
where the manager walks to the mound, is joined by the catcher, and
perhaps the infield players. During this brief meeting, the manager
is reviewing with the players what they are going to do with the next
batter, and how each of the players is to react. After all, we do
not need two people running to retrieve the bunt with no one covering
first base.
Let's look again at the list of ten items. If we examine the list
of each employee, we will be able to rate the employees from best
to worst as we see whose list most closely reflects the list of the
employer. To eliminate this exercise from just being a comparison
of lists, it can be an exercise which allows you to see what the employees
perceive as being most important, and what the employer determines
will be the most important.
Just like the manager of the baseball team, the employer has the responsibility
of gathering his team and determining how the various responsibilities
will be handled. Many of the better employers will tell you they have
this meeting for an hour every other week. A few of the best, will
tell you they have one of these meetings for ten to fifteen minutes
every morning. And still, they will continue to go through the drill
of asking their employees to provide them with a list of the ten duties
they believe are most important.
This way, they are building the team, and not having to wonder, "Who's
on first?"
* Creating job descriptions is an important management tool
* A job description does not need to be a multi page document
* Increased employee skills can mean increased profits
