Paul Keijzer — September 25, 2018 — September 25, 2018
FotografieLink / Pixabay
You may have a stellar strategy and vision to exponentially grow your company into something that’s larger than you and your leadership. However, all your efforts would be in vain if you don’t have the capacity to implement those strategies. Does your organization really have the capacity to achieve your vision? Is there depth in your leadership team to see your vision come to life?
1. Recruiting and Retaining A-Players
The capacity to deliver hinges on your ability to recruit, develop and retain A-players. Take Netflix’s success story for example. A large part of it can be traced back to the culture they have developed and their talent philosophy. They only hire people that are responsible and possess the following characteristics:
- Self-motivating
- Self-aware
- Self-disciplined
- Self-improving
- Those who act like a leader
- Those who don’t wait to be told what to do
- Those who pick up the trash lying on the floor
Netflix believes that responsible people thrive on freedom making them more creative. They are also able to respond and adapt faster to changing situations.
2. Picking the right Line Managers
Line managers collectively have the largest impact on the performance of the organization. The better your line managers are selected, trained and guided the greater the performance of their subordinates. The difficulty of course is that every company has many line managers each with their individual styles, preferences and habits. Your success will depend on your ability to get line managers to consistently display the following behaviors:
Grow People
- Demonstrate a credible commitment to an individuals development
- Leverages employee “fit” and get the best out of each individual
- Provide fair and accurate informal feedback and emphasize employee strengths in performance reviews
Drive Performance
- Put people in the right job at the right time
- Clarify performance expectations and hold people accountable
- Connect employees with the organization and its success
- Provide solutions for day-to-day challenges
Build Teams
- Commit to diversity and team building where trust, honesty and integrity are the main characteristics
- Recognize people daily
- Help team members to build a high quality network of colleagues
3. Resources
One important component required to deliver on your organization’s aspirations is the availability of resources. This includes financial resources, machinery, plants, tools, IT systems and offices as well as the infinite availability of information and the ability of a company to share it across the organization.
Organizational knowledge in my experience is the least valued asset of any company, even though it should be the highest. An organization should be able to capture knowledge and share it with whoever needs it. Of course with web 2.0 technology such as MindTouch, Wikispaces, and MediaWiki, there are no reasons why your organization should not be able to leverage its most valuable asset and safeguard it for future generations.
4. Collaboration
Sports provides ample opportunities to highlight the importance of collaboration and the power of teams. Only a week ago Atletico Madrid, a football team that costs GBP 30 mln beat Chelsea, a team that costs 6 times that much on their home ground by 3-1. Of course sports analogies do not always translate well into an organization and in my experience silo’s still rule the workplace (though this is such a hot topic that I will spend a complete blog on this in the future). Physical work distance is a scientifically proven barrier to collaboration and common agendas, personal relations, ability to deal with conflict, to hold each other accountable and to ‘take one’ for the team are all components in strengthening teams and collaboration.
With an inspiring vision, clear strategy and capacity within the organization, your company will most likely churn out reasonable results. However, the magic to transform your company into a high-performer is still missing. That final ingredient is Commitment, the desire to achieve the impossible. Add this final ingredient to the mix and you’ll have built a company that can truly grow exponentially.
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