033: Turning Around a Failing Team

Transcript

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Why do teams or organizations fail? It often comes down to the not so obvious things like effective communication and trust. We must start with us as leaders to turn around a failing organization.

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Are we doing the right things every day, like setting the right example to follow or operating by a set of values?

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Please enjoy the episode.

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Welcome to the finance leader podcast where leadership is bigger than the numbers. I am your host Stephen McLain. This is the podcast for developing leaders in finance and accounting. This is episode number 33. And today, I will discuss how to turn around a failing organization. And I'm going to talk about four areas.

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Number one, it starts with us as leaders. Number two, you must determine what the real problem is. Number three, you must create a shared purpose, a set of values and also standards to follow. And number four, which is probably the most important that you must continue to build trust in the organization, Peter Drucker said, If you want something new, you have to stop doing something old. Now why do organizations fail? Often people don't realize that their organization is failing, they just can't see it. And sometimes they don't want to see it.

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Often. They think it's just a product or service line. But it's usually more a bad product or service line is just a symptom. Usually it's complacency, leaders lose their way in an organization forgets who they serve, they have no values, nor do they have a set of standards. These organizations often lack solid leadership, and also a lack of an example to follow. And the most predominant reason is probably a lack of communication from top to bottom. And also from bottom to top, inside the side amongst the managers in the team, whatever your role is, you can do your part in helping to curb failure. And also to turn the organization around this discussion is relevant to a large organization, a department or even a five person team. So how do we turn around a failing organization or even your team, your team may not be even living up to the expectations that you have. Now, this doesn't happen in one day. And it doesn't happen with an all of a sudden policy change, it's just not going to do it, you have to realize what's happening. And you'll also have to communicate with everyone, you have to eliminate the confusing communication. Now during my army service, I always preferred to be assigned to leading a team that was less than stellar.

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Because I love to improve organizations, the worst thing that the army could do was to put me in charge of an already high performing team. This happened to me a few times, it's boring to me. And it often comes with a complacency mindset. I love working with teams and being in charge of teams that have a lot of work to do to turn themselves around to commit themselves to excellence. And to do better, the best example I have for my career is that I had the opportunity to have a second command. Now the second unit that I was put in charge of had a lot of issues, they had performance issues, they have communications issues, they failed in establishing strong standards. And they were a unit that served the larger unit as a whole. They had a lot of different missions and a lot of different responsibilities. But unfortunately, they did not have solid leadership and a solid purpose and a good set of values to live by now I enjoyed being put in charge of this organization. Because there was a lot of work to do, there was a lot to do to get this organization finally working together, finally trying to achieve a shared purpose and started working together to get to in order to achieve excellence in the mission that they had. One of the things that I realized was and if you understand army or military at all, you know, we have a team that takes care of the administration. And we also have a team that takes care of supplies. And the supply room that I had. This was considered to be one of the worst in the entire brigade and the brigade is the larger organization. And what I wanted to do was challenge my supply room and challenge my executive officer.

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What I wanted them to do was to compete in the brigade supply room Excellence Program. Now a lot of people saw that and disbelief and why would I want to submit this supply room into this competition because we were the worst and what I wanted them to do was to rise to the challenge. I wanted them to get better. I wanted them to be pushed. I wanted them to see what they could do now I had to deal with The supply Sergeant that was higher in us an Echelon. And she pretty much did not even want to support my endeavor to put this supply room into the competition, she was very negative about it. Because of course, this was the worst supply room and the entire brigade. And I said, Well, we can do nothing but get better.

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And I fought with her about her coaching and helping the supply room, the supply team to get better. And you know what, we didn't win the competition, that quarter that we went into it, however, our performance went up, the expectations were established, and the standards got a little bit better. And we started getting a little bit more focused on what a supply room should be doing. We got out the checklists, we also got out the regulations, and we got out what a supply room should be doing and how we can be doing better. So I believe that with my effort, I actually started establishing a standard of excellence. And I started with that supply around. And immediately after taking command of that unit, I started communicating that we were not going to be the worst unit in the brigade any longer. The first thing is that you have to be honest with yourself about the output of your own team, when you're dealing with a team that is not doing so well. Is your team not meeting expectations? Or are you setting to take over a team that is considered to be one of the worst in the organization? What are you doing to ensure success is your own example of leadership not showing the proper way? Now, I want to take you through a four step process that I believe helps to turn around failing organizations.

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And you know, what is going to be involving a lot of leadership? Number one, it starts with us as leaders. Now, are we setting the right example? Are we doing the right things every day. And we also accept responsibility that our teams and our companies are not doing the right thing, that we're not doing the same performance like we did a year ago or five years ago or 10 years ago, we have to get back to the fundamentals of leadership, we have to start showing strong character we need to prioritize properly. And we need to grow our team members when you do achieve results. And also being innovative when new ideas we need to set an environment where we get to hear the new ideas, what are we doing to inspire our team to do better every day. Number two, we need to actually determine what the real problem is the problems you think are causing the failure may not be it at all, you have to talk with people and you need to listen, your top performers will share what's wrong if they trust you. We need to we need to keep talking with as many people as possible and piece together the small problems, we need to be open to listening to everyone we need to listen, we need to take notes, we need to ask follow up questions, and we need to protect those who have spoken up number three is that we need to create a shared purpose a set of values and a set of high standards to follow the Why does your team exist? What results do your team need to achieve every month? Every quarter? Even during the year? What can you rally your team around? Now that can be a higher idea. Now for medical companies, you know it is to save lives. That's the mission for food producers. It is the feed the world for restaurants. It's to create a unique dining experience for baby products. It's to care for and protect babies and for insurance companies is to protect their customers interest. Why is having a shared purpose important?

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I often find teams doing work as individuals with no real collective tie end. Every team member should know how their tasks are supporting a higher organizational purpose. Purpose gives you direction and the why for doing something. If a task doesn't support the purpose, then why are you doing it? Our team members need to know that their work matters. It is our purpose that communicates that what we do matters. It is our job as leaders to communicate and reinforce that what we do matters and supports the purpose. Additionally, as leaders, we need to know that what our team is being tasked to do is also linked to that purpose, purpose matters to go further. Some companies also like to have a shared purpose with their customers. Starbucks does this very well. It's not just delivering a great cup of coffee, but also creating the concept of the third place, and also wanting to do great things in the world and being responsible. The cup of coffee is not the end product, but changing the world for the better and creating a different experience is Starbucks does a great job in teaching its team members how to belong to the shared purpose and also bringing along their customers in this purpose to Starbucks is in a partnership with their customers and this is what we need to strive for. And when you Have a set of values, you set an expectation that everyone must follow. Now what do we value?

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What behavior do we expect? And you also must live it as leaders, you must set the example and have high expectations of others to follow them to these values must be growth oriented, and create an environment of respect for others and fairness, a set of standards is a measuring stick for the level of excellence that you desire. What is our level of work? What do we want to achieve? What are the standards that we're going to live by every day when we're doing tasks and requirements and doing work that has been assigned to us?

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What are the set of standards that we're going to use to measure our work product against how are we going to achieve excellence? Now, finally, we need to continue to build trust, building trust is critical to establishing a culture of excellence, people have to learn how to trust again, and believe in that purpose. And it takes time to turn it around, we need to continue to communicate with everyone, always, we need to share information, we need to continue to build that trust, what we say is what we're going to do. And what we're going to do is going to be the right thing. Every day, we're going to follow through as leaders doing the right thing. And we're gonna hold everyone to the high standards, and definitely hold ourselves to those same high standards, I want to share with you now a clip from episode number three on building trust.

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And I believe this short clip really puts it all together. As far as our role and the importance of building trust throughout the team and building trust in the organization.

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Please enjoy. What happens to a team when no one trusts the leader, and no one trust each other, the team definitely performs poorly, you're not going to get the best out of people, there's not really going to be an incentive to take a risk or do anything above what is expected every day. Trust is the glue that's going to keep your team together. It's the glue that Bond's you, to your boss, to the senior leaders above you, once they lose trust in you, you're not going to be effective, you're not gonna be able to get anything done, they're not going to give you any special projects, they're not going to give you anything to get ahead or any opportunities to move forward in your career in that organization. Same thing, if you lose trust with your team members, they're not going to do the best for you. They're not going to take any risk. They're not, they're just going to do what they need to do, at a minimum level to get the task done. They're going to be in protection mode, they're going to look out for themselves.

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They're going to risk high turnover on your team, there'll be some that'll stay, you know, they'll just come in, get their test done and leave, they won't do anything extra for you. And they'll just meet the deadline, meet the minimum standard and then move on. But your high performers, they're just not going to tolerate it. They're not going to deal with it. If they can't trust you, they're going to move on and they're going to find another opportunity. And then you're just going to be stuck with a team of just mediocre performers who don't really care whether you're just really or not did is going to come in and do their stuff and get done. Trust is the daily expectation that we will all act ethically within our human relationships.

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Trust is expected above all else, if you lose trust, you will lose your team. Now for an easy one today. Is your team meeting expectations. Are you meeting expectations? Now? If not, what can you start doing to change and to change your team so you can achieve excellence? I have a free guide for you. It's called the leadership growth blueprint for finance and accounting managers. In the guide I talked about three leadership areas communication, team growth, and empowerment.

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Plus a few recommendations around challenges with the systems you are probably using to complete your work. The link to the guide is in the episode description. Or you can go to Stephen McLain dot com. Please use it to help you with a few leadership wins today. Thank you. This episode is sponsored by my new online course offering through finance leader Academy.

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It's called Advanced your finance and accounting career, developing a promotion strategy that will set you apart. Are you having difficulty getting recognition from your leadership, despite all the hard work you pour into your job and your organization. This course helps you analyze what you bring to the organization. How you can set yourself apart from your peers through high visibility work and developing your leadership skills. Plus how you can devise a strategy to move ahead. You can go to Stephen McLain calm for more detail today I talked about how you can turn around a failing organization and I talked about four areas. Number one, it starts with us as leaders.

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Number two, you need to determine what the real problem is. Number three, you need to create a shared purpose a set of values and a high set of standards. Number four, which is probably the most important you need to continue to build trust.

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Next week, I will be talking about how we can best support the company's strategy as finance and accounting leaders.

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I hope you enjoyed the finance leader podcast. I'm dedicated to helping you grow your leadership. I hope you enjoyed the show. You can get this episode wherever you find podcasts. Until next time, you can check out more resources at Stephen McLain calm and sign up for my updates so you don't miss an episode of the show. And now go lead your team and I'll see you next time. Thank you.

033: Turning Around a Failing Team

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