by Manuela Müller | Oct 3, 2016 | Thoughts on Team
2 out of 3 CEOs say that their biggest worries are team related: Finding skilled people, building an innovation culture, motivating people in tough times, developing and retaining, you name it.
A recent study by RippleWorks also showed that (as opposed to access to funding, product design, regulatory questions) talent is the challenge that gets harder and more crucial as the business grows.
Chances are high that you are one of the managers concerned about your team’s ability to deliver on the company objectives. You envision that with the right team you can surpass all challenges, make your customer happy and finally take relaxing vacations again.
This blog helps you get started and shares an inspiring success story.
Many entrepreneurs feel alone in handling team questions
Let’s take the story of James (name changed), who runs an agritech company. He sees a lot of potential in his product and has increasing market traction from other African markets. He was uncertain whether his team was passionate and capable to drive the business aligned to his vision. He felt that they were holding back and the more he pushed and asked of them, the weaker their relationship became. Within the company there was no one he could turn to.
We realize how difficult it is for James and other hardworking entrepreneurs to put things in perspective. With limited knowledge and experience in team psychology or organizational design and little data on your talent systems, where do you start?
While running a growing company you hardly find time to review management research, read long books or sort through advice shared by friends or Social Media articles to find out what is tailored to your reality.
Have you considered a Business Health Check?
James decided to engage edge for a health check and after holding frank one on one conversations with his team members we identified the reasons for the low enthusiasm, which James did not expect:
Not having permanent employment contracts led to staff being fearful of firing and acting “guarded”, low understanding of what the purpose of their roles was had decreased motivation and a practice of written and rushed feedback had disconnected the team from James.
He decided to address these root causes: He issued contracts and edge moderated a one-day strategic planning workshop which addressed company vision, role clarity, processing tensions and defining team values. The whole team was invigorated and immediately went to work on generating new leads and improving operations. To James the day seemed like a miracle, the type of conversations he hadn’t had with his team in a long time.
Managers want data and insights on the team and value third party opinion and recommendations. The special value of our health check is that we are there during the first steps of implementation as well, at no extra charge.
While many established organizations (whether corporates, NGOs or parastatal) prefer slow change, we know that for many small and growing companies one month feels like an eternity, especially when cash flow is tight or negative.
Our approach brings results fast, which is exactly what small companies want
Within 2 weeks edge completes the diagnostics, which in itself gives you immediate outcomes:
- From our experience at least 70% of team members shift their mindset, resulting in immediate behaviour change. This is because of the coaching methodologies we use in the interviews.
- The team will reflect together on how they can utilize each others strengths better. We facilitate this in workshop format – all included in the diagnostics package!
- The diagnostics report will enable you to see the team and your own leadership in a new light, which makes all the difference.
Speed of change will depend on you: What are you willing to address?
Continuing with the same approach and expecting different results will not get you far. Are you as the manager willing to change the rules of how the game is played? Are you bold enough to address some of the gaps in your management approach that are highlighted in the diagnostics?
In the case of James he decided to give each of his employees permanent employment contracts within one day! The staff could see his commitment to them and to the process. With this increased sense of security, they immediately responded and
In most cases defining the new rules of the game can be achieved in 1-2 weeks. This may involve
- creating action plans per employee,
- redefining and allocating roles
- a different way of interacting with each other, through setting team principles.
After a period of one to three months of applying the new rules, you will evaluate the progress. If the agreements made don’t result in the needed progress, you can take more a new set of measures.
Return on Investment
As one of our customers in Mombasa said “I need to know where the money I spend on your work will come from. Either through decreased costs or increased revenues.” Many SMEs are cash-strapped and compare money flowing out and coming in on a monthly base.
Well, let’s get out the calculator and do some maths!
If we believe the Gallup statistics drawn annually across the US workforce since 2000, then only a third of your staff are engaged (meaning enthusiastic and committed to their job and your company) and 51% of your staff are not engaged and 17% actively disengaged. (See all figures and definitions here)
Add up what this means in terms of your payroll every month! How are you feeling about the amount?
What if by choosing different management approaches you can turn another 30% of your staff into engaged team members within a month and curb the effects of the actively disengaged ones who live out their dissatisfaction? You would know that you are on track to rising revenues and profits in the near future.
In those rare cases where you end up letting people go, you will know that both you and the staff member tried to salvage the relationship in the best way. Nothing is more painful for a manager than looking back at a termination decision with “would haves” and “should haves” in mind and having to face hiring costs without accurate data on what went wrong in the past.
In summary, the return on investment is high!
Start with a self-diagnostics
Following these 4 steps can get you started. And it won’t take you more than a week!
- What are you observing in the team that fuels your doubts? And what are you missing? (Strictly list behaviours only and don’t interpret/judge! e.g. say “in team meetings people don’t speak up” as opposed to “people are not interested in having meetings”)
- From this list, prioritize 2-3 changes which you need to see within the next 1 month. Ask selected trusted team members how they think this change can be achieved.
- Ask yourself in all honesty: How might you as management be contributing to low performance and engagement in the team? (this is the most difficult part to assess without a qualified external opinion, but you have to start somewhere)
- Conduct a simple anonymous survey in the team to learn the team’s perspective. Using the “net promoter score” methodology, it should only have 4 questions: On a scale from 1-10 how likely are you to recommend your friends to work in this company? What one thing should change for you to give a higher score? On a scale from 1-10 how likely are you to recommend your friends to buy the services/product of this company? What one thing should change for you to give a higher score?
And when you’re done let us know what you got out of it!
Together we can dig deeper and find the most meaningful levers to progress.
by Manuela Müller | May 10, 2016 | Thoughts on Team
When I explain what services we offer at edge, I often get asked if we help write Job Descriptions. The short answers is “Yes!” and the long answer is more complex. In this post I want to explore with you the current state of JDs in organisations and new ways of getting your people to do what they need to do.
So what are Job Descriptions? Let’s look at the high and diverse demands we have of them:
We want them to be a talent attraction tool that, once thrown out there, will get the right people to walk in for interviews! We expect them to facilitate the manager’s job (i.e. drive behaviour and performance among our staff)! We also ask of them to be the referee in ugly moments: “You didn’t perform according to, erm, laid-out expectations, so we decided to let you go”. Then obviously they’re also a legal requirement andneed to be attached to employment contracts.
And yet, little thought, skill and effort is put in, resulting in a chaotic picture in companies.
In typical companies of 15 staff, between 3 and 10 people do not have a Job Description. Employees can very rarely access their colleagues’ JDs (and especially not their boss’). At least three different templates can be in play in one company: some outlining numerical goals, some outlining career paths, some outlining skill requirements for the role, and so on. The staff themselves tell us that they haven’t opened their JDs for many months and that they don’t fully remember what they say.
When we collect and analyse a company’s JDs, we find considerable overlap between them, and also key gaps, where on paper noone is in charge of key business processes. Most importantly, the Job Descriptions hardly ever outline how people should view their role in relationship to external and internal business environment and priorities.
What we are experiencing – and you might agree – is that what gets done in a working week is determined by pop-up emergencies, the manager’s intuition, and what people find energy for, more than job descriptions.
Our advice: don’t get stuck on Job Descriptions – find a system that serves your company
In our work with small and growth-oriented companies we see the realities of Job Descriptions every day and we know that the old system isn’t working in the new world. 2016 is not about me doing my job and you doing your job (only)! It’s about us working together to answer the constantly changing business demands.
And entrepreneurs sense this – gut feelings tells them that updating written Job Descriptions on a monthly base is not a good use of their time. What we’d love you to do is take the next step:
What will set you apart as an innovative company is finding YOUR system of allocating roles and tasks and aligning your staff to the business priorities. You know that you have found the right one when your people collaborate and innovate together, when they reduce handover time between any two people or departments without you getting involved, and when individuals raise flags and create solutions to issues that are crucial to the company’s success.
Innovation is required – Four things that your role allocation system needs to do for you:
- Harness someone’s strength to get results. No two individuals are the same. Even if your last Head of Sales and the new one have a similar CV (which is already rare) they will still have different approaches to delegation, to teamwork and to decision making, and different tasks will give them energy. Your system of allocating work needs to harness the individuals’ strengths and approaches – otherwise you are setting them (and in turn your company) up for failure. Forget what is ‘typically done by someone with this title’ but rather cross-allocate work in innovative ways in conversation. As M-Kopa’s CEO Jesse Moore told me, “we don’t find great people for jobs, we find jobs for great people”.
- Ownership: – read ‘accountability’. You need exactly one person to be ultimately accountable for a given domain. If people feel that the buck doesn’t really stop with them, they will be less motivated to do a great job. Why? Because autonomy is a key human need! When you delegate accountability you also need to delegate the decision authority that will allow the person to best deliver on this issue. Stop yourself and colleagues from getting into other people’s business. Insist on clarity of role all the time (some useful tips here). If you don’t trust your staff to deliver, then perhaps you have defined the role too widely or too vaguely. If you don’t trust someone to deliver even though the role is clearly defined, then deal with that separately. Are you finding it generally hard to trust others? Do you see a gap in the person’s capacity? Is it the wrong person on the job?)
- Effective and efficient collaboration. Think football (or rugby if you prefer): What does it mean to be a striker? A mid-fielder? A fly-half? Getting clarity on where people are supposed to ask and give help to each other will make sure that in the heat of business they will collaborate without fear and doubts! You need transparency in who does what, and how you expect roles to overlap and intertwine. In turn it avoids endless meetings and everyone being CCed in every email.
- Agile ways of pivoting people’s roles. If you use lean methodologies to evolve your business (whether conscious or unconscious) then you expect your priorities and product delivery processes to change constantly and rapidly: some things change every week, others change every quarter. But the truth is that the changes will not follow a calendar; they are determined organically by your market learnings. Therefore we find scheduled reviews of JDs are inadequate. Your process needs to allow anyone to call for a “role allocation review” at any time!
What you can do right now?
- Find out how well your current system of allocating roles and tasks is serving you! Have a conversation with your teams: Ask them questions like: “Last Monday morning, how sure were you about what you were supposed to do that week?”, “What are the 3 most important things that this business needs from you this quarter?”, “What do you know for a fact that you are allowed to decide by yourself?”, “Where do you think you have to consult others before acting?”, “How would you like to be rewarded for success in your role?” (While touching on rewards, the answers to the last one will tell you whether your team clearly puts individual goals to their roles.) Mostly content yourself with listening here, let them do 95% of the talking.
- Distinguish what the lawmakers need from you (to keep the Nation’s workers safe) and what your company needs from you (to fulfil the purpose you set out with, across all three bottom lines: social, environmental and financial); the two are very different! Once you accept that you as management need to fulfil both needs, you gain the freedom and willpower to experiment with the right internal ‘role allocation and collaboration’ system. You might even end up scratching the term ‘Job Description’ entirely!
- Make the role conversation public: Lead the team in making full use of the office as ‘your workshop’, asking them to visualise what they deem helpful to perform: a board for priorities and objectives, drawing workflows, making individual and group goals public, clarifying decision matrixes, etc. It will cost you time (approximately one day) and some money (for materials such as paints, flipchart paper, cardboard, post-its and a team lunch). Repeat this quarterly, with the aim of reviewing, re-writing and refining who does what, what quantity and quality is required and how people collaborate!
- Talk to us to find out how we can support you in getting the ‘Right Person on the Right Job’, for example in having helpful conversations, identifying people’s strengths and capacities, mapping roles and accountabilities and finding the right system of tracking who does what with you!
by Manuela Müller | Jan 26, 2016 | Career Happiness, Thoughts on Team
I would like to explore with you the impact of unaddressed feelings in the workplace. If this topic is new to you, this is a great place to start. Talking about one’s feelings at work for some seems like a scary, a stupid and unwelcome thing to do. Here’s why the opposite is true and a few tips to keep in mind.
Let me start by sharing a story a good Kenyan friend of mine told me about growing up. He painted the picture for me how boys receive constant reminders from all sides that men don’t show feelings. “First your mum beats you, then when you cry she beats you again for crying. It’s not a single incident, it happens in diverse forms: neighbours, teachers, aunts etc. And now society blames men for not being in touch with their feelings”.
So how does it manifest itself when a large proportion of society grows up like this? Maybe some of this sounds familiar: “I think he got up on the wrong side of the bed, that he’s behaving like this” or “Look at that one, kila saa anacatch mafeelings”. (slang for s/he is always catching feelings). If you look at these statements, you’ll see that they’re judgemental. But mostly they’re vague and simplistic: Avoiding to explore the complex connection between a human’s inner world (what they think, feel and need) and their outer world (what they say and do).
Well, it doesn’t have to be that way. I have met men and women who explain their inner world to large groups in clear and concise language as if it was the most normal thing to do, who use lingo like “triggers”, “emotions”, “needs”, “explore”, and discuss how to use this as a powerful tool for collaboration, leadership and decision making. Coming from a science background, trained in the language of process, facts and proof, I was blown away.
I believe that many people are actually somewhere in between: We are aware of our feelings, but not sure how to talk about them (write about them on Social Media, sure… but talk?!). We believe that such expressions won’t be welcome. Unsure how to deal with the volcano of emotions inside us. Worried of repercussions of airing out how I fell. At the same time this generation doesn’t see the point anymore of being a different person during and outside working hours.
We also expect a lot from our colleagues and bosses: Be a real human, make me feel welcome and connected, be deep and credible, but don’t dare to overstep my emotional boundaries!
Two important reasons why this is relevant in the workplace:
- Feelings are the messengers about our inner world. Messengers where our needs are being fulfilled (positive feeling) or not being fulfilled (negative feeling). Ignoring these messengers or not sharing their message with those around you, will eventually impact on your behaviour and productivity and thus on project and business performance. Typical outcomes are loss of interest in the work, people choosing not to stretch in their assignments or sharing their views and knowledge, decline in collaboration, silo behaviour between departments etc. On the contrary where thoughts, feelings and needs are shared and explored in conversation, we are more likely see increased motivation and commitment, collaboration and internal innovation ability. These effects have been researched and studies show scary numbers, for example one by Gallup saying that only 1 out of 3 employees are fully engaged at work.
- You can’t bottle up negative feelings and thoughts forever. You’ll either get physically sick, turn cynic (which might get you fired) or explode in an unsuitable moment, unable to verbalize your thoughts and leaving others clueless of “what just happened”.
Instead, a healthy work environment makes space for exploring the thoughts, feelings and needs, that are hidden in each of us.
If you want to try, please have a look at these few basic principles:
- Expand your vocabulary to talk about feelings. What else is there beyond happy and sad, frustrated and excited? The more precise you can be in identifying and describing what is happening inside you, the more alive you feel and the more connected others will become to you.
- Point out positive situations and mention positive feelings at least 5 times as often as negative feelings. Most office environments need that! (In fact it’s been quoted as recipe for lasting marriages since the 1990s)
- When you mention positive feelings without context, it creates a good atmosphere, but you are not creating a lasting change. “I am happy that we are making money”. The power of mentioning to others how an external event created your internal reaction lies in them understanding you better. “When I see you negotiating hard and successfully with this client, I feel hopeful because I start imagining how you and I can work together better as a team to fulfil our financial goals”
- Mentioning negative feelings without mentioning a concrete request can be interpreted as blaming language. “Today I am very frustrated with our low sales numbers (turn back to staring at my screen or going for a smoke)”. Avoid this, especially when you are in a leadership role. Much better is “Today, I feel very frustrated with our low sales numbers. I would like to hold a spontaneous meeting tomorrow to discuss what we can do about it. If you want to join in, let me know!”
Let us know about your experiences in implementing some of these tips!
At edge we support our clients bringing in some of this powerful language and making it part of “how we work around here”. Within ninety minutes workshop time you hear a manager say: “I feel much more connected with you all than in the last months!”
by Manuela Müller | Dec 3, 2014 | edge journey
Looking back at 2014 is a very proud moment in edge’s ten-year history.
In just one year we achieved the transformation from a grant-based talent development and placement organization towards an organization delivering crucial support in unblocking business performance – and we’re well on track to profitability!
Today we want to share some of our successes and learnings from our journey.
Where are we in December?
We had enthusiastic and constructive conversations with dozens of small and growing businesses in seven countries. CEOs, COOs and HR decision makers told us the value of spending time to discuss people performance in an analytical manner.
One of our key products are diagnostics products, giving clear information on how well the team is set up to achieve performance. Especially in Latin America where we have rolled out diagnostics earlier in the year we have since started follow-up engagements to address some of the identified opportunities and threats.
The top management of two companies have found it most helpful to cover talent related management topics in regular sessions over a full quarter, in turn allowing them to feel safe while applying new approaches supporting the growth of the company.
We are very grateful to be a trusted partner in a transition moment of a CEO role in one of our clients.
Our bestseller has been the RightHire product in various facets: Some companies value our expertise in creating a clear role profile, others ask for support in building attractive employer branding or the best tactics in targeting talent. Beyond traditional hiring products we’re excited to have implemented personality and team mapping thus setting the new team members up for long-term performance.
We are having honest conversations with investors and grant-making foundations around diagnosing the human capital in start-ups and building a pilot to de-risk investment decisions for early 2015.
Being able to contribute beyond work with individual clients and shaping opinion and trends is very close to our heart. edge is now invited on panels at events in the SME space. We have partnered with 3 accelerators on trainings of their business cohorts. We are becoming a go-to partner for international foundations where they need support on the ground around understanding human capacity and making conversations work.
How did we get here?
- We stayed curious about our business model. After our market research in Quarter 1 we were about to close in on a new product suite and business model. Only by staying curious were we able to go as far as we have gone. “Would we deliver scalable online services or tailored one-on-one consulting?” – “How do you compare with other HR players?” Like any other start-up we received advice and dooming predictions from all sides. It was sometimes uncomfortable and scary to go for meetings without a product suite. Sometimes we would create “tentative product sheets” and a month later contradict ourselves.
- We truly trusted the team. Having the full team contribute to strategy and question each other on whether we’re on the right path has definitely helped in creating the products. Even more crucial was the mindset shift in management: In edge everybody has permission to approach any client, all can spend money on research, sales and delivery and everyone is asked to innovate and deliver all of our products. We are eliminating titles and micro-management and instead the team members support each other to focus their energy on where they are most likely to add value to edge.
- We let the customer decide: The deepest assumption of our products is that the client knows himself best. All our services evolve around providing data to the management teams, offering options and facilitating conversations. We don’t provide simplifying answers in a transactional manner, but rather enable every person in the client business to take better decisions and deliver real business value. This in turn means that all product development decisions are truly based on the users’ responses and needs – and not on our idea of what we believe.
There’s more to share and even more to learn moving forward. If you like what you read, please join us on our journey in 2015!
by Manuela Müller | Aug 25, 2014 | edge journey, Thoughts on Team
After 6 months of interviewing 80 impact businesses, 25 investors/accelerators, 20 Human Resources experts and 100 talented young professionals across 4 markets, we are more convinced than ever that better talent management could help promising businesses to really take off.
Key difficulties edge uncovered through the market research include:
- Recruitment – a lot of businesses think that people management begins and ends with recruitment. While this is undeniably a crucial part of the job, subsequently leaving the promising new hires to their own devices sets up the relationships to fail.
- Mismatched expectations (“Why was I hired?”/”Why isn’t this person helping me more?”) – new hires may be sold on a vision of changing the world, at scale – but left in the back office (which, by the way, may be falling to pieces) without much contact with BoP customers or even upper management.
Furthermore, CEOs and other members of the management team may have unrealistic expectations about the extent to which new hires will automatically share their passion for the work. Often, this needs to be cultivated through exposure, conversations, shared (yet clear) responsibilities… which brings us to;
- Internal communication – members of Generation Y in particular crave feedback in real time. Yet often managers are so hard-pressed for keeping the business afloat, or delivering products on time, that they put this off indefinitely, or provide only vague direction. The mere thought of implementing a regular performance evaluation system, especially one that includes customized coaching, may understandably make them groan. But not having one makes their staff groan…or worse, leave.
It reminds us a bit of the football world cup: Putting great players in a team is not all that makes a well-oiled winning team. Following this comparison, in the start-up space most teams are already signed up for the world cup, while still looking for players, defining their game strategies and searching for a new training ground at the same time while fundraising for flights. Sounds familiar?
From our interviews, we have seen that a variety of factors stop management teams from improving their people performance on their own.
- Awareness – management may not even realize that the way they are managing their people is contributing to substandard performance. Their focus is so firmly on sales, product development, raising investment, or other more tangible goals that they can’t see the forest for the trees. (Well, they don’t have TIME to see it!)
- Cost – the business is already bootstrapped. Management may fear that investors won’t approve of spending money on improvements that they don’t know how to correlate to increasing revenues, profit or other business outputs. However, when speaking with the most sophisticated investors, we have encountered a great deal of interest in providing portfolio companies with tools for better people performance.
- Know-how – they’ve never done it before and don’t have the time to invest in figuring it out. They are anxious for someone else to come in and just do it for them.
What are we going to do about it?
Now that we’ve learnt so much from all of you about your expectations and disappointments with people performance, we’re even hungrier to help you find solutions! We’ve developed a variety of product prototypes in response to your needs and will be testing them in assorted markets throughout the coming months.
We aim to design all of them to be both affordable and empowering to management teams, so that as many businesses as possible can benefit from their outcomes for as long as possible.
We’ll be seeking your feedback on these prototypes along the process, and please do drop us a line if you have any new feedback for us.
