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Chapter 5

Who’s made the cut?

Building high-performance teams

The appetite for knowing how to build a winning team shows no sign of abating. And why would it? Winning teams, well, they win, don’t they? And whatever business you’re in, winning takes precedence.

It’s interesting in that I was raised on a different notion – “it’s not about the winning, it’s about the taking part”. In my early years that was, apparently, more than just all right. In fact, demonstrations of ambition and success, well, they just weren’t socially acceptable. Then in my adult years this unambitious mediocrity was savagely replaced by a personal world of accountability. Where winning orders, new customers or the sales prize was the only thing that counted. Failure equalled dismissal.

The Monday Revolution approach to attracting high performers requires an all-round approach. As detailed in the previous chapter, the company’s outward presentation needs to be compelling. Dull, out-dated marketing materials and a tired old website isn’t going to make the shortlist, as far as the candidate is concerned. And there’s little point in those factors working well if the job description falls short of dynamic, having been written by a trainee in the people department. Or some similar often unconnected outpost. You need to ensure your company looks like (and pays like) a business going somewhere. High performers want high-performance environments. It’s where they can raise their game and flourish.

Like so much in business there’s demand for a formula requirement that will solve the problem. And to some extent they exist. Identifying how companies have built winning teams and copying their behaviour can provide some answers. But too often organisations think it can be achieved quickly by adopting certain elements, but not the whole ingredients. If you require a winning team – and who doesn’t? – you’ll need to make some tough decisions about what’s already in place and what needs to change.

Starting without a clean sheet is far from easy. My advice here is begin as if you are starting from scratch. Would you have the same people and processes in place? I suspect not. If you’ve just joined the company, in that you’re in charge, you’ll have a window to change things. If you’re not in that happy position, you might need to create some sort of event as a background for getting things done.

Incidentally, most organisations don’t like this idea. Evolution, not Monday Revolution, well that’s fine but it’s not for me. I’ve seen people move slowly and stick to their knitting until it unravels… In talking to people about their time at the top, I’d say the majority believe they should have acted more radically and much sooner.

With that in mind, let’s review a few companies I’ve worked in, with and observed. As I’ve already mentioned, I’ve been involved with many companies in a wide range of markets. These potentially exciting roles were rewarding but occasionally fell a little short in some respects, but that was my naivety.