BUSINESS KILLING MISTAKES #4 – YOU HAVE GROUPS – BUT NOT TEAMS

Too many leaders believe that because they have a group of employees or members, they have a team. Nothing could be further from the truth, and the situation “that’s not really a team” mistake wrecks business success. 

It’s quite disappointing how many CEOs and entrepreneurs refer to their functional heads, employees, their sales group, or their operations as a team. But does a certain number in a group dictate, or what you call them, determine a true team? 

Understanding the difference between a group and a team can be game-changing, especially if achieving and sustaining maximum results with minimum resources is a critical goal. Read this article to make sure you, as a leader or team member, are not making this teaming misstep in your business. Then share this material with your leaders, teammates, or employees, to further their learning of when a team is not a team and what it really means to operate in a high-powered “team construct.” 

ARE GROUPS OF PEOPLE TEAMS?

When is a team, a team? Have you ever deeply thought about this concept, definition, or measurement? Should you even care? If you’ve read my book Entrepreneur To Millionaire, the core premise is dramatically growing sales, revenue, and profits while using the fewest resources possible. That means that every part, aspect, and component of your enterprise MUST be focused on continuous optimization. And groups working in a “team construct” is essential to high performance. However, as important as “teamwork” and being a real team are to performance, the majority of leaders don’t have real teams. Less than 1% of groups work as teams.  Even worse, most people in organizations are in groups who have individuals working to maximize their personal success and which sabotages team performance.  

WHY DO LEADERS MAKE THIS “I HAVE A TEAM” MISTAKE? 

There are two major reasons that teams are not teams. The first reason for creating the “non-team” is that leaders use the team word casually but don’t understand how the power of language sets up the success OR failure of that group. This means by default, leaders flippantly throw the word “team” around because they can’t think of any better word to use. 

For example, have you ever heard a leader refer to their employees as “my bunch of sales workers,” “my group of operations people,” or “our gang of tech talent”? Okay, you might have heard the word “gang” in the past, but it doesn’t have a positive connotation today

So, what do they call their groups of leaders, employees, or members? They say, “my [fill in the blank] team,” “our team of [fill in the blank],” etc., thus fostering the team construct misbelief. 

The second reason, and why the word team is used so frivolously, is because too many leaders don’t actually understand how to measure or lead high-powered teams. They believe that when employees are working together or positioned in the same department it must be a team.  Wrong. 

WHAT IS THE IMPACT OF NOT UNDERSTANDING A TEAM CONSTRUCT VS GROUPS?

As we see almost every weekend in amateur, collegiate, and professional leagues sports, there is a situation where the best team on paper doesn’t win. There is always that one game where players, by their experience and pedigrees, should dominate without a sweat – but they don’t. 

Full confession… For almost three decades, I have lived in the Dallas area. I have tried with all my heart to be a loyal Dallas Cowboys fan. But boy, does this group from owner to players (not a team) make it tough! I can’t tell you how many times in the last decade-plus years I have heard this owner or coach’s pre-seasonal assessment: “The Cowboys have the talent and the experience to make it to the Super Bowl,” only to watch them fall apart in big games and fail even to make the playoffs. Everyone in every bar in the world has an opinion of why and who caused the Cowboys to fail again and again. However, the reason is rarely the lack of talent or the right players (employees) it’s the leadership at all levels thinking they have put together a team.  

HOW HAVE LEADERS TRIED TO FIX THE “NOT A TEAM” MISTAKE?

Even worse than not operating as a team, is how leaders try to fix their “don’t have a real team” problem. They are being taught, told, and sold that to have a team, they must: 

• Hire people who can work in teams; 
• Make sure your groups have common goals;
• Have intertwined or collective focus;
• Do bonding and “kum ba yah” at off-sites that will create a team, or;
• Offer financial incentives for “team based” results 

In reality, I don’t have any case studies where one or all of those ideas have created high-powered, “tapped all potential” level teams. 

WHY DON’T MOST TEAM FIXES FAIL?

The reason that the “classic ‘team’ fixes” don’t work is that many leaders and entrepreneurs have not been taught the real design and measurement of an effective “team construct.” Maximum performance is not about who you hire, having team goals, or group incentives; it’s about understanding two key principles that you must incorporate and live by. Here is a personal example you can use. 

CHANGE – WHAT SHOULD LEADERS DO INSTEAD?

Years back during one of my corporate stints, I was VP of Sales for a public software company. My main focus in leading my 18 salespeople was not to manage them.  My strategy was to build and lead in an optimized team construct. Using an “accountability/responsibility-based model” we collectively won an astounding 48 out of 50 major contracts over a three-year period. That’s a jaw-dropping sales win ratio of 96% over 36 months. And these wins were against cut-throat competitors such as IBM, HP, CA, Tivoli, BMC, etc. This was a public software firm (MUSE symbol later bought by IBM) that required full transparency and disclosure to the markets and analysts. 

Average all industry sales win-to-loss ratios (fully scrubbed – as explained on page 153 in my book) range from 15-30%. Doubling that percentage would make any leader a hero. However, if you’re ultra-competitive like what I show my clients, then you must never measure your success against your competitors hoping to just do better. You MUST manage success against perfection – winning every time. 

Here is what you can do that we did to optimize sales… After completing a formal loss review with the salesperson of record and everyone on that sales pursuit team, I led a strategy session with all the salespeople. We reviewed the mistakes, tactical and strategic errors, and what could have been done faster or differently. 

The fact that we follow rigorous and formal win-loss reviews is something that too few companies even administer. But even just having the analysis wasn’t good enough. Here was the transformational team activity I applied in the group. I went around the room to each salesperson who didn’t work on that loss and asked them this question.

“How could you have helped, or what could you have done, to make sure we – as a team – won that contract?” 

It was obvious we had an effective team construct because of how the other salespeople who were not ACCOUNTABLE for the sales cycle but accepted personal RESPONSIBILITY. They said things such as, 

• I could have provided him with better competitive information. 
• I could have helped him prep and role-play for how to handle the major resistance issues. 
• I could have worked my network better to see if we had connections he could have leveraged. 
• I could have reviewed his final value proposition to find holes or flaws with it.

The key point is that a group of people are only a team when everyone takes some level of team responsibility that they didn’t have to take. It’s when everyone is as focused on everyone winning as much as they are on winning themselves. That’s hard to do when everyone is so busy with their own stuff ̶ but that is what makes a powerful team:

The willingness to make sure those you work with never fail.

BENEFITS OF TRANSFORMING YOUR GROUPS TO TEAM

There are hundreds of reasons for operating in a true team construct, here are a few:

1. Great teams don’t require management – only effective leadership.
2. It’s possible to do the impossible individuals could never do on their own.
3. More from less – more production consistently with less work. 

KEY LEARNING POINT

A group of people is not a team. A team is only a team when the group understands two key concepts, 1) accountability and 2) responsibility, and how to use that to help everyone succeed to the highest levels possible. 

WHAT TO DO RIGHT NOW

1. Read or listen to Chapter 10 – Sales Conversion System in my book, Entrepreneur to Millionaire. Even if you are not in sales or lead salespeople, you must understand the thinking, principles, and ideas of “team construct.”
2. Go apply those concepts to your company and groups – make sure they work as teams. 
3. Contact us to help you turn your group of great people into high-performance teams before your competitors do.

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AUTHOR BACKGROUND

Kent Billingsley is the founder and president of the Revenue Growth® Company, LLC (TRGC). He is a published author, international keynote speaker, and business transformation expert. He has become America’s Revenue Growth® Architect by helping thousands of entrepreneurs and CEOs (representing over a million employees) generate several billion in new sales, as well as tens of billions in new revenue and profits for large corporations. He has personally designed, built, transformed, and turbocharged several thousand organizations in 36 countries. Over the last 20 years, his proprietary content and trademarked programs have helped thousands of entrepreneurs and employees become millionaires and multimillionaires by “creating wealth” inside their companies. He can be reached at [email protected].