Maximize Profits by Building High Performance Teams

A video that compared the taste of a popular brand of pizza to that of cardboard, created a furor over the internet. The company’s top management immediately drew up plans for damage control and managed to calm down the uproar. Sadly, in a traditional management system the top management is often unaware of ground realities until something negative comes up and forces them to take notice. When the top management is unaware of ground realities, employees become dispirited and customers become frustrated with substandard services given by dispirited employees.

So what does it take for the management to improve company performance and maximize profits? Dysfunctional teams and workers often paralyze the entire organization and hamper growth. When a top executive sets out to improve company performance, there are a few crucial priorities that help in building high performance teams.

First and foremost, when building a high performance team choose the right team members. Most CEO’s do not spend sufficient time determining the personality of a team. Factors like the executive’s position in the organizational, his pay, and his title are often considered enough to guarantee an entry into the team. The same factors are also contributive to his position in the team. However a CEO who is determined to build high performance teams, is going to spend some time thinking about how to get the teams’ composition right. Every member of the team should be chosen on the basis of his/her talent regardless of his/her position and pay. The key to building a high performance team is deciding what contributions the team as a whole, and individual members can contribute to meet the company’s performance aspirations.

The team has to agree on the cause of the current problem, with individuals making their contribution to effectively tackle different aspects related to the problem. Another major problem hampering growth is when the team lacks focus and purpose. A survey conducted by an independent organization found that only about 35% of executives agreed that top management allocated an acceptable amount of time to the issue of concern.

When creating high performance teams, it is important for teams to distinguish between the issues that require immediate action, and the issues that can be monitored. When top management fails to realize the difference, meetings are overloaded with agendas that are impossible to tackle, leaving executives wondering when they could leave, and get on to some real work. A quicker way for top management to address these issues is to choose agendas that require the team to act upon, and create performance indicators that help monitor progress.