Performance hacks to get the most out of your team

I decided to dedicate this article to my top hacks for getting the most out of your team. 

For me, it is all about getting the communication right. My three hacks are designed to open communication channels in your business, they work because they provide you with a line of sight into what's really going on. If you are serious about improving communication in your business, start with the intent of establishing genuine two-way communication. 

HACK #1: THE EIGHT MINUTE HUDDLE

One of my clients told me she never understood why you needed meetings. I agree; so many meetings are a complete waste of time. I am not a fan of meetings for the sake of meetings. However, an eight-minute-huddle is a disciplined information exchange. We deliberately suggest you keep it short, so it is always focused. One way of making sure it is short and sharp is by keeping everyone standing. 

First, who should take part? - the people who are across the most important operational metrics that align with the quarterly business goals. Sales lead, Operations lead, Finance lead, and so on. The people who are accountable to your business plan goals. 

Second, what are the most important operational metrics? It's the information that quickly tells you how things are tracking, week to week. They may include: 

• The key sales metrics that matter for your business. For example: sales closed, sales proposals out, upcoming tenders, state of play in tenders already out. 

• The key finance metrics that matter for your business - such as tracking of cashflow and cash in bank, debtors, and upcoming bank repayments. 

• Percentage of customer fulfillment with no errors, return rates, stock levels.

Third, how to structure the meetings? They should look like the following:

• What's happening in the next week? 

• How are they tracking against the weekly metrics? 

• Any red flags (upcoming issues or things they need help with). 

Each person should be allocated no more than two minutes. So the meeting may be longer if you have more than four at the meeting. Make sure the person who runs it is very disciplined and structured. The meetings are to ensure you have a line of sight into your business, allowing each person to have a line of sight to the whole business and to each other. 

The meeting happens every week at the same time, and should not be any longer than 15 minutes at the most. 

HACK #2: SETTING BINARY KPIS TO YOUR TEAM THAT ALIGN WITH BUSINESS GOALS 

I've written extensively about KPIs in the past because without them life is really hard and there's a culture of no accountability. For people to understand how they contribute to the business, they must have meaningful KPIs that align with the business goals, and for them to be effective they need to be binary. Binary KPIs are KPIs that are either achieved, or are not. For example, making ten sales calls a day is an example of a binary KPI. 

Why is it important to stick to binary KPIs? Because when binary it is very clear for people if they are succeeding or not. For you, binary KPIs are important because it helps your conversations around performance become a lot more informed and it will be very clear, very quickly, who is performing and who isn’t. Binary KPIs leave no room for subjective feedback. Good binary KPI’s can be set for any business, it just requires some thinking. For your people to own them, they need to be involved in setting them, don’t just hit them with KPI’s they have had no input in to.February is the absolutely best time to set KPI’s for the year.

HACK #3: REWARDING VALUES -BASED BEHAVIOR 

I have found that most organisations may reward or incentivise on sales. 

That limits the opportunity for staff that aren’t part of the sales team to be rewarded for activities that may meaningfully contribute to your business.

What does this mean? If you have a set of values, and linked to those values are clear behaviours that you associate with those values, how do you reward staff who demonstrate the desired behaviour?

When we keep rewarding positive behaviours, we reinforce them and the company values. Staff become more engaged and feel encouraged to do more of it, and new staff learn very quickly what good behaviour looks like.

The recognition initiatives should be a combination of:

•⁠  ⁠Spontaneous (research shows that this has more impact),

•⁠  ⁠Peer nominated (an opportunity for leadership to hear about staff that they might not know much about) and

•⁠  ⁠Leader initiated (a more structured programme that is rewarded based on agreed criteria).

For values-based rewards to work they need to be explained well in advance, and have rigid adherence, otherwise cynicism will creep in and lack of follow-through will do more damage than good.

The key question to ask yourself when setting up reward and incentive programmes is: 'What are the unintended consequences?'

People will find the loophole, or you may incentivise the wrong behaviours. It may be a good idea to run it past some of the staff whom it affects and you'll be amazed at what they'll tell you about how it could be subverted!

I hope you initiate all three hacks. However, these hacks make the assumption that you have things already in place, such as:

•⁠  ⁠A strong business plan with quarterly and annual goals in place,

•⁠  ⁠An articulated company purpose, a set of values with associated behaviours,

•⁠  ⁠A culture of accountability.

If these aren't in place then get them in place, pronto. Seek support if you don't know where to start.

With the fast pace of change and talent becoming harder to find, every business needs to know what it stands for, who they want to attract as customers, and why people should do business with ther as well as why they should work for them. Retention and engagement of talent is critical to retaining customers.