340 | Getting the Team to Take Ownership

You don’t want your employees to DO the work. You read that right. You want more than that. You want them to WANT to do the work. When they want to do the work, you have created a particular magic alignment that makes your company grow fast. Today we talk about the key to getting them to want to do the work. We are talking about getting the team to take ownership. When they have the feeling of ownership, you have connected deeply to their inner drive. Enjoy today’s show.

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Ownership Workshop: The Transcript

I remember one of my clients said to me one day is my team’s not performing at the level that I know they can perform. And I had a lot of questions for them, but it was really a moment of just frustration and a moment that I could see in her eyes that things needed to change or she wouldn’t be able to continue to grow the company the way she wanted to. And in fact, we talked about the growth that day, and she talked about I’m not sure my team can handle it.

Now two months later after we did a little bit of a workshop, everything has completely changed, and I’m gonna tell you exactly what it is when we come back.

Hi my name’s Gene Hammett, I work with hyper-growth companies to help them understand this, and create an intentional culture of growth and help leaders lead in a new way. To really understand the new demands of growth and of a changing workforce.

So what happened in that two month period really is quite remarkable. When I talk about this, my client, I’m not gonna tell you the name of it because I’ve got to protect the confidentiality of my client, but I remember distinctly she said I’m not sure we can keep selling at the pace that the market’s demanding because I’m not sure our team can handle it. And I hate to hear that because that running at capacity and holding yourself back and throttling the company because your team’s not engaged the way you want to is painful. So what we did was we did an ownership workshop. I’m gonna tell you the structure of that right now.

That structure of the workshop is what set the tone for everything else. We brought in about nine employees into one meeting and I’m gonna go through four different parts that I share with you today.

The first part of that has we just had a really solid conversation around customer expectations. We had, it was about an hour long where we just went back and forth and got everyone’s input into what is expected of them. In their supply chain, so that means before the product sold, and then after that when the product is actually delivered. And we had a fantastic conversation, and a lot of the work in part one of the customer expectations was dry language. But I remember one thing that stuck out very specifically because I challenged them to come up with something that was really juicy and really lasting. And someone said we want customers for life. So instead of improving customer service, I got them to create something in a language around customers for life. And that one change has stuck inside their company over the two month period.

Now in part two we created behaviors, and we identified this together, I facilitated it, of what is expected of them to map to those expectations. So the behaviors of customers for life, one of them would be how do we go above and beyond and delight our customers in every interaction we have whether email or phone? Think about that, that was the employees coming up with these ideas. And in the third part, I gave them a version of the speech I give, my keynote version, where I talk about the six disciplines of hyper-growth companies and we talk about some of the areas they can improve inside your own leadership and culture.

And the fourth one was how do we simplify it? I’ve never seen a plan that comes out right the first time so how do we get that down into a three by five card? How do we get that down in something very simple for them to be as a reminder to make sure that these moments don’t just happen and you spend money on a workshop, but they actually have a lasting impact inside the company?

Now that workshop uncovered a few more things that must be done that I’ll tell you in another video, but it will really help you understand how we got the ball started to shift that team engagement. And the two months since then has been phenomenal. The company’s had record growth, and they have no question that their team can handle this, and handle the even future growth that’s coming their way.

Alright, my name is Gene Hammett, I love to work with companies that are in hyper-growth or want to activate some of the core elements of hyper-growth, help leadership, the way they lead, and help cultures have a very intention to grow.

If you have any questions, I can help you with, make sure you reach out and as always lead with courage and I’ll talk to you next time.

 

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