Why Team First is Important in Times Like These – Behind the Scenes
There is a MYTH that comes with growing a company. This is one of those harmful myths. It is when you fail to put the team first. You create more layers of management to manage the people. Managers make sure the workflows, and they even improve effectiveness in small increments. However, managers don’t put the team first. Managers have their place, but what we need in a time of new approaches and agile moves is more leaders that can adapt and lead their people to a new future. Here is a concept about the team first that is more important now than ever before.
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Why Team First is Important in Times Like These: The Transcript
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Disclaimer: This transcript was created using YouTube’s translator tool and that may mean that some of the words, grammar, and typos come from a misinterpretation of the video.
I wanna bring you a story today about team first. What does that mean? When you put your employees first before your customers, for many of you, think that’s the wrong way to approach it. For some of you, the select few, know that employees are more important than customers.
Now, I have a lot of flack around this and I totally get it because there are times when your business is beginning that you don’t have any employees and you’re focused on customers. I totally understand that. But when you have product-market fit, you are starting to grow out that team, you’ve gotta realize that you can’t continuously replace people that are on the team. You’ve gotta invest in them, you’ve got to grow them, you’ve gotta put them first as a leader so that those employees will put the customers first.
The research I’ve done on this with fast-growth companies is undeniable. Over 94% of the 100s of interviews that I’ve had say that it’s an employee first. The difficult question I ask them is sort of impossible if you will, is as a leader, what’s more important, your customers or your employees? Fast growth companies from the Inc. 5000 will say that it’s employees first 94% of the time. I share this with you again because I wanna make sure it sinks in.
Now, I’ve been told I’m crazy because of this, I’ve been told by CEOs of publicly traded companies that that’s just not the way it works. But I also know that people like that grow to a point where they see their people as interchangeable. If someone doesn’t show up, the company doesn’t feel it, just someone else steps in. And that’s great when you get to that point, but not many companies are at that point. And I think there’s also very dangerous when you do get there because people don’t feel appreciated and valued.
Inside the team-first approach, you have a very different connection to the work that you do and the relationship you have between leadership and employees.
One of the interviews I did was with Digital Hyve, the CEO there is Jeff, and Jeff talked about how important his people are, He calls them the crew, to the business. I documented it on my podcast, Growth Think Tank. If you’re listening to this, maybe you know that I have a podcast where I interview the fastest growing companies. If you wanna get more of the 12 principles because that was just one of the 12 in this three-page document that I recently put together. But if you wanna get that document absolutely for free, go to genehammett.com/principles and you can download the 12 principles. Again, team-first was just one of them, but I’d love for you to go ahead and get that. So let me know what you think about the list, how you rate it. I’d love to hear from you.
Hopefully, there are some on here that you absolutely agree with and that you’re really soaring in your company, and there’s probably a few that you could use some work on. Get this free download of all 12 principles of fast-growth companies that I’ve analyzed and you can see where you rate. You can see stories about some of the companies that really are excelling in each of those areas, just go to genehammett.com/principles. This is my piece today on behind the scenes at Growth Think Tank.
I bring you messages like this to help inspire you to take it to the next level, to go beyond complacency in the status quo. To become the leader that your team craves, make sure you keep tuning in, subscribe to growththinktank.com. As always, lead with courage, we’ll see you next time.
Disclaimer: This transcript was created using YouTube’s translator tool and that may mean that some of the words, grammar, and typos come from a misinterpretation of the video.
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