Building a Winning Culture

The first step for success is creating the belief that you can achieve your goals; whether speaking of a sports team, getting to 100% occupancy in a senior living community, or creating a service level that exceeds customer expectations!  This belief becomes the nucleus of a “Winning Culture”, building on the principle that it is a lot more fun to win than to lose.

Tug McGraw

“Ya Gotta Believe!”

1973 New York Mets

The following is a proven, 10-step process to building a winning culture and a winning team in business:

1.  Recruit the “right people” for the team.

In his book “Good to Great”, Stanford Professor Jim Collins asserts that a common trait of successful 20^th century companies was “getting the right people on the bus”.  Chip Conley, the founder and CEO of the Joie de Vivre boutique hotel chain takes this concept to another level by relating employee behavior to Abraham Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs.   He states, in his book “Peak”, that the needs of employees may be categorized into 3 groupings:  compensation (base needs), recognition, and meaning.   Quoting Peter Drucker, he suggests that the company must go beyond meeting the base needs of the employees if it wishes to instill loyalty and motivate employees.

Chip also classifies employees into 3 categories:  superstars, silent majority and weak links.  Interestingly, he doesn’t suggest that a successful organization must have all superstars, but recommends a 2 to 1 ratio between superstars and weak links.

Thus, the right people don’t have to be superstars, but they should be capable of being motivated by and committed to the underlying mission of the organization.   Even with superstar skills, they will not contribute to the winning culture unless they are motivated by more than pure money.

2.  Establish a vision with clear goals and expectations.

Henry Ford said “If you think you can … or if you think you can’t . . . you’re right.”  The team will follow their leader.

Employees look for a leader with a sense of where the organization is going and what is expected of them in that process.  That leader must possess a winning, “can do” attitude to inspire team members to stretch their efforts to meet goals.

3.  Create a Team Concept where everyone’s contribution is important.

Professor Collins doesn’t go far enough in his analogy; success depends on not merely getting “on the bus” but in working together as a Team to achieve common goals.  I prefer the example of a racing scull to illustrate that all members have to pull their weight AND work together.

Again, everyone doesn’t have to be a superstar and often a GREAT TEAM is made up of people with different strengths so that the total is greater than the sum of the parts.  A classic sports example is the strong defensive player on a baseball team who is not the home run hitter but contributes by advancing another runner while “sacrificing” his own “at bat”.

Together Everyone Achieves More!

4.  Implement a Rewards Program that gives tangible as well as intangible recognition of Team and individual achievements.

It is easy to identify accomplishments and provide rewards for the superstars, but the really successful manager will find a way to recognize all of the players, such as the batter who “sacrificed” to advance the runner above.  A critical component is recognition for achievement of Team, or company, goals, not merely individual successes.

5.  Assess each individual’s knowledge base, strengths and weaknesses, and then assign them to roles where they can / will be successful.

One of the worst mistakes a manager can make is to expect everyone to be a superstar, which is somewhat like looking for a poker hand with 4 Aces!  The art of management is the ability to mold a group of committed individuals, with differing strengths and weaknesses into a cohesive team working towards – and achieving – exceptional goals.

6.  Provide each individual with all the technical and management training and tools they need to successfully accomplish their job and mission.

The organization must make a commitment to training and dedicate resources to support the team.  Nothing kills the winning spirit more than a lack of tangible support from the organization!  Building the winning culture is a process involving a number of group dynamics that can only be achieved in a collective training setting.

7.  Establish defined benchmarks to attain small, manageable targets in reasonable timeframes.

Athletes are taught to take one game at a time.  In a fill-up or turnaround situation for a senior living community, simply stating the goal at 100% occupancy would be over-whelming and non-productive for local management.  Instead, they should be given daily, weekly and monthly targets for number of new contacts, follow-up phone calls, in-person visits, special events, etc.  These targets are within their control and should lead to increased occupancy.

8.  Empower the “players on the field” (i.e. local managers) the autonomy and opportunity to execute the game plan and the latitude to make adjustments when the need arises.

Management should avoid over-managing.  If you have followed the previous steps of hiring the right people, and giving them the proper training and tools to do their job, you must display confidence in their ability to deliver.  Otherwise, you would be like the football coach who refuses to allow his quarterback to “audible” when he sees that the called play isn’t going to work.

9.  Recognize and celebrate successes when targets are met.

Coach Vince Lombardi said “Winning is not a sometimes thing; it’s an all the time thing.  Jeffrey Gitomer, motivational author and speaker points out that “positive attitude is contagious” in his book “YES! Attitude”.

How do these concepts apply to Building a Winning Culture?

The answer is to find every possible reason to CELEBRATE A SUCCESS – no matter how small!  Publicly acknowledging those accomplishments creates recognition and helps employees achieve their higher level ego needs as defined by Maslow.  That recognition will motivate them, as well as other team members, to strive harder to achieve even more difficult goals.

10.  Build on those successes to “raise the bar” and reach the next plateau, helping to motivate other team members to succeed.

Winners Lead to More Winners!