Great Results Come From Great Teams

Having looked at how much folks within our organizations need us to exemplify what we’re holding up as core values and detailing how unlikely we are to build a great team without those values being a legitimate part of what we’re doing on a daily basis, let’s dig into some practical steps each of us should be doing to rally our team around our company values. I’d love to cite several different articles referencing mounds of data showing global companies with monstrous growth simply because the executives backed their value talk with a disciplined value walk, breaking records year after year. I searched for it and found plenty of articles listing the big names we’d all expect to read about, but I’ve seen just as many articles bashing those same companies for less than scrupulous practices. 

With that being the case, let’s stick with some that I have very close proximity with. As I explained the textbook example I saw my friends provide for each of the five values they’ve used as the foundation for the business they acquired in 2021, I shared some of the growth that business recognized through the first twenty-four months they owned it as well as a few things they’ve achieved since. With now four separate businesses under the parent company they’ve formed, all based on those same five values, the cohesion is nothing short of amazing. Not only has the first business grown substantially, the others are following suit. Every time I talk with Craig, which is at least once each week, he tells me about an awesome new client or a new opportunity that’s as big any they’ve had to date. None of that is coincidence. Quite honestly, I see nearly every member of his team firing on all cylinders to support this growth. And not only is the existing team actively engaged, they’ve made some outstanding additions, too!

I once heard Jack Welch say that even the best managers only make the right hire about 50% of the time. Having been involved in well over a thousand hiring decisions, I’m far too familiar with why he made that statement. Even the most thorough interviews are rarely long enough to learn everything you need to know about a candidate's work history or existing skill set. With all the employment law rules and regulations around what can or can’t be discussed during an interview, it can be extremely difficult to get a complete picture of who the person really is. In many cases, the leaders most experienced in the hiring process use their intuition to determine if the candidate with a reasonable level of competency will actually fit in with the rest of the existing team. Sometimes all this works out wonderfully and sometimes the person who shows up for their first day of work looks and sounds like the person you interviewed, but acts completely different right out of the gate.

The most resounding thing I’ve seen come from the strong foundation Craig and Kim have built across all their companies by consistently modeling their core values has been how much the overall impact has spilled over into the hiring process. Since they’ve experienced so little voluntary turnover, and much of what they have had has been through planned retirements, they’ve had the luxury of being very intentional about screening every candidate. Relevant skills certainly play a role, but every aspect of how the person connects with the existing team ties into the final decision. Coupled with the fact that they’re building a very positive reputation, resulting in multiple quality candidates applying for each position that’s posted, the team has grown stronger through nearly every hire. Great results do indeed come from great teams, and those great teams rally around great values that they see their leaders model daily!

Great Teams Are Built On Great Values

For the casual observer, it could appear as though the results each of the businesses Craig and Kim have acquired are the primary reasons so many solid candidates have applied to join their team. After all, who doesn’t want to be part of a winning team? Where I’d challenge that casual observer, though, lies in determining what had to be in place first. This is most definitely not a chicken or egg scenario! Had they not solidified a foundation based on their five core values from the start, I’m convinced the results would have been vastly different. I believe turnover would have been much closer to the national average, if not even higher since management changes nearly always result in a spike in personnel changes, and I’m also convinced that simply maintaining the existing client base would have proven to be a challenge with a lot of different faces in place.

Great results certainly do come from great teams, especially great results that are sustained over long periods of time. A company with many talented individuals can also produce strong results in any given year when there are enough incentives in place, but there’s a tremendous difference between several people achieving individual results and an entire team performing exceptionally well on a consistent basis. If teamwork is held up as a value and defined with the idea of building on trust, the most effective individual performers will produce on their own but have little reason to look for ways to collaborate with the team around them if they’re seeing an executive making decisions out of fear that undermine the community they’re professing to serve. When each of the folks watching Craig and Kim saw them routinely making decisions that benefited everyone involved, even when doing so cost them personally in the moment, it didn’t take long for the most talented folks on the team to look for ways they could support not just the new owners, but everyone around them.

Had those values been just words printed in a handbook or painted on the wall, the existing team members wouldn’t have had a reason to rally around a couple who had little industry knowledge and that would have had a direct impact on the caliber of candidates who were willing to accept positions in the company. The name of the business had been in place for more than seven decades but basing each decision on those values created a foundation for the new to build on moving forward.

If this was the only example of this that I’ve seen, I probably wouldn’t be as adamant about how much those values contributed to building their (now extremely) strong team. In complete transparency, there are at least a half dozen other clients we’ve seen experience results like this. I’ve been referencing Craig & Kim here because I’ve had the opportunity to be on the journey with them every step of the way. Another friend’s business has grown exponentially in the decade he’s owned it, going from ten employees to over fifty. He’s held a similar set of core company values as a foundation through it all. I’ve seen him pass on highly skilled candidates (at times where he had a pressing need for their credentials) because those candidates had reputations that contradicted his organization’s values. Another friend holds a leadership role in public safety. While nearly all the other localities are constantly recruiting, he has a wait list of top notch candidates before he ever posts an open position. Interestingly enough, the locality he presides over also has far less public drama and a substantially better working relationship with local businesses than any other in our area. How he’s established and built his team around a core set of values has played a critical role in that.

When we’re willing to do the work up front to ensure our core values are truly what we’re building our team around, the great results aren’t limited to the company’s bottom line. Those values will show through in everything our team does for the communities and clients we serve. Before we begin looking at how our values impact anyone outside our organizations though, let’s close the loop with why those values give our team members a reason to look beyond the results they achieve for themselves.

As we lead our teams, how we choose to live out what we list as our core business values will eventually show up through everything our team does, with exponential results - positive or negative. In the time I’ve known Craig and Kim, the bulk of my interaction has been with Craig. Through all that, I’ve witnessed numerous examples of how he exemplifies their core value of Integrity, through his interaction with their team as well as in how he responds to customers and clients. When he and I talked through their list of core values initially, he considered adding Profitability as a sixth value. After considering it further, he decided that upholding each of the others, especially Integrity, would yield a level of profitability that may never be achieved through simply including it in the handbook; and it certainly has. But many of his choices to model that Integrity cut into that profitability on the front end. Providing replacement products and services beyond a warranty, offering refunds in times where the business was in the right, and even choosing the high road when a non-profit took advantage of his good will. Not only were his team members watching closely, they were able to begin replicating this in their own roles. They truly did rally around Craig’s example of Integrity, as well as the other four values he (and Kim) displayed daily. Those values began showing up in what everyone did; the key team members first, then nearly everyone in the organization.

With Integrity being something many organizations list as a core value, though, you and I both know that all executives aren’t willing to back their talk with the same intentional walk. Have you ever worked for someone who expected you to perform in a certain way but consistently missed the mark in doing so themselves, then justified it by detailing why their busyness was an acceptable reason but your busyness was not? If Integrity is as simple as just doing the right thing, what are the odds of that type of justification being replicated and viewed as “the right thing” at every other level of the organization? Unfortunately, you and I have both seen examples like that far more often than we’ve seen a Craig - who lives the values he holds in front of his team daily and is the first to accept responsibility for an issue regardless of where on the team it originated.

While the examples I’ve shared here, good and bad, have been brief and fairly vague, I’d challenge you to think through the values in your own organization. How have you seen them modeled by leaders? How are you exemplifying them for the team looking to you for leadership? And how are those values showing through in everything your team does? What we have listed won’t mean nearly as much as what people see in our behavior. Over time, that behavior will be what creates a lasting impact on the clients and communities we serve - so that’s what we’ll work through next!