Regardless of if you’re running a business of your own, coaching a team or are testing out a new relationship, there is always the threat of moving to a state of complacency.
Every person, team and organization needs to guard against the disease of complacency. It can be very subtle in the early stages and even go unnoticed and it happens when you start to believe your prior successes are going to ensure that you will have success in the future.
You see it happen with championship sports teams all the time, they are consistent in their pursuit of greatness, laser focused on their goal of winning and once they drink the champagne from the cup, they often don’t even qualify for the playoffs in the following season.
Bill Walsh, one of the greatest football coaches of all time, would often say that he feared success-not failure for this exact reason. We see it in business too. Far too often somebody who steps up and strives to reach a goal and is recognized for a quarterly award, wins a new account, makes a placement or has a great quarter all of a sudden feels that they can have success just by showing up. Unfortunately, it doesn’t work that way.
The secret is to consistently look forward instead of resting on our laurels while competitors are doing everything in their power to overtake your customers and potential sales.
It is on the business owner to ensure that they keep the team moving forward at all times, leaving no room for complacency to make its home.
Stay Motivated
There are a number of great ways to keep your teams motivated based on their roles at the organization. Change your rewards and recognition programs so that the same people aren’t consistently winning by revisiting criteria. Also think about challenging your stars at a different level to keep them off the complacency wagon.
Evaluate and Adjust
While many companies still adopt the yearly review mentality, I would argue that a strong entrepreneurial organization should be evaluating daily, weekly or monthly at the longest. Taking the time to see how individuals are progressing at different stages provides a real snapshot of operations. If someone is starting to slack because they don’t feel like they have to work hard enough you’ll be able to address a few things from evaluations. One, you’ll be able to identify potentially de-motivated employees that are likely great at what they do but need to now be challenged to be even better. Two, you’ll show your team that you’re invested in their personal growth and want to continue to motivate them to excel at their careers. Three, you’ll be able to identify those that are becoming complacent and take the steps required to realign. Waiting until year end is simply too late.
Coaching
This is one of the hardest things to do in an entrepreneurial organization, mainly because everyone is always working to catch deadlines at every turn!
If you’re vested in keeping your workforce positive, challenged, energized and motivated however, then coaching is something you need to make the time for. While I’m not suggesting you personally coach everyone in the company, your business leaders should be coached by you and in turn coach those underneath them. Fostering this environment will leave little room for those that are on their way to complacency.
When you focus on the process instead of the destination, you make your desire to be great your number one priority. What you want is consistent improvement, consistent coaching and most importantly a consistent desire to be great.
Have a great week.
Frank.