Manager's Tools: Content: Newsletter
Three things lousy teams do…and how you can avoid them
July, 2010
We all love the idea of a lone genius—Thomas Edison, Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Mother Theresa. Yet for the last decade we’ve been studying great workplaces and we’ve found the reality is very different. What do great leaders do? What did Edison, Gates, Jobs or even Mother Theresa do well? They built great teams.
This September, Simon & Schuster will publish our latest book, The Orange Revolution, revealing some startling new findings on the characteristics of high-performance teams. The book shares the results of a 350,000-person study on teamwork as well as case studies from Pepsi Beverages Company, Madison Square Garden, Zappos.com and others.
What we found was eye-opening. For instance, what do most poor business teams have in common? Those with below average financial performance, customer satisfaction and employee engagement?
No drive to be great. The breakthrough teams we studied consciously committed to a standard of world-class performance, while average or poor teams went along putting out fires and meeting just enough deadlines to get by.
Fear of honesty. Poor teams are marked by a lack of openness, honest debate and clear expectations. While many of these teams thought they were being “nice” to their fellow teammates, these teams actually had much lower trust scores than in environments where employees openly debated and agreed not to surprise each other.
Selfishness. While breakthrough team members support, recognize, appreciate and cheer others and the group on to victory, poor teams are marked by in-fighting, pettiness and ego. The research proves that great team members appreciate each other’s great work.
Here’s an example of an environment full of appreciation and cheer:
Texas Roadhouse has more than 40,000 employees working in restaurants built to resemble a traditional roadhouse found throughout rural Texas, serving great food amid line dancing and country music. “We have a little giddy up and yee haw here,” one store manager told us.
During our visits, CEO GJ Hart told us a touching story of cheer—that of the Andy’s Outreach Fund. “The genesis goes back to when I was in training and I was working at a restaurant here in Louisville.”
In that location was a 50-year-old dishwasher, James Bryan, who was deaf. “He was just so kind to everyone,” said Hart. About six months after Hart was finished training, Bryan passed away. “As a dishwasher he had struggled to provide for his family. And with five kids, a wife and bills, there was no money for a burial.”
Hart, Founder Kent Taylor, and a group of executives paid out of their own pockets to bury James, but this event changed the CEO’s thinking forever. Texas Roadhouse already had a means for charitable giving. What Hart realized was that it should be used not only to help outsiders, but their own people. “It hit me like a ton of bricks.”
Hart introduced the idea at the company’s annual managing partner conference and within five minutes the managers in attendance had donated $73,000 to help their own. At the next annual managing partner conference, a 20-minute auction raised $410,000.
A volunteer board was appointed, a process for applying for funds was put in place and more than 90 percent of dishwashers, wait staff, meat cutters and bartenders started giving what they could through payroll deduction. Andy’s Outreach Fund was born. The name, by the way, is a nod to Andy the Armadillo, the Texas Roadhouse mascot.
Today, with the funding from employee donations—not to mention a new restaurant that was paid for by employees and where 100 percent of the profits go to Andy’s Outreach—the Fund is able to assist thousands of employees with funerals, fires, natural disasters, abuse situations, medical issues and many other crises that would otherwise render some employees hopeless and homeless. To find out more about this great story, watch the video.
There are few companies in this economic climate that would consider opening a new franchise and giving the profits to help their own, but the cheering at Texas Roadhouse is unique. The idea’s success is a testament to a powerful desire among most people to be supportive of one another and to feel part of a larger whole. It’s one reason the company is so successful, and certainly part of the reason employees come to this restaurant chain and stay.
The Orange Revolution contains many such stories of teams breaking out of the doldrums and creating world-class results. Pre-order your copy today.