The Metiss Group's Blog

Most organizations promote their employees as being their “greatest asset.”  Unfortunately, most employees indicate they hardly feel like an asset, much less among the greatest assets of the company.

According to the U.S. Department of Labor, the average employee stays at a company for 3.5 years and makes about $40,000 per year.  Therefore the average “employee asset” costs organizations just in wages $140,000.  How much effort do you invest in your employee assets as compared to your investments in other $140,000 assets?  Think about how much time you spend buying and maintaining your computer systems – how does that compare to the time you spend hiring and accelerating the performance of your direct reports?  Ask yourself these questions:

• Do you give your “greatest assets” daily, customized feedback?
• Do you invest 30 minutes of uninterrupted one-on-one time weekly with your “greatest assets” talking about their issues?
• Do you review your “greatest assets'” accomplishments, personal development, core value adherence, and future objectives at least quarterly?
• Do your “greatest assets” have clear job accountabilities specifying key activities, time percentages, priorities, and success factors?
• Do your “greatest assets” know what the organization’s goals are and do they have goals that are aligned to the organization’s?
• Do your “greatest assets” continually work at developing to be a better person – physically, emotionally, intellectually, and spiritually?
• Do you have a succession plan for your “greatest assets” so they don’t feel trapped in their role?

Remember, unlike most assets on your balance sheet, these assets should appreciate over time so the investment you make in them should continue to net you great returns.  Invest in your greatest assets regularly and empower them so you’ll all be successful.

We all have natural behavior styles.  This hard wiring is the result of our personal DNA.  Ideally we perform best when we are matched with a job that requires us to use our natural skill set.

Even though leaders should strive to fit jobs and direct reports’ skill sets, rarely is there a perfect match for a person and a job.  We are all required to adapt our natural skills to those required in the job we are performing.  Those people with a more developed critical thinking or problem solving aptitude are better able to adapt their natural skills for short periods of time to accomplish the job at hand.

When evaluating talent or considering job fit, pay particular attention to critical thinking skills and aptitude.  An increased critical thinking ability provides much more job flexibility and likelihood for success, especially when the tasks within one job set are quite diverse.

Peter Drucker was hailed by BusinessWeek as “the man who invented management.” Drucker was a prolific writer publishing over 39 management books and countless articles.  One of Drucker’s famous quotes was “culture eats strategy for breakfast” emphasizing the importance of core values in an organization.  In 1994, Jim Collins and Jerry Porras continued the core values mantra in their popular book Built To Last.

How do you know you have strong core values?  Ask yourself these three questions:

1. Would you actually fire somebody for violating one of your values?
2. Would you be willing to take a financial hit in order to live one of your values?
3. Can you tell some stories about when and how your team demonstrated each value?

One fun and impactful exercise is to start team meetings by going around the table and asking each person give an example of how they have seen others demonstrating one of the values.  First of all, this forces team members to know the core values in order to make the observations and secondly it underscores the importance of living the core values for all to see.

Empower your team to live the organization’s core values and you’ll experience more success.

We have always advised leaders when defining jobs to assign a percentage of time to the major accountabilities.  This helps the incumbent know how to focus their time.

In a recent Inc. article, Yuriy Boykiv, CEO of the New York-based global advertising agency Gravity Media breaks down his time as follows: 50% Psychologist, 25% Sales, 15% Finance and HR, and 10% Strategy.  Really, 50% Psychologist?

It is important for leaders to understand how individual personalities impact team dynamics.  No one disputes the power a team has over a bunch of individual contributors (we’ve all seen the Successories poster showing a team rowing the boat together with the sun in the background and TEAMWORK captioned below).  However, a team’s effectiveness is greatly diminished when one of the team members is a jerk.  Jack Welch defines a jerk as someone who exceeds performance metrics but demonstrates poor behaviors.  On teams, jerks disrupt team chemistry, are ostracized, and often create an over reaction by the other team members.

A leader needs to put on the psychologist hat when this disruption occurs.  The leader needs to confront the jerk and the whole team on their behaviors.  Failing to do so damages trust in the leader, stifles team motivation, minimizes core values, and saps energy.

Empower your leaders to identify team jerks to address the impacts and you’ll have more success.

Navy SEAL combat veteran Brent Gleeson is the co-founder and Chief Marketing Officer at Internet Marketing Inc. His leadership approach is inspired by the unrivaled Navy SEAL training and the Navy SEAL Creed.  Here are the seven habits (likely an extension of, but not a replacement for, Core Values) Navy SEALs have for success:

1. Be loyal. Loyalty is about leading by example, providing your team unconditional support, and never throwing a team member under the bus.
2. Put others before yourself. Get up every day and ask yourself what you will do to add value to your team, such as simply offering your assistance with a project.
3. Be reflective. Reflecting on your mistakes ensures you never repeat them.
4. Be obsessively organized. Some of us innately have this ability, often to a fault, and some have to work at it a bit more.
5. Assume you don’t know enough. Any effective team member understands that training is never complete.
6. Be detail-oriented. Attention to detail could avoid catastrophic results.
7. Never get comfortable. Always push yourself outside of your comfort zone.

It’s unlikely these would all apply to your team, but have you defined the habits required for success in your organization?

Empower yourself to take time to define the important habits for your organization, and your team will experience more success.