Following your favorite sports and teams can provide several insights into the effective habits for organizations. What is often deemed as “coach speak” provides glimpses into how the head coach thinks and acts with his staff and players. Phrases such as “game planning”, “implementing our system”, “grading out the performances”, “holding people accountable”, “we still have many of our goals ahead of us” and “addressing communications breakdown” may not provide a lot of specifics on what the coach is doing behind the scenes. However, it does speak to several important concepts that leaders within every organization need to think about.
How well do your favorite sports teams perform year after year? Do they seldom have a winning record but hold a sentimental place in your heart? Do they have a good balance of wins and losses – i.e., they put an entertaining product out on the field/court? Are they perennial conference leaders and well respected for the coaching and development of players?
How would you assess your organization’s team performance?
Football coaches speak of breaking down the game into three phases – offense, defense, and special teams. The coaches at the beginning of the season construct their rosters and play books around strategies that give them the best chance of winning. Then before each game, they game plan around how to win in each phase against that particular opponent. Is there a solid plan for each phase? Will the team be able to execute the plan effectively? Does the team have capable players to execute the plan? A game can be won without winning each phase. However, a game will not be won if the team loses in all phases.
What phases define your business’s game plan? How well are you executing in each phase? Is the team performing well enough in most phases to succeed in achieving your team goals?
At Heaton Consulting, we can assure you have a solid team strategy and break down the game plan into manageable phases. Through engagement with leadership over the course of a few days, we will go beyond the “coach speak” and provide practical recommendations with measurable impact to nurture your company performance. This engagement process, called Business Wellness Assessment, will help organizations objectively determine strengths and weaknesses of performance in each phase of business as well as analyze how well all the pieces align to support achievement of the corporate goals.
If you are interested in seeing if your team is best positioned to win, let’s start a conversion to review your game plan. Contact @TimHeaton for a Business Wellness Assessment or to see how Heaton Consulting can help your organization.