Insights on Excellence | "Insights" Archive

Five steps leaders can take to get the whole team pulling its weight

by Stephen Hawley Martin
for Virginia Business
February 7, 2006

According to recently published data, 31 percent of college-educated male workers regularly log 50 or more hours a week at work, up from 22 percent in 1980. About 40 percent of American adults get less than seven hours sleep on weekdays, up from 34 percent in 2001. For these folks, meals are rushed and lunches are choked down on the run. Yet a recent study by America Online and Salary.com says the average worker wastes 2.09 hours a day surfing the Internet, chatting with co-workers, running errands or making personal phone calls, costing employers about $759 billion a year in unproductive salaries.

What's going on? Businesses across America have downsized, eliminating large numbers of middle managers in an effort to streamline and increase productivity. The result is a few people, less than a third of the total, are doing a great deal more work. But many workers, what used to be called staff or direct labor, are coasting along just as they always have, maybe even more so.

As businesses have downsized and eliminated hierarchies, many have organized into interlocking teams. In many cases team leaders along with a few team members they can count on end up doing most of the work. Leaders often are afraid to delegate. Or perhaps they have tried delegating and found the ball gets dropped too often, and they are the ones who end up taking the heat.

This doesn't have to be. Here are five steps to get a dysfunctional team working so that each member pulls his weight:

1. First establish the ground rules. Have the team meet and agree on team rules such as being on time, having an agenda and sticking to it, and informing others immediately if an agreed-upon deadline won't be met. These become bylaws that can be publicly posted and placed in a team handbook that serves as a public record.

2. Use action reports to assure team awareness and to create urgency about assigned tasks. Rather than rambling minutes of meetings, the tasks the team as decided upon need to be documented. Who is responsible and the agreed-upon completion date must be clear. Copies of these action reports should be distributed to all team members and to the individual in upper management responsible for the area of the business in which the team operates.

3. Have each team meeting begin with an action report review. Those who were assigned tasks should report on where things stand. This will create peer pressure to perform as will the task-owner knowing upper management is aware of what that individual is supposed to accomplish.

4. Update and reissue action reports after each meeting. When commitment dates are made, this should be noted. When they missed or moved, this should be clearly indicated as well.

5. Make it clear action reports will be used at review time. They form a performance history for each individual on the team and should be used and referenced in this regard. You might make it known, for example, that missing several deadlines may be grounds for passing an individual over for a raise.

-----------------------------------------------------

Stephen Hawley Martin is a former principal of The Martin Agency in Richmond and the author of more than half a dozen books including his newest, Lean Enterprise Leader: How to Get Things Done Without Doing It All Yourself. He is editor and publisher of The Oaklea Press, a book publishing business dedicated primarily to helping business executives increase productivity.