As we are well into the winter sports season and with world cups looming in Cricket and Rugby Union, a lot of us are analysing our favourite footy teams and questioning whether our team is going to win on the weekend. Or if you’re like me, you’re trying to add some science behind my ordinary footy tipping track record ?.
Over the years, there seems to be more science behind the fact that teams that stick together, tend to win together. Ben Darwin, the former Wallaby and ACT Brumbies runs Gain Line Analytics who Measure, Analyses, Predicts and Creates Cohesion within teams across the sporting and corporate field.
Who would have predicted Leicester winning the 2015-16 English Premier League and who would have predicted Tottenham’s brilliant season capping off with a spot in the Champions League Final? According to Ben, this is down to cohesion and sticking with your players (& in Tottenham’s case – the Manager) to build that understanding and cohesion.
This is all very transferrable in the workplace and I have seen firsthand this work in a range of organisations I have had the privilege in working in as well as with a number of clients. I have also seen where there is lack of cohesion and understanding where organisations collapse from within.
I’ve been working with Optimum Consulting for the past 3 ½ years and this is no surprise to this unique organisations continued success. In the high-pressure cut and thrust world of recruitment and HR Consulting, the industry staff turnover rate is extraordinarily high. Optimum bucks this trend with ALL of the original staff members from 16+ years ago still working or involved in the business plus considerable long-term tenure with other key staff and minimal turnover.
How can you get this happening in your business?
There is a well-used but often misguided adage of “You’ve got to hire slow and fire fast!”. This can be a flawed strategy in many instances as if you hire too slow, you’ll miss out on the best candidates and if you fire too fast you may be missing out on opportunities to improve a staff members performance.
To build cohesion in your business you really need to ask yourself a number of key questions:
1.Have you got your attraction and hiring strategy right?
Is it efficient, effective and have you measured the success?
2. How do you measure and manage performance of your teams?
If you don’t measure it, you can’t manage and improve it
3. How are you measuring how engaged your teams are?
When is the last time you’ve done an engagement survey and actioned all the key initiatives that came out of it?
4. How are you ensuring you’re retaining the right talent?
What did you do the last time you lost one of your best performing staff members?
5. Are you exiting people with grace?
At Optimum (shameless plug ?) we partner with organisations to improve the performance of their business through people and cover all of these key areas mentioned above.
I would be interested in hearing your thoughts on cohesion and how it has helped your organisation achieve its objectives.
Richard Dunks
Executive Consultant