Before establishing Zenith Strategic Solutions, I was a senior manager with Deloitte in Auckland.
Our team specialised in strategic planning, business process effectiveness, control assurance and risk management and was quite cosmopolitan - a mix of many different backgrounds and nationalities.
The two best staff that I managed and trainedin that time were Canadians - Barry from Toronto and David from Vancouver, both on secondment to New Zealand. We often undertook multiple complex assignments with tight deadlines and Barry and David exceeded expectations every time. So much so that they were asked back to undertake future assignments by some of the biggest companies in the land. Having recently re-read Stephen Covey's Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, I am reminded of the key quality which set Barry and David apart, and made our team highly effective.
Both of them understood and could articulate the goals of our team and translated that into the way they worked. More importantly, they understood the goals of our clients - strategically and as they applied to a particular project. As a result, nothing got in the way of us achieving our goals as a team, because we all worked together and were not distracted from what we were there to do. Sure, we all had personal goals but they contributed to, rather than drew us away from, team objectives.
The three years working with them was highly productive and rewarding for us all. David and Barry have gone on to other organisations - David, in Australia with a large insurance company and Barry directs a major company in the construction industry - and they became the template for what I look for in people. We organise ourselves in teams because we can achieve more collectively than we can individually, and if the team members are working co-operatively and collaboratively the results of our efforts can be exponentially more effective.
As with everything, there is another side of the coin. When you have a teammate or employee pulling in a different direction or just not buying into the vision it can undermine what you and your team are trying to achieve. When you consider this, it places great importance on your recruitment processes - you need to make sure you bring in the right skills and aptitudes. In addition, how you retain your best staff and how you upskill is also critical. If you are putting together your 2015 strategic plan, why not invest some time thinking about this? And involve your best people in developing that plan, because excluding key people from strategic planning risks your organisation heading in a direction which is not bought into by key people. A collaborative team will enable you to better achieve your goals.
Russell Bell's Zenith Strategic Solutions is a specialist Wanganui business advice and consultancy practice - 021 2442421.
