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Your financial planning business is the way it is today because of the people you employ. I know, at times, it can be a struggle just to get your team to do what they’re paid to do…but, if you want to take your firm to the next level (and achieve the success you deserve) you must tap into your team’s potential.
In the post below I share three quick and easy ways to bring out the best in your team and transform your company’s culture. You’ll have fewer headaches and a more engaged workforce who are ready and willing to contribute to a better business.
Most firms are full of well meaning people trying to do their best. Your job as the business owner is to try and harness the strengths of the good people that already work for you.
Here are three ideas to help you to do this:
1. Personal Development Plans If you haven’t done so already get each staff member to create their own 3-year personal development plan. One of the greatest frustrations of business owners is that their staff don’t always seem as proactive as they could be in developing themselves.
Take the initiative and ask your team to take a stab at developing their own plans (rather than you doing it for them). By all means assist them with the final completion of their plan or provide feedback on their efforts. Better still get an outside expert to help you and your team with this task if it is not within your personal skill set.
Now everyone can start to get more involved in growing and developing themselves for their own benefit and the benefit of the business. Your job is to identify what they might need from you and the business to help them achieve their plans.
The plans can be updated annually and progress should be reviewed with each team member quarterly.
2. Role Specialisation Think about the roles that each person performs within the business and try to have each team member owning a set of tasks that they love and are good at. I know this gets trotted out regularly by various guru’s and consultants, but there is a reason for that; it works. Be careful not to lump your most talented team member with a bunch of jobs because they are the only one that can do them. In this instance they would have jobs they dislike but are good at. That’s hugely demotivating and unfair
If you can simply tweak the existing roles of your team and get them working to their strengths (anything they love and are good at) you will be amazed what can be unleashed in terms of productivity, staff satisfaction and client satisfaction.
3. The Jack Welch Approach Jack Welch the famous former CEO of GE believed strongly that the way to create a better organisation was to actively turnover the bottom 10% of staff every year. That’s right, they used to go out of their way to lose the people they considered to be bottom 10% of their staff. They would then try to hire better people and keep increasing the quality of the organisation as a whole.
Now if you are a team of 5 people I know this is not going to apply literally, but the concept is sound. If after tweaking and developing there is still someone on the team who can’t quite cut it, you need to move them on and hire someone else who can bring what you need to the role. I know this is difficult but I also believe that after biting the bullet both the business and the staff member who has been moved on end up better off.
Take a look at the performance of your own team and see if any of these ideas could be applied. A bit of effort improving how everybody functions within the firm can really take you forward in leaps and bounds, not to mention increasing the job satisfaction for everyone across the board.
Comment Have you adopted a strategy that has vastly improved your team’s performance? If so I’d love to hear your thoughts. Leave a comment below or drop me an email to brett@fpadvance.com.
Take Action If you want more direct assistance with this or any other aspect of your business drop me a line at brett@fpadvance.com or give me a call on 0207 431 3663.
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