Yesterday we looked at the number #1 reason businesses fail to grow consistently – because they have the wrong team.So why do so many teams fail to grow their business consistently and profitably- even if they have a great strategy to underpin their efforts?
Why teams fail.
To answer first in the negative, it’s mostly not because of communication problems, or intra-team tensions, or lack of trust – or anything else the ‘team-building’ industry exists to fix.
While those problems may exist within the team, they almost always are symptoms, not causes, so ‘fixing’ them rarely takes, and has little effect in the long term.
No, the root cause as to why your team isn’t delivering consistent growth (whether you’re a CEO with a senior management team of 35 people, or a solopreneur with a ‘team’ comprising your dog, your spouse and a VA) is because between them, your team doesn’t contain a balanced representation of all the needed elements for growth.
Why teams succeed.
Here’s what I’ve discovered after working with over 900 businesses: In order to be successful, every team needs four elements, equally represented –
A Visionary, to set the vision and motivate the others;
An Operator, to implement the vision and get things done;
A Processor, to put systems and processes in place so the business can scale through complexity, and
A Synergist, to hold the ring between the first three and ensure they work together efficiently and effectively.
Whenever I see a business failing to grow consistently and profitably (whatever the business’s size – 2 employees or 20,000 – and whatever its age, young or old) I know that the answer is almost certainly that one of those key roles is missing, or grossly under-developed.
Even if the ‘team’ is just one or two people, those one or two people will be failing to act in one of the four key roles. If the senior team is 35 people, but growth is not being attained, then again, one of the four roles will almost certainly be missing or under-represented.
The VOPS model (Visionary, Operator, Processor, Synergist) is an integral part of the Predictable Success methodology – so much so that I have an entire book on the topic coming out early next year and in later posts I’ll be expanding on how they interact.
But in the meantime, here’s a free assessment to discover which style comes more naturally to you (it’s free, there’s no registration required, and there’s an option at the end to send the results to me for feedback, if you wish).