Chapter 7: Build Your Team

Overview

When Liam Geffen was appointed to lead a troubled unit of an instrumentation company, he knew he was in for an uphill climb. The extent of the challenge became clearer when he read the previous year s performance evaluations for his new team. Everyone was either outstanding or marginal; there was nobody in between. Clearly, his predecessor had played favorites.

Conversations with his new direct reports confirmed Liam s suspicion that the performance evaluations were skewed. In particular, the head of marketing seemed reasonably competent but by no means a minor god. Unfortunately, he believed his own press. The head of sales struck Liam as a solid performer who had been blamed for poor judgment calls by Liam s predecessor. The relationship between marketing and sales was understandably tense.

Liam recognized that one or both would probably have to go. He met with them separately and bluntly told them how he viewed their performance ratings. He then laid out detailed two-month plans for each. Meanwhile he and his VP for human resources quietly launched a search for a new head of marketing. Liam also held skip-level meetings with midlevel people in sales, both to assess the depth of talent and to look for promising candidates for the top job.

By the end of his third month, Liam had signaled the head of marketing that he would not make it; he soon left. Meanwhile, the head of sales had risen to Liam s challenge. Liam gave her more opportunities, eliciting even better performance. Eventually Liam had enough confidence in her to give her overall responsibility for sales and marketing.

Liam Geffen recognized that he couldn t afford to have the wrong people on his team. If, like him, you inherit a group of direct reports, it is essential to build your team to marshal the talent you need to achieve superior results. The most important decisions you make in your first 90 days will probably be about the people on your team. If you succeed in creating a high-performance team, you can exert tremendous leverage in value creation. If not, you will face severe difficulties, for no leader can hope to achieve much alone. Bad early personnel choices will almost certainly haunt you. As one experienced manager put it, Hire in haste, repent at leisure.

Finding the right people is essential, but it is not enough. Begin by assessing existing team members to decide who will stay and who will have to go. Then devise a plan for getting new people and moving the people you retain into the right positions ”without doing too much damage to short- term performance in the process. Even this is not enough: You still need to put in place goals, incentives, and performance measures that will propel your team in the desired directions. Finally, you must establish new processes to promote teamwork. This chapter will walk you through these steps.