The Future of Work DEMANDS The RIGHT People On The Bus

Do you have your dream team?

The future of work demands that you have the right people on the bus!

Creating your dream team requires two things:

1. The ability to inspire and motivate talented employees to higher performance.
2. The ability to ‘coach’ team members OFF the bus if he/she is not contributing to high performance.

We know that the future of work is about innovation and collaboration – these two skills are what leaders should be measuring in performance.

Take a few moments to check off the items in the below ‘dream team’ checklist to see where you are at right now with having the right people on the ‘bus’:

1. Your team consistently meets metrics and performance goals easily ___Yes ___No
2. Your team consists of 80% top performers and 20% average performers ___Yes ___No
3. Your team performs as a cohesive unit the majority of the time ___Yes ___No
4. Your team self manages the majority of them time you are the ‘overseer’ ___Yes ___No
5. You spend most of your time facilitating creative solutions with your team ___Yes ___No
6. Your team is viewed by other departments in the company as a ‘dream team’ ___Yes ___No

If you answered mostly YES to the items in the checklist congratulations! You have a dream team.

If you answered mostly NO’s you have some work to do to shift your team towards being a dream team.

If you are somewhere in between its likely that you have to do some fine tuning towards creating your dream team.

Here are some action items you can take towards creating your dream team:

1. Take some time to write down your ‘vision’ for your team – what would your dream team be doing and achieving beyond what they are achieving now?
2. Make a list of your team members and on a scale of one to ten with ten being high rate them based on high performance AND on his or her ability to innovate and collaborate.
3. Identify your ‘keepers’ the people that with more guidance and coaching you know must remain on the ‘bus’.
4. Identify your challenge team members – why are they a challenge? Have you given them every opportunity to succeed? Could you coach him or her to higher performance? Have you set up a mentor system with your high performers to your challenge team members?
5. If you have already exhausted all of your efforts to help your challenge team members and you cannot see them on the dream team – what’s your plan to help them off the bus? By this I mean helping them to see that he or she are not a fit and that he or she may be suited for something else?

The future of work is here now, its moving rapidly and we no longer have the luxury of having teams that are not propelling results forward quickly. As leaders we must be looking at our leadership ability and invest the time in dream team development in order to be future ready now.