A Non-negotiable Culture of Success?

In a recent blog post, I explored the characteristics of a high-performance team. Today I want to discuss how to promote a non-negotiable culture of success. The biggest mistake I made when first implementing the high-performance framework, was assuming that this great initiative will be supported and endorsed by all. After all, who wouldn’t want to be good at their jobs? I had spent about six months building out the position descriptions, writing a procedure manual with the team and rolling out a comprehensive suite of KPIs. But the framework was intimidating to some and others, just a plain annoyance, particularly if they had been doing the role for many years without any problems. One of the hardest thing about implementing a high-performance team is getting buy-in from the team. You will come across many potential new candidates that are actively seeking an environment that promotes and encourages success. Through your detailed recruitment strategy, you can draw those people to the surface and engage them as high-performance team members in your new high-performance environment. But what do you do with the existing team members and how do you promote a high-performance environment into a team that doesn’t believe has anything wrong with how they are performing today?

A high-performance team must promote a culture of success. They must not accept the status quo and be hungry for continued improvement. They believe that they can always be better and strive for excellence. They want to know they are succeeding, they want a career, and want to see if they can do better. There are those in your business that don’t support this culture that doesn’t adapt to change and believe they are doing a great job now. The root of this problem starts from many years of a very unstructured property management business. We recruited re-actively and took what we could get. We accepted underperforming team members because we didn’t know any better and tended to be very slow at exiting the worst of the worst from our businesses. I’m guilty of this also. I remember I had a conversation with a team member who was very vocal about not supporting the implementation of KPIs, suggesting it was managements way of checking up on them. Umm, it was!! I accepted this behavior because I didn’t receive any complaints from their portfolio and thought, better the devil you know than the one you don’t. It is imperative that you attract the right people to your team. If you are building a high-performance team, you will find team members, some of them may have been with you for many years, that doesn’t support your new initiative. You must address this early and plan to exit these team members from the business. You can build as many frameworks as you like into your business, however, if your team doesn’t support these, you will never achieve the momentum you are seeking for your high-performance team.