5 Keys to Building Your DREAM Team

This key covers the final key of a five-part series entitled “The Five Keys to Building Your Dream Team.”

• Key #1focused on hiring top-quality while avoiding average talent.
• Key #2 highlighted the importance of defining your ideal candidate and marketing your opportunity so that your ideal candidate(s) find it.
• Keys # 3 and 4 focused on the importance of building your business to be a desired landing spot for top performers.

This chapter builds on the idea that your business is a reflection of you -- a mirror that reflects your image as a leader.

Ownership is about owning your ship. So, if your team is more interested in getting a paycheck than helping your business grow, that reflects on you. That means you’ve built a business that attracts those kinds of employees. On the other hand, if your business has been consistently growing to your satisfaction, that likewise reflects that you’ve built a business that attracts a top-performing, growth-minded team.

If you fail to build a Dream Team for your business, that failure rests solely on your shoulders as the business owner. When I hear owners say, “I guess I didn’t hire the right people,” I wonder if they had:

• identified their ideal candidate by documenting the roles and responsibilities of the position,
• established the qualifications and personal qualities of their ideal candidate, and
• recognized the importance of not settling for an average candidate

Or, if I hear a business owner say, “I just can’t find the right candidate,” I wonder if that owner recognizes:

• their ideal candidate is probably happily working for someone else and wouldn’t be attracted by traditional job posts, and
• whether top-quality candidates are interested in the opportunity largely depends on the company culture.

In this chapter, I’ll highlight three areas business owners need to focus on to become the leaders top-quality candidates are looking for; 1) you get what you deserve, 2) you must spend time and focus on the individual members of your team, and 3) get comfortable paying slightly more to attract top-quality candidates.  

You Get What You Deserve

Complaining that there aren’t good candidates in the job market right now is not productive. It’s an excuse to cover your inability to build a company that attracts top-quality people.

Owners who are dissatisfied with their team's performance most likely hired average talent rather than attracting top talent. It’s unreasonable to expect above-average performance from an average team. If you don’t truly recognize the seismic difference a high-quality team will have on your business's growth and success, then you’ll never be able to take your business to its full potential.

If, alternatively, you free yourself from the norm by saying, “Enough is enough! I’m not happy with the performance of my team, and I’m going to build a business that attracts and retains top-quality team members,” then you’re on the right path to learning the five keys and building your dream team.

Jocko Willink and Leif Babin, two former Navy Seals who led the most highly decorated special operations unit of the Iraq War, in their book “Extreme Ownership” share this insight about leadership:

“On any team, in any organization, all responsibility for success and failure rests with the leader. The leader must own everything in his or her world. There is no one else to blame. The leader must acknowledge mistakes and admit failures, take ownership of them, and develop a plan to win.”

This suggests that if you want to build and retain a superior team that you have to take responsibility for all aspects of your business. If errors are made, is your team properly trained, are there clearly established operating procedures, is there clarity in your communication messages?  

You MUST Spend Time and Focus on Members of Your Team

Your team is your business's most important asset. You can have a great product or provide a fantastic service, but your business will not succeed without a top-performing team.

So often, I find that owners spend more time working in the business than focused on their team. It’s almost as though employee training and development is an afterthought. For example, the owner of a law firm spends virtually all her time working in the law rather than spending some time focused ON growing the business. All of her training has been in law and very little, if any, has been around how to run a law practice, But the same can be said for the vast majority of owners…they’ve had little training in how to run a business other than through the school of hard knocks.

To build a highly successful business, you must focus on hiring and retaining top-quality team members. These individuals have personal goals and are looking for you, and their new job, to advance them towards those goals. If they don’t feel that you care about them or that you’re not interested in helping them advance towards those goals, they’ll leave and you’ve got to start the recruiting process all over again. They want to work for the best because top-performers have a thirst for continual personal and skills improvement. They take initiative and want to make a difference for the owner they work for and for the community in which they live.

If a team member isn’t meeting your expectations in their current role, perhaps they’re better suited for a different role. You’ll never know unless you spend time with your employees to understand their interests, career goals, and their perceived strengths and weaknesses. Just because they’re not performing at a top level doesn’t mean they’re entirely unable to. You may be able to leverage their aptitude and skills in a different position. If you fire an underperforming employee without exploring whether they’re in the wrong role, you’ll lose out on a potentially wonderful teammate.

During these one-on-one conversations with your employees, you’ll also learn whether there are outside issues affecting their work performance. Determine what the distraction is and help the employee to work through it, if they’re able to. It’s a good idea to implement regular check-in meetings with each member of your team, regardless of their performance.

Top-Quality Candidates Should be Paid More

As noted in Chapter One, top-notch employees can be up to 125% more productive on complex jobs than average employees doing the same task (meaning an additional person and a quarter required to perform a job in the same amount of time as a high performer) and 85% more productive on medium-complex tasks (Source: McKinsey & Company). Yet, some business owners view top-quality employees as an added expense rather than an investment. Let’s fix that.

I attended a presentation the other day where the presenter suggested that on average, a top-quality employee is paid 135% more than the other average employees. Yes, top-quality employees are more expensive, but not when you factor in production.

Let’s compare the hourly cost of a top-quality employee ($27 per hour) with that of an average employee ($20.00 per hour). You might want to hire the average employee because they’re cheaper. But it’s a different story when you consider work performance.

Looking at the chart below, you see that you only need one top-quality employee to complete a moderately complex task, whereas you’d need 1.85 average employees to complete the same task. The total cost for those average $20/hour employees to complete a moderately complex task is $8.00 more than you would pay the top-quality employee for the moderately complex job. So, given this new information, which employee would you hire?

  Average Employee High Performer

Low Complexity Job 1.5 employees 1 employee

Salary $22.00 / hour $30.00 / hour

TOTAL Salary $33.00 ($22 x 1.5) $30.00 ($30 x 1)

The high performer completes the job faster and costs you less even though you’re paying him/her $8.00 more per hour, however the total labor cost is $3/hour less

Average Employee High Performer

Medium Complexity Job 1.85 employees 1 employee

Salary $22.00 / hour $30.00 / hour

TOTAL Salary $40.70 ($22 x 1.85) $30.00 ($30 x 1.)

The high performer completes the job faster and costs you less even though you’re paying him/her $8.00 more per hour, however the total labor cost is $10/hour less

Average Employee High Performer

Highly Complex Job 2.25 employees 1 employee

Salary $22.00 / hour $32.00 / hour

TOTAL Salary $49.50 ($22 x 2.25) $32.00 ($32 x 1)

The high performer completes the job faster and costs you less even though you’re paying him/her $10.00 more per hour, however the total labor cost is $17.50 less

Not only will your overall payroll cost less with the top-quality employee, but that team member will likely motivate the other employees with their enthusiasm and commitment.

Final Thoughts

I’m not surprised that so many business owners complain about their teams’ performance. How would you rate the quality of your employees? Most business owners would probably say their teams are average or slightly above-average performers.

A team of average performers will not help you, the business owner, build the successful company you desire and deserve.

My purpose in creating this five-part series is to provide valuable information for business owners looking to improve the performance of their teams. To create a prosperous organization, you must have the desire and discipline to follow each of the five steps to building your dream team.

I specialize in working with business owners to build superior teams. Give me a call at (404) 444-1836 or schedule time on my online calendar below and let’s discuss your situation. I will be happy to share some ideas and strategies