Is Your Business Team Surviving The Cut?

I have recently discovered a wonderful new series on the Discovery Channel called, “Surviving The Cut”.  The series is about the young men who sign up and join the various special warfare schools of the United States.  As you will see when you watch the series is that the training is tough, brutal, and pushes each individual to the breaking point.

What is not obvious in the beginning of the series is that for each man to be successful he has to lead and follow his peers.  Each of the special warfare schools teaches one key trait: no one can survive alone.

Special Warfare & Business

If you have gotten this far then I am sure you are asking yourself, “great but what does this have to do with me and my business?” An excellent question and the answer to that is: a lot.

Take a look at your business – whether you own one or a leader in one – and all the people that are involved in making it a success.  On the face of things each person plays a key role and their individual effort is important.  The key differentiating factor between your business surviving or thriving is how well those individuals operate as a team.  Everyone, including yourself, must acknowledge and believe that they can only succeed if they help their partners succeed.

That is the creed taught in the special warfare schools.  Only teams aligned on the successes of each other will succeed.  The success of the individual is built on having confidence in themselves, the willpower to overcome the desire to quit, and a loyalty to helping their teammates succeed.  In the end it is about the team succeeding in its mission.

Your business is has one mission: profitability.  No one starts a business or joins a company seeking to be mediocre or declare bankruptcy.  While profitability is the goal, many businesses do not create that year in and year out.  Many do not survive the cut.  The primary reason being: the business is a team in name only, but acts like a collection of individuals.

A team that is a collection of individuals – unfocused and not aligned – will score some wins, but have more failures than victories.  It is a recipe for disaster in the special operations field (where failure means death) and in the business world.

Building A Business That Survives The Cut

Whether you are building a business from scratch, promoted to a leadership position, or deciding to lead your business in a new direction you must build an espirit de corps.  It starts with your hiring process.

Of course you are not going to have your interviewees wrestle each other, crawl through the mud, and become sleep deprived in order to become members of your team.  What you can learn from that “interview process” of the special warfare schools is that it builds a common experience in everyone who survives.  They have been through hell together.  They have all suffered alike.  The all have been tested to their limits and they did not quit.

You must build you team around a similar experience.  They too must share a common struggle or test of effort that binds them to a common thread.  Without this shared experience that tests them as individuals your team will have a difficult time helping each other succeed.  They simply do not know what each other is made of and therefore have no common bond.

Without breaking laws or sending your business team to Ranger School, here are some things you can do to build espirit de corps in your business:

• Make The Interview Process Tough.  To be successful in business you must always adhere to the rule “twice as long to hire as it is to fire.”  Your open positions are better of remaining open then having a bad hire.  Everyone who joins your team should have the same experience interviewing with you: the questions tough, the process long, and the testing to get in rigorous.  Getting hired is a badge of honor they all share together.

• Praise Individual Effort/Reward Teamwork. Individuals who shine in your company should be praised with awards, recognition, and promotions.  Their efforts to make your business successful should not go unnoticed.  The largest and lavish of all rewards should be given to the team only.  Plaques and certificates are one thing, but everyone loves being sent to a destination and/or pampered.  By giving the most lavish rewards to the entire team if they meet their goals will inspire everyone to work together.

• Create Real Team Building Exercises. Golf is not a team building exercise.  In fact most sports – unless your entire business team is athletic – are not good in building team unity.  You need to pick an exercise that take everyone out of his or her comfort zones, tests their limits, and makes them work together to succeed.

• Focus The Team On Common Goals.  Everyone has his or her own goals.  Some seek financial success and others seek promotion.  Those goals are individual in nature and in most cases can only be achieved if the entire team is successful.  You must align those individual goals with the team goals with one caveat:  the team goals are supreme to the individual goals.

Beyond The Cut

The one defining attribute sought after by businesses seeking leaders is if they can build a successful team.  The four steps mentioned above will help you get there in terms of creating an espirit de corps and common experience for your team.  This builds a strong foundation for you, your team, and your business.

What happens next depends on how you train your team, how the market reacts to your team’s efforts, and other forces outside your control.  A team that is focused, aligned, and supportive of each member can overcome almost every obstacle in its path.

Author’s Note: In accordance with FTC Guidelines and Regulations the author of this post has not received any compensation from the Discovery Channel, its parent companies, and/or production companies hired to produce, create, and broadcast any of its programming.  The picture in the article is from an article in The Economist titled “MBAs are for Wussies.“