If you’ve had a cold or perhaps the flu, the doctor may have prescribed an antibiotic in which you were to take two dosages, twice a day, for 10 days.
How many of you actually took the two dosages, twice a day, for 10 days?
If you were like me, there is a greater possibility that you took the two dosages for several days began feeling better and the remaining dosages can still be found in your medicine cabinet two years later. Afterall, we began feeling better, we saw improvement and decided we didn’t need the remaining medicine.
Organizations do the same thing. As an employee development company, specializing in team building and creating a culture of accountability, organizations seek our assistance when teams within their organizations are not performing as expected and are presenting “ill” effects. Occasionally with more proactive organizations, the organization simply seeks to improve performance.
In either case, we will generally prescribe some form of team development, team building, personal accountability or motivation program. Many times, the client, from experience will “self-diagnose” and know precisely what type of program they require. Otherwise, we develop a program and present the program and team members, and teams, begin experiencing improvement – its’ that straight forward. However, (and this is where the antibiotic metaphor comes in to play), on seeing improvement, the organization sets aside the commitment to continual improvement and over time the team will relapse to the original troubled behavior.
The challenge is simple.
Organizations must make a commitment to the continued improvement of their teams and employees. The organization must be used as a learning environment for their most valued asset, the employee. Interestingly, our experience is that money is not the greatest challenge to a company’s success, it may not even be a lack of leadership or vision, but rather the failure to develop and maintain their most expensive assets – their employees.
If you belong to an organization that has taken the initiative to improve the teams, please remember to continue the development and maintenance of your teams, afterall, you’ve already shelled out the money for the initial investment. So much of the continual improvement can occur internally by continuing the focus on the principles and ideas of the program you’ve just experienced, (i.e. team building, accountability or motivation program). Your commitment to furthering the development of your teams will produce a healthier team, organization and add profitability to your bottom line!
About the author: Charlie Selcer has provided organizations with employee training and development through Strictly Success Inc. for over 15 years. Strictly Success is a U.S. based employee training company for both the public and private sectors including some of America’s Fortune 1000 companies. Strictly Success specializes in high performance teams and teambuilding, employee motivation, employee accountability and change management.
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