BOOK SUMMARY 292 The New
Game Changers
·
Summary
written by: Dianne Coppola
“The
challenge, simply stated, is this: there is not enough top talent to go around,
so how do we get good, solid people to produce great results?”
-
The New Game Changers, page vii
The New Game Changers by Greg Long
and Butler Newman uses a business fable format to illustrate how the
implementation of outcomes thinking can transform employee performance as well
as organizational practices like recruitment, job design, and training.
Director Aimee Martin has returned to work at Calara Enterprises after being a
stay-at-home mom for three years. She needs to boost her sales team’s
performance to stave off the permanent dismantling of the division in favour of
a slick digital marketing strategy. Luckily for Aimee she has some superstars
on her sales team, and a brother who coaches for Navy, who helps her develop a
winning game plan that ultimately saves the day.
Long and Butler are
quick to acknowledge that while outcomes thinking is a simple and
straightforward approach to enhancing performance, putting it into practice in
the workplace can be challenging. In true Actionable style, they include a
detailed appendix that summarizes the TOPS model, along with handy checklists
to guide your thinking as you work through each phase of the model. Briefly,
the acronym TOPS identifies the four steps in the framework
Identify Top
performers
Uncover the Outcomes
they focus on
Equip People
to produce those outcomes, and
Coach for Success.
The key to leveraging
outcomes thinking lies in challenging yourself to go beyond superficial, easy
answers so you uncover the absolutely vital outcomes for specific staff roles.
Let’s explore this more thoroughly.
The Golden Egg
Begin with the End in
Mind
"Once we
understand exactly what we need to do to win the game, we can design each role
to contribute to how we win."- The New Game Changers, page 65
Ok, I admit I chose
the second of Dr. Stephen Covey’s The 7 Habits of Highly Effective
People for
the title of my golden egg. It perfectly captured the essence of what my big
take-away was, so why reinvent the wheel?! Aimee initially thought revenue was
the outcome she expected her sales team to produce. However, after speaking
with her brother Shafe, she realized that strong, trusting relationships with
customers was actually what generated sustainable revenue for the company
(through repeat business) and thus was a more relevant metric for her sales
team.
With a clear outcome
to focus on, you can then outline what role each member of your team needs to
play to ensure you achieve success. Again, you need to go beyond general
descriptions to create clarity about the specific actions that must occur to
create those desired results. We’ll explore this in more depth in Gem #1. When
you don’t begin with the end result in mind, you can end up deploying valuable
resources on the wrong activities. This sets people up for failure in spite of
their best efforts. And that is a recipe for disaster.
What about you? Are
you crystal clear about what it is you want your staff to accomplish? Or have
you settled for something that seems like the right outcome (winning the game)
without really describing what specifically you need to do to produce that
outcome (maximize time of possession and create opportunities to score points)?
Gem #1
Do What the Pros Do
"If we understand
what the best performers do, how they think about their work, we can teach
those in the middle how to emulate that top performance. The key is focusing on
the outcomes that these top performers aim for."- The New Game Changers,
page 88
As Aimee reflected on
what needed to happen to turn slumping sales around, she frequently found
herself wishing she could ‘clone’ her top performers. If only the entire team
could establish the deep (and profitable) relationships with customers that
reps like Joe seemed to cultivate so easily, Calara would not be facing this
current crisis.
Actually, the idea is
not as far-fetched as it sounds. Tapping into the knowledge and expertise of
your organization’s top performers will yield a wealth of information that can then
be used to improve the performance of all staff in similar positions.
Aimee met with her
top performers to identify how they approached different stages of the sales
process and isolated the metrics they used to monitor their effectiveness. The
authors also suggest observing top performers in action and reviewing key
performance metrics can also be informative, particularly if you can compare
the outputs of top producers with those of average and under-performers. Once
you know what your star employees are focusing on to guide their decisions and
actions you can develop a training and mentoring program to teach other staff
how to adopt those practices.
Gem #2
Maximize Training by
Focusing on What Matters
"Using the
outcomes uncovered from top performers as the basis for a robust development
system is both powerful and efficient – powerful because it focuses development
on things that matter and efficient because it eliminates wasted effort on
things that don’t matter."- The New Game Changers, page 141
Too often, companies
rely on external training programs to boost the knowledge and expertise of
their staff, only to find that performance gains are small and temporary. The
authors posit that this is because external training is often general and not
customized to address the specific challenges staff face when doing their jobs.
Offering pre-packaged programs places the responsibility for knowledge
translation and skills application onto individual staff members, who may or
may not follow-through once they leave the classroom.
Designing a training
program based on the specific outcomes associated with a discrete job role is a
better way to achieve significant and lasting behaviour changes. This is
because the course content will focus exclusively on the knowledge and skills
needed to execute the actual job requirements within the context that the
learner finds him/herself in on a daily basis. The most successful
programs are those that combine different modalities for learning and
incorporate an ongoing ‘on-the-job’ coaching component that can identify and
respond to an employee’s specific performance gaps.
Aimee and her star
performers took the time to figure out the relevant outcomes, key tasks and
excellence criteria that produced exceptional sales results on a consistent
basis. They piloted the process with a promising new hire and discovered an
outcomes focus was effective in accelerating job performance. The TOPS model
shifted the way they approached sales training and customer service. You could
say it was ‘game-changing’.
Integrating outcomes
thinking into your organization can be a game-changer for you too. It will take
time, a high degree of focus and continuous practice. Like winning teams, high
performance organizations:
·
know
what it takes to win each game (end result)
·
develop
a game plan to overcome obstacles (key outcomes and tasks)
·
teach
their personnel exactly what to do to excel in their specific roles (train,
practice)
·
monitor
performance metrics, adjusting tactics as needed (coach)
Are you willing to do
what it takes to be TOPS in your industry? How might outcomes thinking change
the way you do business?
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