Take Away Your Team’s Safety Net
Take away your team’s safety net. Safety nets are an added bit of protection that teams try to provide themselves by padding schedules or intentionally operating staff, equipment, and resources at levels below full utilization.
Safety nets are a bit like bicycle training wheels; once you are able to keep yourself going without them your self-confidence rises and they are quickly discarded. What safety nets have you placed under your people? What would happen if you temporarily removed them?
For example, could you juggle around assignments to maintain your current workload during vacation periods? Could you challenge your team to make do without resources on which it’s traditionally relied? Set a goal to eliminate any safety nets that may be discouraging your staff from performing at its best.
Create a competitor for your team. In my experience, teams often suffer from complacency because they’ve been shielded from competition. Use the following ideas to create a competitor for your team:
• Invite bids from outside vendors who offer services competi¬tive with those provided by your team. Force your team to conduct a detailed make/buy analysis proving that it can match the quality, response time, and cost offered by these vendors. Performing a comparative cost analysis will help your team better understand the overhead costs it represents to your company.
• Sponsor competitions with similar teams within your depart¬ment on selected performance measures.
• See if other divisions will work with you to sponsor a biannual conference in which teams can showcase significant improvements they’ve made in selected performance areas.
• Use peers to encourage individuals to consider alternative approaches to their work.