The Team Performance Formula
A few years back, one of our directors was involved in a small networking group and while they were taking about building a business, the conversation moved to team culture. One raised “There’s a formula for this. It goes Systems multiplied by Training multiplied by Monitoring = Culture.”
We found ‘culture’ to be a fairly vague word, so let’s change it to Team Performance.
Systems x Training x Monitoring = Team Performance
They are like three pillars or the sides of a triangle.
We knew this was the formula that applies to successfully running an offshore team.
When it relates to businesses, many of the issues we see in offshoring stem from a deficiency in one of the three factors.
In some cases, we advise business owners that offshoring is not a good solution until they sort some of these issues out.
Systems
Good systems provide direction for your team. If you have no systems in place and just run your practice off what’s in your head, guess what? Your team will have no clue what process to follow, your training will be long and hard, and they will become dispirited when you hold them accountable for non-performance.
Training
Systems are just the start. You then need to train your team to give them understanding of how to use the systems properly.
Without training, you might have an eager staff member who gets your checklist and goes into ‘processing mode’ but does it all wrong. All you get is a mess. You can imagine the disaster on your hands if you combine this with no follow-up and monitoring.
Monitoring
With good systems and training, you should start getting quality outcomes from your team. But unfortunately, most employees don’t think like business owners and without accountability, productivity suffers, staff get roadblocked and, at worst, you could end up with behavioural issues that make you wonder why you hired anyone to begin with!
If remote work is a new concept for you, then your focus may need to shift from running a business in a single location to running it in multiple locations. While it’s very common for businesses to run this way, it’s not so common for smaller businesses. It can require a paradigm shift.
New, highly-funded software startups are launched all the time. Yesterday we used Skype, today we use Zoom. What will we use tomorrow? At the end of the day, the emphasis shouldn’t be about the tools, it’s about the outcome.
Hopefully, by now you’ve realised that working with your offshore or remote team is actually quite straightforward. Many businesses already have the elements in place, and the offshore team will just require a few extra tools to become a natural extension of their enterprise.
Just remember that what’s good for the offshore team is also good for your business as a whole. By implementing these things into your practice, you will find yourself with more free time, better productivity and more profit.
Where to From Here
You can book an appointment with our team to learn more about offshoring and be at the forefront of the accounting industry.