Increasing Productivity & Profits

Would you race in the Indy 500, with your tires out of alignment?

Metaphorically speaking, this is exactly what 2 business partners were doing, whom I recently had the pleasure of coaching. I shall refer to them here as Johnny and Jimmy.

While they both were enjoying their business, within their respective roles, they were not feeling fully energized, and this was impacting both their business performance and their quality of life.

Johnny was spending much of his time on internal matters, e.g. accounting, project management, client delivery. He often wanted to ask Jimmy for support, but seeing how busy Jimmy appeared, he hesitated.

Jimmy on the other hand was trying to do business development, something he truly didn't enjoy. Yet as it was so needed, he too continued to silently plod along, doing his best, even though it was draining and stressful for him.

While going their coaching reports with them together, and facilitation a conversation between the two of what's working well, and what can improve, it came up that Johnny actually preferred to do more external business development functions whereas Jimmy preferred more the internal functions.

As a result, they switched some of their responsibilities and this has lead to increased satisfaction and performance, as each is now playing to their natural inherent strengths and preferences.

In hind site, this seems so obvious. Yet it took an external perspective combined with the use of powerful assessments and facilitation of open and honest dialogue, to bring this situation and solution to the forefront. Through better understanding of themselves and each other, they are now able to more effectively align and leverage each other for greater individual and joint success.

In our work, we too frequently find such "bad job fits", less then effective communication and very limited understanding of self as well as team mates. If organizations are truly going to increase productivity and performance, specially today where resources are tighter then ever, enhancing job fits, communication and understanding of behaviors and motivators are crucial to success.