You are facing the very beginning of a necessary transformation. You are thinking through all the new things that need to be done. There will be things that need to be started, stopped, fixed, invented, re-designed, re-negotiated…and, as you are cataloging all the new stuff in your mind, you think about your team—your current team. In these first moments of a transformation you still have the same, existing organization. You ask yourself, “Is this the right team?”

In your heart you secretly know that not everyone on your current team is the best choice to succeed in the new mission. But it's really hard to make a change, and you probably still need them to keep working on the current plans. And you might also be feeling bad and insecure, thinking, I like these people. I brought these people in initially! Who am I to now tell them that they are not going to be part of the new business strategy? Maybe I'll just move forward with my existing team, and they will be able to evolve to be capable enough in their new jobs. Or maybe I really do need to change the team. I don't know. This is hard!

What Everyone Is Thinking

This new strategy is kind of scary. I'd like to feel more confident that the leadership team is really competent enough to lead us. There are some leaders in this business that seem really smart, but others that seem in over their heads. I'm not sure they all agree on what is important—that makes me a little nervous! When I hear about all this new stuff we are supposed to do, I'm not sure we have the skills here to do it. I think there is organization change coming. What happens to my job?

It's worth noting that you are not hiding a bad organization structure or weak leaders from the rest of your team. Nor are you hiding a need or intention to re-structure. They can see it. Your best approach here is when you do make a change, to get it really right so that the new organization makes sense to everyone.

There Is No Effective Antidote for the Wrong Team

There is no more important thing you can do as a business leader than to build the right team. Every time I hated my job, or felt like I was drowning or failing, a mentor would tell me, “Patty, you need to build the right team.”

Every time I was in a new management position, I built a new management team. And every time, before I had the new team in place, I suffered. It was not that the individuals were particularly bad in some way. It was that the team as a whole was the wrong team to accomplish what the business needed to get done. As long as I had the old team, doing the new stuff proved virtually impossible. And I had to shoulder all the weight of thinking about the new stuff by myself.

If you find yourself working overly hard because there are too many things that you can't delegate to anyone—you have the wrong team.

A Lesson from the Dogs

A while back I had a chance to go dogsledding in Canada. It was fun. I highly recommend it if you ever get the chance. At the beginning of the day there were 17 sled-dog teams lined up on the sides of the path. There was a 30-minute briefing that we listened to while standing outside in 36 degrees below! The dogs were in their harnesses, mostly lying and lounging in the snow. All the sleds had their brakes on. (The brake is basically a stake that is driven into the snow so the sled can't move.)

When the dogs knew that the 30 minute briefing was ending (they had heard this briefing before), without any cue from the guides, they all jumped up, pointed forward, and were ready to go. They had such motivation and energy that you could see and feel it. And because the sleds had their brakes on, there was tremendous energy and tension in the ropes. All the ropes were tight.

At that moment I felt such a wave of purpose and energy. It was palpable. Every dog was pointing forward and ready, willing, and anxious to go. All you needed to do was release the brake.

I remember thinking, I have felt this same energy when I finally was able to build the right team, and we reached that moment where we were all committed to go forward. This has become my metaphor, and my test, for the right team: When you look at your team, you need to ask yourself, honestly, “Are all the ropes tight?”

And if all the ropes are not tight, your job is not to try and go forward with the wrong team; it's to create a team where in fact, all the ropes are tight—that's the fundamental ingredient of a successful team. Here are some rope-tightening questions you can ask yourself:

1. Are all your team members facing forward?

   This may seem like a simple question, but more often than not, there is at least one person who is simply not facing forward along with the rest of the team. They may be facing sideways (confused about where you are going) or backwards (in disagreement with where you are going). They may be sticking to an old way of doing things, or refusing to change their point of view on something important.

   For example, say you've committed to a new manufacturing process that requires a fundamental change to your infrastructure. This one person is very invested in the old infrastructure and disagrees with the change. So every time the new work comes anywhere near him, all the decisions, tasks, and communications about the new way stall. Instead of investing to help make the new way possible, this person keeps advocating for the old way and shooting holes in the new way.

   Instead of helping to overcome the problems involved in making the new way succeed, he is highlighting the problems and saying why it won't work, or he is ignoring the problems so they will never get solved. Everyone else is trying to run forward. This person's rope may be tight, but it's pulling in the wrong direction!

2. Is everyone on your team truly in alignment about what the course is and what their role is?

   Can everyone on the team run forward without getting tangled up? Or are there points of disagreement or confusion that need to be resolved? If people's roles aren't clear, or if you have competing, conflicting, or duplicate efforts within your organization, the ropes will get tangled up. When you say “go,” everyone may start running, but not in the same direction. They don't all see the same curves in the road ahead. The mission looks different to each of them. You may still be able to move forward, but you lose a lot of time and energy sorting out questions and issues that would be eliminated if everyone on the team had a clear view and a clean charter. If you fail to create clarity of purpose and roles, the ropes will become tangled, and energy that could have been spent moving forward will get re-directed and lost in the tangles.

3. Is each person capable and up to the task required of their role?

   Can every person on your team pull their share of the weight—truly? Do they fully have the ability, the judgment, and the communication and leadership skills to do the job that needs to be done? And are they willing and motivated to do their part?

   When there is a team member who can not pull their share of the weight, if they remain on the team, the manager and other team members are forced to compensate. And every time someone needs to compensate for a weak team member, there is a person not doing what they should be doing. Progress slows. You have a dog that just can't (or won't) run fast enough to keep up. If they are not helping to pull the sled, there is no tension on their rope. In the worst case you will need to get off the sled and go up front and help pull. You may enjoy pulling the sled sometimes, but just remember: First, you should be steering; second, you are paying someone to not do their job; third, the other team members will wonder why they are pulling so much of the weight.

4. Are they all motivated to go where they need to go?

   This is as important as any of the other questions. Do all the members of your team personally care about where you need to go? Are they engaged? Are they invested? There are some people who go through the motions of facing forward, and they have enough capability to run just fast enough so that their rope doesn't visibly droop. They put on a great show of their effort, but they are only just barely pulling their share of the load. These are the people who enjoy the lifestyle of having this job, but don't really want to run all that hard or pull any extra heavy weight or go uphill. Or these are the team members who give weak or passive aggressive support. To look at them, the effort looks right, but if you are honest about it, they are really not helping as much as someone who could be in that role truly pulling for the team's success.

Are All of Your Managers Good Managers?

Before leaving the topic of all the ropes being tight, another foundational question you need to ask yourself is this: Are all the managers in my organization good managers?

Many organizations settle for having people in managerial roles, who quite simply are not good managers. Some common causes for this are that people have been promoted because they excelled at doing their job function, or simply because there was a need for another manager to reduce the span of control, so they just named an individual to lead part of the team. Selections are sometimes made in ways that seem as though it doesn't matter. It matters! It is one of the things that matters most.

One of the biggest things you can do to impact your business growth and bottom line is to insist that every manager is a good manager.

People who are not suited to management wreak havoc. I know this firsthand because I regularly interact with first- and mid-level managers from companies in many industries all over the world who ask for help with how to deal with a bad manager. On my membership Coaching Hour calls that are part of my FORWARD program for professional development, I hear so many stories of bad managers: poor (sometimes back-stabbing) communication, lack of decision making, lack of accountability, lack of support, poor planning and resource management, prevention of opportunities for development and visibility, lack of ability to understand and make trade-offs, can't stick to a long-term plan in favor of shiny objects, politically motivated, inaccessible…this list goes on and on. There are a lot of bad managers out there. It will serve you well to make sure that you select, support, train, and set expectations about what is required of a good manager in your organization.

With bad managers lurking about in your organization, people who should be doing work are instead getting confused, discouraged, frustrated, and scared. Bad managers are preventing them from doing the right things for the business, so your strategy stalls.

You need your managers to be engaging, motivating, supporting, and facilitating the right work, not preventing it.

This is one of my favorite types of work to do with corporations—to train their managers to be good managers—because it makes such a huge difference not only to the business, but to the health and sanity of everyone involved!

In one of the monthly webinars in my FORWARD program, I shared a simple test: Are you a good manager? I'll share it with you here. Every good manager should be able to get a yes answer from each of their employees on the following questions:

• Do you understand the strategy of our business?
• Do you understand the mission of your team and why it is important?
• Do you understand how your job fits into that mission?
• Are your strengths acknowledged? Do you get to use your strengths in your work?
• Do you know what is expected of you? Do you know how you will be measured? Did you have input into this process?
• Do you feel acknowledged and recognized by your manager?
• Do you feel informed and in the loop about information that is relevant to you and your work?
• Do you feel like you can work without fear?
• Do you feel like you can deliver agreed outcomes without being micromanaged?
• Do you feel like you can give your manager feedback without fear?
• Are you excited about something you are working on?

Note to Leaders Making Changes: Are You Leading the Team You Have or the Team You Need?

One of the tough things about a business transformation is that when you initially sign up to do something different, in that moment you still have the same people. Usually the new thing is bigger, more sophisticated, or more challenging in some way. One of the ways I see organizations get stuck is that they try to do the new stuff with the same people. Not everyone will be capable of what the new way requires. Not everyone will be able to step up. Do a really honest assessment: “Are all the ropes tight?”

Note to Everyone Whose Job May Change: What Happens to Your Role Now?

Of course, organizational changes can be stressful and difficult if not outright scary. If you face the risk of losing your job, it feels terrible!

Awareness is really important here. First, be aware that the new strategy will likely resort in some changes in personnel. Don't be surprised by this. Understand the strategy. Don't hide your head in the sand and just wait. Assess your situation and that of your team. Educate yourself as much as possible about the new goals of the business. Be ready to engage in planning and discussion. You might not always feel like you are being told all the answers along the way, but be as ready and educated as you can when you get the opportunity to have an opinion.

It's important to realize that it's not a good personal strategy to dig in and attempt to preserve your job and team exactly as it exists today as the new change rolls out. It's a much better strategy, both from a business and personal perspective, to make a sincere effort to understand the changes at hand, and to be proactively ready to tune your job if necessary to better support where the business is going.

Don't wait to be asked or told. Think about it. The personal leadership that is required here is to conceive of and recommend changes if they are necessary instead of just waiting for others to make all the decisions.

I can tell you that every time this happened to me, my willingness to proactively say something helpful was always appreciated and rewarded. For example: “As I understand the new strategy and the way that the new organization is shaping up, it seems that my role is no longer needed. Here is an idea for how I can change the focus of my team to support this critical part of the new strategy. I can continue to lead the team, but I think it would be okay to combine my team with this other organization. Then I could work on this other new thing that is really critical…”

If it turns out that your job will be eliminated because of the new strategy, your helpful, proactive, positive leadership behaviors are the best way to find your way into another opportunity in the new structure, and to help your team members land well. (Also read my book RISE to learn how to make sure that you have built a foundation of positive visibility and support for your career.)

Consider your role and your goals in the new organization, or in the same organization with the new strategy if the organization does not change, as you read through the next chapters in Part 2 (O = Organization). Think seriously about optimizing your organization, too. These chapters will give you the tools to proactively build the strongest team possible and develop your own leadership abilities.