When the Game Gets Tough, the Tough Get Game

by John Carroll

            It’s game time.
            Do you recall that unprecedented period of peacetime economic growth the United States enjoyed in the 1990s and on into the new millennium? That period is over, based on two major pieces of evidence. The first is that we’re no longer in peacetime as the war against terrorism pervades the news. The second is that the economy is no longer growing, slowing at first to catch its breath from years of tremendous growth. The terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, punctuated the sputtering economy, leaving little doubt about the end of the growth cycle.
            There’s a phrase that I believe sums up that entire period of peacetime economic growth. I call it the pre-game warm up.

“Fat, dumb and happy”
            According to one of our clients, that period of brisk growth had many people and businesses feeling “fat, dumb and happy” with themselves. This is a condition characterized by a lack of awareness of missing the point, of not staying sharp in a period when most businesses were able simply to grow with the economy. By riding that magic carpet, many became a bit too self-congratulatory, not realizing there was no net improvement happening within the organization.
            In this specific client’s instance, he arrived on the scene to find an operation that had performed well, returned considerable profits and spent years helping other locations learn what it was already doing. A bit distracted by its own success, the group was busy patting itself on the back and enjoying the adulation. Meanwhile, the students began outperforming the teacher and the results spoke for themselves.
            Now this group faces the challenge of moving to the next level of its own performance, first to catch and then surpass its best ever results. This would help the group prove to itself and others that its early success was no fluke. The outcome remains to be seen; the management team is planning and acting now to change its approach and its thinking to reach new objectives.

The game is on
            So it’s over. That wonderful period of growth is dead and gone. We can reminisce about how wonderful it was. We can mourn its passing. We can also get on with our lives. Will it return? It certainly won’t return to its former head of steam, at least not in the near term. Will it ever restore itself to the levels of growth we saw in the past decade? With economic cycles, it’s a possibility. Consult your crystal ball if you need to know for sure.
            Where do we go from here? We’re facing one of the most difficult and challenging periods our economy has ever faced. The continuing threat of terrorism has many acting quite cautiously and with good reason. Nonetheless, we have organizations to operate, customers and clients to serve and results to post. In spite of all that’s happening, the game is on, the ball is in play and there are no timeouts.
            When the game gets tough, the tough get game. These top performers get game with three ingredients essential to winning. Each has its own place in the growing organization and no great contest is won without them. The three are game face, game plan and game team.

Game face
            Game face is the appearance, the look, the posture and stance that say unmistakably, “I’m a serious participant. I’m here to win.” We know game face when we see it.
            This is the expression you wear when you, as a leader, meet with your team. This is about what you do and what you say, anything of yours that will come in contact with team members. You may be constantly concerned about the economy, the productivity of your sales team and nagging errors in your fulfillment system. You may be wondering how on earth you’re going to bring the month in and show a profit. Regardless of what you’re thinking, when you’re with your team, you put on the game face of confidence and reassurance.
            Why is this element of game face so critically important? First and foremost, confidence or the lack of it is contagious. Your team often looks to you, its leader, for signals telling the entire team how to perceive and process the events of the day. By virtue of your leadership position, you likely have access to more information and greater insight than your team members, and they are well aware of it. If you show any kind of anxiety or excessive concern, even in a moment of weakness, the grapevine will buzz and your people will quickly find cause for worry and distraction from the task directly in front of them. Those with less information will fill any vacuum with speculation and guesswork, making the distraction and resultant loss much more widespread than necessary. In fact, the thought process goes something like this: “If she/he is so worried about the company, what’s going to happen to me and my job?”
            Game face, of course, is more easily said than done. So how do you master it during challenging times? First, focus on the things over which you have some measure of control. The reason is simply that your productivity improves as you concentrate on those things you can control; conversely, your productivity dives as you immerse yourself in things outside of your control. As you keep your targets on things inside your circle of control, you provide a strong example for your team to do the same. Greater team productivity results, improving your odds of putting up some positive numbers in the results column.
            For instance, focusing on which way the economy might turn next could have you watching the stock market to the detriment of coaching and encouraging your team. Conversely, building a more effective team-based performance incentive plan can get you and the team truly focused on golden opportunities in your own backyard.
            The second element of game face is taking care of yourself physically. When times are particularly challenging, it makes sense to get more rest and sleep than you would normally. Find something you can do physically to get yourself up and moving. Start training for a reasonably challenging competition or event. Eat for highest nutrition, knowing that your energy levels can make or break your ability to prosper in a difficult environment. Give yourself every possible advantage so that you’re ready for virtually anything the world can throw at you.
            A third tip for sporting your best game face is committing yourself to an occasional news fast. In case you hadn’t noticed, bad news attracts headlines. Those headline stories rarely contain elements within your control, so your focus on such topics tends to drain productivity, putting you in a less than optimal performance posture. Start small by dropping a news cast per day. You can gradually move to a news-free day per week, opting for educational programs, relaxing music or quiet during your driving or riding time.
            Rest assured that during your news fast, two things will happen. One is that you’ll miss next to nothing that has a major bearing on your decisions for the day. The other is that you’ll get the big headlines from team members, suppliers, customers, family and friends. As a result, you will have missed very little, freeing up some time to complete an additional task or two from your list.

Game plan
The second essential ingredient for high performance in challenging times is a well-devised game plan. While you may have been able to play it loose and win consistently during a period of growth, you’ll find that action without planning creates more chaos than it solves. This is also where you do a bit of soul searching to answer a critical question: Are you playing to win or simply playing not to lose? There’s a huge difference between the two. Here are some Playing Not to Lose Clues:

It’s 3 a.m. and you’re the only one on your team or in your organization awake and staring at the ceiling wondering what to do about a particularly tough issue.
Your general observation is, “If you want something done right around here, you do it yourself.”
You write and enforce rules and policies that prevent a small minority from cheating and therefore hurting the organization.
You resist doing much of anything new because of the anticipated reaction from the small minority of chronic whiners on your team.

If one of more of these describes you in your current situation, it’s time to get back to the drawing board and think about what you’re doing and how you’re doing it.
           A game plan for playing to win during tough times involves three key elements. The first of these is to focus on what you do well and do more of it. For example, if your team’s best thing is relationships with your customers, do everything you can to enrich and strengthen those relationships, even in times when your customers don’t need to buy much from you. Stay in closer touch with them than ever before. Show them that you care and are working on their behalf, especially when they’re tightening their spending belts.
            The second element is to admit what you’re not very good at and find a way to shore up that part of your game. Errors in your shipping, fulfillment or tracking provide an ideal example. Your organization has been working, perhaps for decades, to perfect your systems and deliver the right thing to the right place every single time. If you’ve been trying all this time for some six sigma, near faultless performance and haven’t been able to achieve it, why would you think you can do it now, all in the space of a month?
            For some odd reason, the knee jerk reaction of many leaders and organizations during challenging periods is to move focus, attention and effort immediately to areas where the team has traditionally lacked superior performance. This focus usually has a low return on investment and has the undesirable effect of handing the team more bad news, sapping what I call “team esteem.” During challenging times, you and your team need a few small victories. Why take on Goliath right away when you can warm up your slingshot by knocking a few cans off the fence? That larger target will still be there when you’re ready. Chalk up a few minor wins first to remind your team of its true capabilities.
            Instead of going after the giant immediately, take some small steps to insure that you’re improving, slowly and steadily, in that traditionally weak area. In the example of shipping and fulfillment, find a way to catch errors before they leave the building. In other words, you may still be making those mistakes internally, but you’ve taught people to look for the warning signs or check packing slips twice to prevent the mistakes from reaching your customers. Shore up in this small area first. Then you can begin to make the trip upstream to find where the bulk of the mistakes originate and eliminate the causes.
            The third element of a winning game plan during challenging times may be the toughest for some leaders. Take action and follow through on that something you’ve been thinking about doing that will have a major positive impact on your results. Assuming that you’ve been in your organization for any length of time, there’s something that you’ve been considering for awhile, at least a month or more. You’ve kicked it around mentally, listing the pros and cons on the balance sheet inside your head. You may even have asked a trusted colleague or friend for a reaction or some insight into the wisdom of taking action.
            An example of taking such a step is the termination of a non-contributing member of the team. You’ve taken all the steps to cover yourself legally, documenting both the problems and the agreed upon resolution with no progress. It’s as if this person is daring you to make the move. You know it’s the right thing to do and you’ve spent weeks or even months trying to justify to yourself why he or she remains on the payroll. In every case I’ve seen, owners and managers who have lingered on the decision and ultimately terminated the non-productive team member have shared the same sentiment: “I wish I had done it sooner.”
            Here’s the deal breaker for some: if the action you’ve been considering involves an out-of-pocket investment, find the money right now and do it. I can hear the objections already. “What do you mean, spend the money? It’s all I can do to meet payroll and keep the doors open around here!” Yes, I understand. When you’re up to your ears in alligators, why would you want to spend money to rearrange the swamp? Here are two solid reasons. The first is that the swamp must have needed rearranging for quite some time; otherwise, it wouldn’t have been on your mind and on your list of “do this when the time is right and there’s money around.” You may not have the money sitting around to do it. If your business is a bit slow, however, you may finally have the time to get it done. There’s never a perfect time. Some times are simply better and more advantageous than others. By delaying to find just the right time, you can wait yourself and the would-be positive impact into oblivion.
            The second reason for putting money into critical improvements during a tough business cycle is that this is exactly what your competition is least likely to do. Considering the competitive landscape, you can make your greatest strides in market share or other critical areas when business drops off for all involved. Do it now and be ready when business begins its inevitable upturn. You’ll be better positioned than your competitors, who focus on the short term and will be scrambling to catch up while you’re putting serious distance between your results and theirs.

Game team
            The third essential ingredient of winning when the game gets tough centers on the team. The multitude of books, seminars, workshops and assessments available on the subject of teams seems to underscore their importance in business. After all, business played well is a team game. No one goes it alone, not even the sole practitioner who may fancy herself a true lone wolf. By defining, equipping and appreciating the team consistently, you can help to insure winning results.
            The first element in making sure that your team has game during tough economic times is by defining exactly who is on the team and at what level. That “lone wolf” is really the leader of a team of outsourced business people who may represent accounting and financial services, legal advice, printing and duplication, fulfillment and delivery and more. Even when you have team members all employed by your organization, keep in mind those who support the team’s efforts from the outside. In this sense, they are as valuable to you as anyone on the team, primarily because you can get results from them, often delivered faster and at a lower investment than you can get from those on the payroll.
            Knowing exactly who is on your team gives you the advantage of helping and asking for help from those team members. By clearly communicating the size and members of the team, you give others a similar edge.
            Once you have defined the team, be sure to include team members in your communications. By putting them in the loop, you have a better shot at keeping them engaged, involved, even enthusiastic about the team’s objectives. Try to over-communicate with your people inside and outside of the organization. Rather than you hearing the age-old excuse of “No one told me,” give people the chance to come up with something new and creative. Will there still be excuses? Of course there will, until everyone on the team accepts responsibility for the team’s results and focuses on where you go from here rather than assigning blame for past blunders.
            Give yourself a communications check. First, how are your team meetings? Look at frequency, duration, organization, participation and follow through from one meeting to the next. Second, how are your written communications? Do they say what you want to convey? Do they get the intended results? Are they easily misunderstood due to lack of clarity? Third, how are your one-on-one communications? Do you find people looking forward to meeting with you? Do you get the desired follow-through after you’ve spoken with individuals on your team? Make this an informal assessment by asking several people, including your toughest critic. Learn what you need to know and make one specific change immediately. Then touch base with those same people to determine if you’ve gained obvious improvement from their perspective.
            Finally, your winning team needs to feel like a winner. Celebrate a victory, however small, with an appropriate commemoration or reward. Just as a touchdown in American football often gets a dance in the end zone, take a new order from what had been a fallen away customer and ring the bell, as it were. Post that paper order where everyone can see it. Trumpet the accomplishment in your next meeting and ask how the team can get two or three more of those before month end. Publicly and personally congratulate those who were instrumental in getting the returning business. If you’re the lone wolf, send a handwritten thank you note to one of your key suppliers. In the note, recognize the good service you’ve received over the past year with your intention to tell others about the best place in town to get the services this supplier offers. You never know when you’re going to need a favor from that supplier. That simple act of appreciation will have some staying power in the memory of the recipient.

The Coach’s Credo
            So how does the team leader sum this all up for team members and fans? She or he can learn directly from American college football coaches who do it week in and week out, all season long.
            Here’s what I mean: there must be an interview prerequisite in which these coaches learn how to answer the three basic questions included in virtually every media interview. Allowing for a variety of styles in the answers, the interview goes something like this:
            Media: “Coach, coming off that win/loss/tie last week, how do you prepare for this week’s game?”
            Coach: “We have some work to do. We just want to improve over last week.”
            Media: “That’s a tough team you’ll be facing this week. What’s your game plan to win?”
            Coach: “I guess we’ll have to be better at blocking and tackling, running, passing and catching, better at the basics than the other guys.”
            Media: “Coach, one last question: How do you like your chances of being invited to a big post-season bowl game?”
            Coach: “I’d like to answer that, but right now, we need to take this season one game at a time.”

So, put your coach’s hat on, meet with your team and give them your best post-game interview with these three one-liners. Tell them you want to see improvement each and every week. Instill in them the fact that you need everyone to be the best on the basics. Assure them that you intend to take this one game at a time.
Make these three points the gospel according to you. Repeat them every chance you get, while you’re wearing your game face, formulating your game plan and appreciating and developing your team. Your team will respect your leadership, and you will savor your results.

John Carroll is President/CEO of Unlimited Performance, a Mt. Pleasant, SC, firm specializing in high-performance cultures to help leaders and organizations win the game of business and life. He is the author of Sales Illustrated 68 Sales Lessons from Everyday Life. Contact him at 1-877-755-8844 toll-free, email at jcarroll@uperform.com, fax at (843) 881-6746.