Intelligent SME.tech Issue 32 | Page 34

// EXPERT PROFILE //

How to get a team

TO BUY INTO A SHARED VISION AND IMPROVE GROWTH

It ’ s important to have a vision for your company but what ’ s more important is making sure that everyone in the team knows what that vision is and how to get there . Jeremy Campbell , CEO of Black Isle Group , expert on behavioural science and an executive coach , offers advice on how to boost an organisation ’ s productivity and build an engaged team . He explains how leaders can get a team to buy into a shared vision and improve growth .

MOST BOSSES ARE DELUDED
ABOUT HOW MUCH THEIR TEAMS UNDERSTAND
ON WHERE THE COMPANY IS GOING AND WHAT THEY NEED TO DO AS INDIVIDUALS TO
GET IT THERE .
USINESS LEADERS ARE great

B at brainstorming strategies , devising visions and crafting grand missions . But none of it matters if you don ’ t get people to buy in and take the right actions to achieve your company goals .

Most bosses are deluded about how much their teams understand on where the company is going and what they need to do as individuals to get it there . Test it yourself . Go into any office and ask , “ What ’ s the goal ? What are you doing today to achieve it ?” You might get great answers but , chances are , you ’ ll get a sea of blank faces .
This is a dilemma which has irked the team at Black Isle Group for some time . The disruption of the pandemic made it even more urgent to re-think how we maximise performance . We set ourselves a challenge – could we increase the performance of a team by a factor of 10 , in 10 weeks , if we went about this in a different way .
Bravely , IT transformation business , VCG , stepped up to be our guinea pigs . The goal was to see if we could add £ 3 million to its business pipeline in ten weeks . We did it in four . So , if you ’ re paying attention now , we ’ ll explain how we did it for them and how it could work for you .
Let ’ s start with the story of the London Olympics in 2012 . Jade Jones was a teenage Welsh taekwondo athlete who dreamt of a gold medal . Sarah Broadhead was one of her coaches .
In the 24 months before the games , Broadhead and Jones compiled a list of the key actions they would take every single day . It covered what Jones would need to do around sleep , diet , stretching , strength , technique and many other things to move towards her dream of Olympic gold .
A dozen specific actions each week translated into more than 50 small steps each month , more than 500 every year and more than 1,000 actions by the time the games began . Broadhead told us that by focusing on the everyday actions they removed the anxiety of the daunting goal of gold .
At the end of each week , athlete and coach would review their progress and agree their next set of small steps for the following week . On this journey they were constantly being distracted by things which could push them off course or break the new habits they were
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