Taking it to the next level
This is the time of year many of us look back, reflect, and evaluate our performance individually and as an organization or team. We want to know what worked well, what we need to improve on or repeat the success of, and we want to know what is keeping us from moving to that next level of growth and performance. If you were hoping to figure it all out in an 800-word blog article, we’re sorry to disappoint. However, what we will do is provide two simple keys, and we emphasize simple, to making positive leaps forward in 2017.
#1 – Stop blaming the weather and the dog
This sounds easy enough, but we all know it’s much easier to blame. Why didn’t your branch grow this year? Why didn’t you get that promotion or raise? Why can’t you get that employee to perform at a higher level? Far too often, for all of the “why’s” in our life, we usually will have an excuse or something to blame. We’ve taken the proverbial, “the dog ate my homework”, excuse from our grade school days and perfected it into a blame game in the working world to the point that we actually begin to believe our own excuses and even the excuses of others within our organization.
Related article: Top 10 Cross-Sell Excuses in a Community Bank
Don’t misunderstand, there can always be outside factors or reasons that will impact performance, but the driving factor for your success should be who you see in the mirror every morning. Whether you like what you see or not, that reflection is the reality of what is driving your success or failure… How you manage your team, how you improve yourself from being just good to being truly remarkable, how you lead, how you manage, how your customers perceive you and how those same customers experience you and your team. It’s all on you. If you spend as much time focusing on these things as you do playing the blame game, you’ll be in a much better spot right out of the gate. Once this is understood, you can begin to take the steps necessary to move forward.
#2 – Simply look deeper
The key word here is “simply”. Don’t make this more complicated than it needs to be. People who see something wrong tend to first look at the surface for the easy fixes. That can be fine. But when things go wrong over and over, the fix is often not at the surface, but instead it’s at the core. Few people and organizations want to look at the core because that’s usually a little more difficult and expensive to repair. Sometimes it takes an expert or an outsider to help with the repair. To many, this is viewed as more money and more time, but instead should be seen as an investment to make money and save time. Don’t gloss over the deeper issues, opting for the quick fixes that do nothing more than kick the problems down the road. This will only give those who don’t know better, a false sense that you’ve turned the corner and things are about to improve. It doesn’t work that way!
Avoid complicating the matter by commissioning extensive reports or creating research committees to provide even more reports. Keep things simple by just being honest about who and where you are individually and as an organization. Then ask a few more questions until you get to the answers that aren’t blaming everyone and everything else for your shortcomings. Looking deeper is more about you and your community bank and a lot less about who or what can blamed. Now you know why so few like to look deeper. It’s not that complicated.
Define it and own it
After taking these two steps you should begin to get a clear picture of where you stand and why. It could be the lack of a clear vision for your employees or team to follow. It could be that you don’t have the right people in the right seat on your bus as Jim Collins would say. It could be your leadership and management. Whatever “it” is, the first step in moving forward is defining it and owning it. It’s really that simple.
