I created this spreadsheet earlier in my career. I designed it to make sure I had the right team in place to execute my sales strategies and to increase sales. Over the years, it has continued to amaze me with its accuracy in predicting performance AND its ability to triage. Rarely has the team or a sales person been above a 7 average and not met their goals.
Building teams out of people requires a focus on the job as much as the individual. Measuring people is easy. It’s an individual exercise. Measuring teams, that’s a little different. To build a good team, you have to focus on the job.
To build a good team requires focus on the entire effort, not just the individual players. It requires an inventory of all the elements needed to be successful. What I’ve found is, by taking an inventory of the role(s) and evaluating the team collectively, gaps are identified. It’s these gaps that impede performance. Identifying these gaps allows them to be addressed and fixed.
Each quarter I would review my team against a similar chart. The assessment matrix is for me. If asked, I will share with individual employees. However, this is NOT meant to be a performance review. I have a separate performance review process. (My team assessment and individual performance reviews are intricately linked). I use this process to understand how each member of my team is performing against the critical elements of the job. I identify gaps and target my efforts toward closing the gaps. I enjoy this exercise. Identifying the gaps is a rush for me. With out this process, I would miss too many revenue impacting and team performance issues.
With amazing accuracy, the lowest scores on the chart have always aligned with the problem areas in my organization. By reviewing this chart (an example chart, not real), I can tell you that this team most likely has no succession planning, which leaves the company vulnerable if someone leaves. They lack a career development process, and some of its rising stars maybe in jeopardy of leaving. This chart tells me there are real people problems on this team that need to be addressed. It also suggests this team is very flexible. By looking at their highest score, Coachability, this team is flexible, agile and responsive. Addressing issues and problems are not a challenge for this team. High coachability gives me confidence the team can respond to the people problems.
This process is also great for finding the poor individual fits. Not only am I able to see the teams effectiveness, I can see how the individuals “FIT” into the team. Those in red are dragging the team down. The goal is a collective team score of 7.0 or higher. However, to see where the problem player(s) are (those with scores of less than 7.0) is critical. I use the individual scores to help with performance reviews. The goal is to bring the individual scores up, in order to bring the team scores up.
Every organizations chart should look different. They must be customized for specific roles and positions. Every leaders chart will contain different criteria. Take the time, understand what is critical to make your team successful, put in the chart and then measure it.
Having a view into your team takes the guess work out of it. Knowing the players is great but knowing the team is awesome.
Remember, players score, teams win!
