Steve Huey’s Blog

The number one thing you can do to build a great company is to build a great team.  I call this the “FIRST FACT”. 

There have been tons of books written on this topic and on the fact that building a great team is the most important thing a manager can do.  Good to Great put forth “first who then what”.  The Five Dysfunctions of a Team is devoted to getting the team to work better together.  The whole “Strengths series” is dedicated to either finding your strength or you peoples strengths.  Book after book expounds on either how to build a team, pick a team,  or wring the most out of your team.

So why do we forget this simple First Fact. 

Every day you should be working on the FIRST FACT.  Here are my thoughts on what you should do:

1. You should work every day to attract the right people to your cause – Tribes by Seth Godin is dedicated to the idea that we need leaders who can do this.  Find people who have diverse skills and actually believe in what your company does (simple for what your company’s mission is).
2. Make the people around you better.  Each person you manage should have a development plan.  You should have a development plan.  What can they do to be better?  What five things should they be working on to be better?  What can you do to help? 
3. Build the team!  You have to continually Build TRUST, promote constructive CONFLICT, promote COMMITTMENT to results, establish within the team ACCOUNTABILITY and focus the team on RESULTS that further the cause.

I encourage you to start tomorrow by thinking of the FIRST FACT and how you can help attract great people, make them better, and help them work as a team.

You know what it is like – you are in the trenches – slugging it out – fighting day to day.  Someone in the organization stops the bus.  No, you can’t move forward – someone has dug in.  What do you do?  I would like to relate this story of a local Kentucky hero – General George S. Patton. The story is taken from the book, “Tuned In” by Craig Stull, Phil Myers, & David Meerman Scott is a passage about a scene in the movie Patton based on a real event.It seems that the entire U.S. Seventh Army gets critically held up in the heat of battle by a cart pulling donkey.  The donkey is blocking a bridge while an MP is pleading with the Donkey and the donkey’s owner to move so the Seventh can cross the bridge and get out of harm’s way.

The entire Seventh Army is at a standstill due to this “mule headed” donkey.

Up pulls Patton, he jumps from his jeep and in one swift motion pulls his ivory handled revolver – shoots the donkey in the head and has it flung from the bridge thus removing the obstacle.

This is a great story that illustrates the point that swift decisive action is sometimes called for and that of a great success principle of personally taking decisive action to remove obstacles to fulfill one’s mission.  I ran into this very issue this week in my current business.  In two cases members of my team took on the role of the MP and not that of Patton.  Be the general take decisive action and “shoot the donkey”!