Pick any time of the year and you can find a sport to follow. For each of these team sports, there is a definite offense and defense strategy. And let’s face it, you must have both to win a game. For business leaders, the same is true. Unpack a few fundamentals of your business game to ensure your team is ready to win against your competition.
Episode Guide
Offensive Strategy
#1: Know how you want to score
- Aside from revenue and profit, what are the 1 degree metrics that, when fine tuned, will make your team decidedly different from your competition?
- What is your discipline within the team to continually push for process improvement so those minor advances occur?
#2: Play to your strengths
- How well are you using your team’s strengths in your product or service strategy?
- Do you have every team member performing in his/her sweet spot of skill or expertise?
- Are you capturing your strengths in a way to best communicate those to your customer?
#3: Run your Playbook
- Does every member of your team know daily, weekly or monthly targets?
- Does every member of the team understand (and is equipped) to fulfill his/her role to meet those goals?
- How often do we review progress to goals to identify both best practices and lessons learned?
Offense moves your product or service into the hands of your customers. Your defense is how you respond to your competition.
Defense Strategy
#1: Know your competition
- Do you know who your primary competition is?
- How does your competition market their products or services? How do those products or services compare to yours?
#2: The discipline of agility
- Does every member of your team have the flexibility to adjust as needed to customer needs or demands?
- Does your team have the mindset to think openly to receive constructive feedback from customers and/or peers and leaders or are phrases like “but we’ve always done it this way” seem to prevail?
#3: Cover your Bases
- Do you know who your primary skill or customer experts?
- What is your plan if the employee(s) in those roles suddenly exited the company?
- Does every member of the team have a back up for his/her key tasks and responsibilities?
Great teams look at their rosters and playbook on a regular basis to ensure they stay on top. Pick your sport and pick your favorite team. Watch how they play the game. I know you’ll find some insight that will help your team win.