4 Things You Need to Do to Get Everyone Working Together to Achieve Your Contracting Business Goals

August 6, 2018
Category: Achieve Consistent Business Success,Be a Highly Effective Owner,Business Tips,Define Your Vision and Plan,Management

Do you have a nagging feeling there is huge untapped potential in your business? A potential you can’t seem to harness? If you feel this way, know you’re not alone.

If your 7-figure business isn’t the well-oiled machine you want it to be, there’s a good chance you’re overlooking one important management success key: Alignment

What is Alignment?

My definition of “alignment” is getting everyone in your business working together to achieve the goals of your business. And the bigger your company gets, and the faster it’s growing, the harder it becomes to achieve and maintain alignment.

Focusing on organizational alignment has been a major success key in helping my clients dramatically improve their profit while reducing their work hours and putting more ease and fun back into their lives. And it can have the same impact in your business.

How Do I Achieve Alignment?

So how do you achieve business alignment? I’m going to share two important areas you must focus on to improve your business alignment. If you dedicate your efforts to focus on these two items, everyone in your business boat will start rowing in the same direction—together.

Develop a focused vision and plan for your business

A common metaphor for alignment is “getting your ducks in a row.” But the fact is, momma duck can’t force those baby ducks to line up all nice and orderly. The baby ducks won’t respond unless momma picks a direction first and leads the way. And the same is true in your business.

You need to lead the way.

So, the first step in creating alignment for your business is to create a clear vision and a plan which spells out the direction you’re heading. Further, you must include the steps you’re going to take to get there.

Unfortunately, most business owners don’t have a clear vision of what they want to create nor do they have written plans on how to get there. Do you?

If you don’t have a clear vision, this is one of the root causes for why you don’t have the well-oiled, hitting on all cylinders, business you really want. It is impossible to create alignment without a clear vision, goals and plans to point the way.

Now there are hundreds of opinions on how to craft an effective business plan. To learn more, check out my October 2015 blog post on the subject. Follow the steps outlined in that post and you’re on your way to completing the most important goal for your business.

Like a magnifying glass which focuses sunshine to start a fire; a vision and a plan for your business will focus everyone’s energy time and effort on building the business you want to create. So, put this at the top of your “to-do” list of things you need to work on.

Align Your Management Team and Crews to Support Your Goals

Now that you have a clear vision of your business direction, and have created the plans to get there, it’s time to get everyone in your business coordinated and working together toward your vision and goals. Here are four things you must do to ensure team alignment happens:

1. Share your vision and game plan with your team.

Don’t keep it a secret. Share your business vision and plans with everyone in your company. Everyone! Each employee in your company plays some key role in helping you grow and be profitable, so it’s important they know what your vision and plans are—and how they can contribute. Trust me, very few employees actually know your goals and plans and without this specific knowledge there is will be zero alignment.

To communicate more effectively, many of my clients share their vision and plans and how everyone can contribute at an annual company kickoff meeting. Then they continue to reinforce these priorities through training and monthly progress meetings. You may choose to do something different, but it is important you communicate regularly.

2. Ensure someone owns every important goal and priority…and they can’t all be owned by you!

When I ask owners, “Who is responsible for (fill in the blank)?” (Getting enough leads, achieving our gross profit goal, controlling fixed expenses, growing our commercial business, etc.), the two most common answers I get are:

1. “I am. I’m responsible for everything!” But let’s face it, you can’t be personally responsible for ensuring every goal and key priority is achieved. There just isn’t enough of you to go around! Many owners have tried, but it always results in lots of stress and hours for you and sub-par business performance.
2. We all are… sort of!” When everyone is responsible, no one really is. The end result, again, is sub-par business performance.

So, what’s the answer? I find that if you want something to get done, someone needs to own it and be responsible for making sure it happens. You need to assign ownership for each goal and key priority to someone on your team. And when I say ownership, I mean they (not you) are responsible for ensuring those goals and key business priorities are achieved.

Your role as the owner now shifts away from being responsible for everything to holding your team accountable for achieving their goals and coaching them on how best to do that.

3. Let everyone know how their role contributes to the company’s success.

Have you ever watched a pro football game? A pro football team has set positions and each player knows exactly how their position contributes to the success of the team. The same should be true for the different positions in your business.

And yet when I talk to employees in any position, most don’t know the ultimate goal of their job is to help the business grow and make a profit. Most don’t even have a clear picture of how their role contributes to the overall success of the business.

Now you might be thinking, “We have job descriptions. Isn’t that what they’re supposed to be for?” Yes, they’re supposed to be—but most job descriptions just tend to be a hodgepodge, laundry list of duties and responsibilities read once and then forgotten.

To align your team around your goals and objectives, you need to spell out clearly:

1. how each position creates value for your company;
2. the key actions an employee must take to maximize the value they create;
3. how success will be measured.

Defining and training your employees on these three elements will create a simple “Success Formula” to guide your employees on how to excel in their jobs and how to align their actions to helping your company grow profitably.

4. Follow through to Sustain Alignment Throughout the Year

Alignment is not a one-and-done thing. You need to continuously keep your team focused and working together to maintain alignment. I compare this to how a GPS operates.

The GPS is the model all business owners should emulate when it comes to keeping your business aligned. With a GPS, once you set a destination for your trip, the GPS maps out a course to get there, monitors and updates progress, adjusts the path when you get off course or hit an unexpected traffic jam. It is absolutely relentless in keeping you aligned and on the path to your destination.

You need to be as relentless as a GPS to ensure everyone in your business stays aligned throughout the year. To accomplish this, I have my clients establish a regular schedule of meetings to give everyone feedback on progress with their goals and plans and to keep everyone heading in the right direction. This may seem like a lot of time and work but it has proven to be a huge time saver, productivity booster, and alignment creator.

Harness the full potential of your business!

Creating alignment in your business where everyone is harmoniously working together to achieve your business goals is the key to harnessing the huge untapped potential in your business. Following the steps I’ve laid out here will have a dramatic impact on your business and your life.

So, let’s get started!

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