By Jim Mikula, President/CEO
A book I reference often is “Trillion Dollar Coach” by Eric Schmidt, Jonathan Rosenberg, and Alan Eagle. All were coached by Bill Campbell who played a key role in the development of Google, Apple and Intuit. The authors coined the term Trillion Dollar Coach as the value of the companies he coached was more than a trillion dollars when he finally retired from coaching.
After reading the book, I adopted Bill’s framework for one-on-one (1:1s). The 1:1s are conducted monthly and have four segments:
· Performance on Job Requirements
· Relationship with Peer Groups
· Management/Leadership
· Innovation (Best Practices)
Job requirements can include revenue generation, product delivery, product quality, customer feedback, marketing productivity, and managing expenses. They can also include administration and organizational development.
Relationship with peer groups is important for consistency in a company. In companies that have multiple departments, it’s critical that peer groups – such as department managers - have effective relationships. In small businesses the peer group can be fellow small business owners. At the Chamber we use our neighboring Chambers of Commerce as our peer group for learning. For individuals, your peer group might be people around town who are in similar positions as you hold.
Coach Campbell has one question that I especially like for managers and leaders, “Are you able to get your people to do heroic things?” It has been a while since I asked myself that question, but I was reminded today! It immediately led to some thinking about how I can help our team be heroic in our value to our members.
Innovation (Best Practices), in Coach Campbell’s world, includes the Japanese philosophy of Kaizen: continuous improvement and reducing/eliminating waste. He again asks a challenging question. “Do you measure yourself against the best in your industry?” We have identified several Chambers of Commerce as benchmarks for our learning.
The Trillion Dollar annual review was of achievement:
· Displayed extraordinary in-role performance
· Exemplified excellent leadership
· Achieved outcomes that were in the best interest of the organization
· Expanded the organization’s capabilities through innovation and application of best practices
· Collaborated effectively with peers
· Effective contributor in key meetings (strategic planning or in the case of the chamber, event planning)
· Dedication to and implementation of the organization’s mission
While our business community is made up of small businesses with small teams we can use some of Coach Campbell’s framework to coach are valued team members to deliver more productivity and/or customer service. And, each of us, individually, can assess our effectiveness as workers, managers, leaders and collaborators.
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