How strong is your team?

The strength of the team is impacted by its weakest link.

This is to say, you lose the respect of the best people working with you when you don’t deal properly with the worst.

I use the example of a business I knew in Kentucky. They had been in existence for 25 years. The front office person had worked there for 23 years and ran the whole administrative team. She was an integral part of the business.

She also happened to be the person who was the most negative. 

Unfortunately, the business owner abdicated the responsibilities of running the daily operations to this office woman. Because of her resistance to change, he struggled for many years to be able to move the business forward, even though the business owner was trying to implement many positive changes. She also was the most influential person in the organization because she was there every day. With the patients, the other employees, everyone, including the business owner, she didn’t like what the business owner wanted to attain because it caused– cause and effect– her to change what she was doing. So, ultimately it took the realization that this million-dollar business was going to lose 50% of its revenue in the next month (because of a change of reimbursement), for the business owner to put his foot down and get serious about what they needed to do. 

He had to radically change how the business was performed. Because the front office woman continued to resist, he had to remove her. It was painful for this business owner, as well as the front office woman who had worked with him for years.

Because of this set back, his business lost 50% of its revenue in a two-month period… but, because his team was stronger, he bounced back. In the following year, his business grew by 20%. The team stepped up and got serious about what he wanted to accomplish, proving when your team is strong, your business is strong.