WESST Blog

Paying Attention to Team Tasks and Rewarding Excellence

In this last installment of “The Four Things Every Business Owner Must Know About His Business,” I’ve saved the best for last. I say this because this one is all about people! And, at its core, business is all about people and teams of people. Paying attention to the job quality of individuals and teams and rewarding excellence is one of the greatest privileges and pleasures of business ownership. These two tasks are more important to customer satisfaction, growth and profitability than just about anything else you can possibly do to improve your business.

Of course I don’t mean just knowing whether the team shows up for work. A time clock does that for you.  Rather, the business owner needs to know what specific tasks her team is doing, how well they’re doing and how the task specifically relates to serving customers and generating profit. A starting point is asking how a specific task either serves customers or reduces expenses.  Both are valuable. However, if you the owner don’t see the relationship of task to outcome, how could your employee?

But don’t stop there!  When you see employees excel, reward excellence as though your team were your business’ most valuable asset – which of course they are. Mark Twain said it all – “I can live for two months on a good compliment.” Like Mark Twain, become a Missouri “Show-Me-State” native. Show yourself some good stewardship by asking the team and yourself whether a given task represents the very best possible return on the labor dollar. Both you and your good employees want to know. Finding the answer, continually refining tasks and rewarding excellence puts all of you well down the road to building a better a business!