What’s TW up to? Feb 7-13

 Culture  No Responses »
Feb 062012
 

In short, here’s my week. I’m..

Welcoming - a new physio (Kelly) to The Physio Co family on Tuesday morning

Attending - my monthly EO forum on Tuesday

Writing – my first monthly post for Dynamic Business on Thursday

Registering - for The Growth Faculty’s National Growth Summit in Sydney March 15-16 

Preparing - for an Olympic distance triathlon on Sunday

Considering - heading to the 2XU Falls Creek Triathlon on Saturday to cheer for my mate Steve Glowrey

Reading – The Wealthy Speaker by Jane Atkinson

Planning – my first eBook to be published on Amazon’s Kindle store

Wondering – how much help Siri can be?! (My iPhone4 is being replaced by a 4S)

How storytelling builds a strong culture

 Culture  No Responses »
Feb 062012
 

Sharing stories of team members living core values and then celebrating their successes is one of the best ways to build a strong family culture.

At The Physio Co we tell a short, 30-second story of a team member living one of our four core values everyday at our daily huddle.  To The Point, our 12-minute huddle has a set agenda and one day per week each member of our support team shares a story of another TPCer living a core value.

Similar to how we use core values for recognition, the stories are told like this:

Value - Find a better way: we inspire others by continually finding a better way

Who lived it - MT

How - MT (TPC physio) went shopping in her own time and with her own money to buy some new shoes for an elderly resident who had no family or friends to do it for her. The brand new shoes made the resi feel very special and of course she’s now much safer on her feet. Thanks MT, you’ve inspired us all to continue finding a better way!

Positive stories of team mates getting great results and being recognised by their peers is fun, feels great and helps to focus everyone on what works.

Storytelling is without doubt THE best way to build and strengthen a strong family culture.   No matter how many stories you’re already telling, I reckon you can always tell more! 

How being a CEO helped me lose 10kg

 Culture  No Responses »
Feb 022012
 

In the last 143 days, I’ve lost just over 10kg’s. The skills I use everyday as a CEO helped me get there.  Here’s how…

  • Create a vision - On my bucket list (you do have one, don’t you?) is a dream to finish an Ironman Triathlon, so I’ve entered! I’ll be competing in Ironman Australia at Port Macquarie in May 2012.  For the past 8 years I’ve pushed myself hard in my professional career at the expense of my health and fitness. It was time to change. Putting a deadline on my dream made it real. 
  • Learn from the experts - Over the last few months, I have read a LOT about triathlon! Two things that helped me lose the excess 10.5kg’s is the knowledge that 1) cycling is often the most important leg in triathlon 2) power-to-weight is critical to being a good cyclist. Therefore, get lean! (Lance Armstrong explains it right here – jump to 2:15 if you’re in a hurry). 
  • Set mini-goals - After learning how important it is to get lean, in September 2011 I set a goal to get from 82.5kg to 72.0kg by January 31.  I then broke this goal down into monthly, weekly, and daily(!) goals (remember Reverse Engineering?).  I no longer had to lose 10.5kg’s, I just had to lose 74 grams per day. Easy!
  • Measure what you manage - I measured and recorded my weight every morning.  As I got closer to my goal, sometimes I weighed myself a few times a day (crazy, I know, but it worked).  By knowing my progress, it helped me make decisions about what I could and should eat.  When I was ahead, I could have a treat. When I was behind, I ate a bit less.
  • Don’t let failure stop you – Some days I put on weight. It was frustrating.  In the week between Christmas and New Year’s Day, I gained almost 1kg.  But, by measuring what I managed, I knew what I had to do and I re-focussed on making it happen
  • Make it fun - Weighing myself every morning and sometimes during the day became a game in our house.  KW got involved in the last month and we both had some fun entering our weight into the True Weight iPhone app every day.
  • Celebrate successes – I made my 72.0kg target on Jan 30 (one day early).  This week, we’re celebrating! (I’ll still measure what I manage, but, I’ll take it a bit easier and enjoy what I’ve achieved for a moment).

Being 10.5kg’s lighter not only helps me on my bike, I feel much better and have heaps more energy (despite training 14-16 hours per week!).  For me, measuring what I managed was the most important approach to hit my goal.

*NB – I visited a medical doctor before and during these 143 days.  The measure what you manage approach worked for me, if you want to lose weight, get the right advice.

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**This post is from the 2012 series ‘What I’ve learnt this week’. If you’d like to receive these and other Culture is Everything posts in your email, subscribe here.

How to help remote staff feel more connected

 Culture  No Responses »
Feb 012012
 

This is part of the ‘Ask Tristan’ series.  If you have a question, please email me: asktristan@thephysioco.com.au

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Q: Tristan, do you have any tips for keeping geographically dispersed teams engaged with each other as well as the company as a whole?  Communication seems to be the key, but how do we ensure it’s 100% quality, 100% of the time? – ED.

A: Dear ED,

Great question. You’ve asked about something which is very close to my heart, communication!   

In my experience, it’s super-important to make sure both organised and incidental communication happen as often as possible within your entire team.

Organised communication could involve a scheduled phone call between a remote team member and their manager/mentor/buddy every friday at 2pm. This type of call is something that becomes part of your meeting rhythm, it’s locked in to both people’s calendars and has an agenda.     

Incidental communication is much less structured but equally important. It can involve people calling each other or bumping into each other without having it planned or having it locked into their calendar.  It’s simply out of the blue, informal communication. Everyone likes to receive a call from a manager or workmate just to say ‘How are you?” / “Is there anything I can help with?” / “Thanks for your help”.  Creating an environment where incidental communication happens as often as possible will help engage your team more than anything else.

As far as ensuring communication is 100% quality, 100% of the time: you can’t!  You have to trust people.  This is a tough one to become comfortable with, but, if you have the right people on your team, you train them and then you support them, you have to trust them to do the right thing.  Building trust is one of the most important parts of building a great place to work.

Good luck,

Tristan


How to discover your core values (in 15 minutes)

 Culture, Culture is Everything TV  No Responses »
Jan 312012
 

How to discover your core values (in 15 minutes)

Culture is Everything TV – Episode 3

Click here for a short video that shows how to discover your core values in less than 15 minutes.

New Culture is Everything TV episodes appear every Tuesday.  Subscribe here.

What’s TW up to? Jan 31-Feb 6

 Culture  No Responses »
Jan 302012
 

In short, here’s my week. I’m..

Preparing – my CEO Spotlight for To The Point tomorrow morning.

Celebrating - our wedding anniversary with KW on Tuesday!

Welcoming - two new physio’s (Amanda & Lisa) to The Physio Co family on Tuesday.

Improving - my presentation skills with seven other TPCers at the first of 4 sessions with Communicators Melbourne on Wednesday. 

Attending – weekly 1:1 meetings & monthly strategy meetings at The Physio Co on Tuesday & Wednesday.

Writing -  an article for Latte magazine and content for Good Health magazine.

Registering – for EO’s Global Leadership Conference in Vancouver. 

Training -  5.5 hours on the bike, 3 hours in the pool and 4.5 on foot again this week.

Reviewing – my “so you found me on twitter page”. Any suggestions?

Core values for attracting the right staff

 Culture  No Responses »
Jan 302012
 

A strong family culture is essentially a group of people that live and believe in a small set of shared values. Therefore, growing a values-based organisation is about attracting more and more people that share those values.

At The Physio Co we use our four core values to attract new team members by sharing and referring to them at every possible opportunity.  Potential new TPC team members already understand how important our values are before they even apply.  In most cases, one of the reasons why they apply is BECAUSE of our values.

The Physio Co core values are in many spots on our website, in our painted picture of 2012, used in recruitment and stories are told of TPCers living our values at To The Point every single day. Our core values are even No.2 on the list of the Top 57 reasons to work at The Physio Co!

Like attracts like.  Are you using core values to attract more culture-fits for your team?


Lessons of failures from Jordan, Armstrong & now Evans

 Culture  No Responses »
Jan 272012
 

Michael Jordan was arguably the best basketballer to ever play the game. As a kid, I worshipped MJ. I wore his shoes, his jerseys, watched his videos and had his posters all over my bedroom.  I loved the way he played the game, I loved his “give me the ball, I’ll win the game” attitude, I loved the way he and his Chicago Bulls team mates won championship after championship. 

Since Jordan retired, I’ve read more about the obsession he had with perfecting his game that started right from when he was cut from his high school basketball team. In his early NBA years Jordan obsessively worked out in the gym to become the strongest guard in the league, he even used to get out of bed in the middle of the night to fine tune his jump shot. Michael Jordan was one of the hardest working players of his era and the results speak for themselves.

Seven-time Tour de France winning cyclist Lance Armstrong is another phenomenal success who also obsessed over his preparation and training. Armstrong is famous for his fanatical approach to his training and the way he put in longer hours at higher intensities than any of his competitors. 

Both Jordan and Armstrong tasted defeat and (in their eyes, failure) during their time. In fact, Jordan missed more than 9000 shots in his career, he lost almost 300 games and 26 times he was trusted with the game-winning shot and missed.  It’s because of these failures that people like Jordan and Armstrong learn, become more focussed and succeed.

This week I’ve been reading Close to Flying, the Cadel Evans story and it seems that Evans has a similar approach to both Jordan and Armstrong.  One of my favourite quotes of the book was from Cadel’s summary of the 2005 Tour de France. He wrote: “You think you’re goin’ okay but just looking at the face of [Lance] Armstrong tells you another story. While you’re gasping for breath, he’s takin’ a drink or talking on the radio.”

Evans has learnt from his early failures and gone on to taste the sweetest victory of his career, the 2011 Tour de France.

Embracing failure, learning from mistakes and obsessing over what it will take to succeed are the lessons I’ve learnt this week from Jordan, Armstrong and now Evans.   

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**This post is from the 2012 series ‘What I’ve learnt this week’. If you’d like to receive these and other Culture is Everything posts in your email, subscribe here.

Two ways to boost morale of your sales team

 Culture  No Responses »
Jan 252012
 

This is part of the ‘Ask Tristan’ series.  If you have a question, please email me: asktristan@thephysioco.com.au

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Q: Tristan, how do you keep staff morale up to hit sales targets when we seem to be missing them every month? I feel that I am setting realistic targets. Do I set a poor and easily achievable target to push up morale or do I keep setting targets that are in line with what I feel we should be able to achieve? – JB

A: Dear JB,

Firstly, take a deep breath, you’re not alone on this one! Driving consistent sales is really tough.

Next, don’t set a short-term low target, that just reduces your expectations.  You need to find a way to hit your targets and every time you do, you have to celebrate! Success creates more success. 

In my experience, setting goals for someone else is risky business.  I’m very rarely inspired by someone else’s target or goal. The same applies to getting your team motivated, they have to feel like it’s their goal. To get your team focussed on achieving your sales targets I think you need to consider two things:

  1. Involve your team in the goal setting
  2. Make chasing the target more fun

Now you might be thinking that only you, as the business owner/manager, can know what expenses you have and therefore sales you need to create a decent profit. In my experience, the more you share with your team, the greater their commitment, understanding and loyalty will be. You don’t have to share all your financials just yet if that makes you uncomfortable, but, at the very least, share some numbers so your team can understand where you’re coming from.  (Whatever profit you’re making, I’ll bet your team thinks it’s at least 2-3 times more!  Be honest with them).

As far as making chasing the target fun, how about breaking the monthly target down to daily goals and having a mini-reward for hitting the target each day?  The mini-reward doesn’t even have to cost you anything, it could be parking in your car space or starting work 15-mins later. Be creative.

Good luck!

Tristan

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