It's Not Rocket Science: 4 Simple Strategies for Mastering the Art of Execution

Chapter 28The People Pillar

The Challenge

Many leaders focus more on their goals and strategies than they do on the quality of the people they're counting on to execute and get them there. Here's the problem with that: A great dream with the wrong team is a nightmare. A great dream with mediocre people will bring you mediocre results. If you're at a point where your dreams—the ultimate few objectives (TUFs)—are bigger than your team, then you have got to either grow up the team or give up the dreams. Without question, people are the most important pillar of your culture. They must share your core values, believe in your mission, have the competence to meet your performance standards, and have the talent to align with your core competencies. Because the book's final chapters in “Get the Team Right!” will offer in-depth strategies for developing people, here we'll review numerous ways people affect every aspect of your organization's culture and how culture in turn affects the people working within it. The relevance of the connection is unmistakable and should strongly influence how and where you spend more time—building culture and people.

How Culture Affects People and People Affect Culture

• People in a strong culture share common beliefs, customs, and language, forging an even closer bond among team members.
• People who are highly developed more naturally attract other highly developed people into their culture.
• People are far more likely to be strongly engaged in a high-performance ...