MMI Watercooler
Holding Your Team to a Standard
by Kate Catlin
Sarah Evans recently blogged about the standards of teamwork at Sevans Strategy. She said, “A strong and united team is the most important thing and will determine whether or not we succeed or fail – together.”
We take the same approach at MMI, so I thought it would be interesting to tell our readers a little bit about our standards at MMI Public Relations. We actually took the idea from a speech given at the 8th annual Fuqua School of Business & Coach K Leadership Conference. Coach K discussed his Olympic team and how they developed standards, not rules. When we met as a team, we tried to emphasize that we wanted our list to be the same way, a list of standards, not rules. We came up with TONS of things for which we all want and need to be held accountable. We took those items, grouped them and eventually culled them down to the following list.
1. If you don’t own it, we all fail.
2. There is a time and place for everything, and some things are off limits.
3. Take pride in MMI.
4. Learning is not optional.
5. We’re all in this together.
6. Trust and respect are our currency.
7. Our minimum is the maximum.
8. We do what we say we’re going to do.
The list is hanging in our office as a reminder of what we expect from ourselves and one another every day. It can be applied to our culture and to the work that we do for clients. We try really hard to live by it as a company. Does your team have something similar?
Permalink | 07/26/2010 |
