Maurilio Amorim

Author: Maurilio Amorim

  • To Build a Winning Team, Talent is Not Enough

    Sometimes the team with the most talent loses. The 2006 Brazilian National team was the favorite to win the World Cup. They were touted as, potentially, the most talented soccer team ever assembled. Yet, the world favorite was eliminated during the quarter finals much to the disappointment of Brazilians worldwide, including yours truly. What happened? How can so much raw talent, experience, and stardom result in such a poor performance? While some blame Brazil’s coach, Parreira, most of us saw clearly the problem play itself out on the field: superstars who could not play together as a team. It was obvious that the players were more preoccupied in looking good individually than winning games together.

    Individually, they were the best in the world; together, however, they were less than the sum total of their talents.

    All the talent, pride and praise of Brazil’s “jogo bonito (translated, “the beautiful game”), could not make up for the lack of team spirit and camaraderie on the field. Individually, these guys were the best in the world at their individual positions; together, however, they were less than the sum of their talents.

    As I build my team at The A Group and as I help my clients build their teams filled with top talent, I’m keenly aware that talent alone does not cut it. It never has. These days I hire on three levels: character, competence, and chemistry. Sure I want to hire the most honest and talented person I can find for the job, but not at the expense of the team chemistry. In the past few years, I have changed the way I interview for openings in my company. While each potential hire has to meet our toughest job standards, he or she will not become part of the team unless the chemistry is there–after all, we are a small collaborative group and even one odd person can change the entire team dynamics.

    It has taken me a long time to learn this lesson. I wish I’d learned it sooner.  Talent alone does not cut it. It has never done it.  In last few years we have passed on some great talent because they were not a good “fit” for our creative and professional culture.

    Have you seen talented people not make it in your line of work? What happened?

  • How Your Promising New Hire Can Hurt Your Organization

    Strategies and implementation tactics are too often built on a single person’s skill set instead of built on a plan that takes advantage of his or her skills and experiences. While some might call such differentiation “semantics,” it is an important principle that when violated can slow down growth and even derail an organization.

    New Hire Syndrome

    Unfortunately I have seen this happen time and time again in business, not-for-profits as well as academia. The bright new  head of  “blank” (fill in a key position: IT, marketing, sales, development) comes in and wants to put his or her mark on your organization, and so, too often, all current plans, ideas  and systems are replaced by the new hire with his “better” ones.  While I understand the need to allow your new hire freedom to do his job in a way he can succeed, I also find the wisdom in protecting the organization from serious missteps and, perhaps, total dependency on a single individual. Before setting your new hire free to change the status quo, consider the following:

    Audit current systems, personnel and strategies before replacing them. There is a big difference in making changes because things are not working well, and making changes because your new hire wants to put his mark on your organization. I can think of a leader going along with dismantling a marketing campaign that was extremely successful because the new head of marketing decided that he wanted to take the organization in a “different” way. Different is not necessarily good and if things are working, then work the plan deeper instead of changing it altogether.

    Protect the organization from the single-point-of-failure syndrome.  In smaller organizations that’s often a problem. A key  position holds the entire team hostage on his or her knowledge alone. Your new “web guy” is often that person. In all my years of consulting work, I have yet to encounter any single web professional who’s an expert on all things internet. It just doesn’t happen. In my company I have to hire experts in the areas of design, security, infrastructure, and mobile app development in order to be able to serve our clients well. If you have one person in charge of your entire digital strategy, what would happen to your organization if he were to walk out today? We deal with such chaos often when that happens and clients ask us to bail them out.

    The team is more important than any one of its members. Remember that while you want to give your dynamic new hire the tools and latitude to succeed, you need the entire team to win, not just the new person. Replacing systems, partnerships, software so you can show your support for the new person is often a price too high to pay. Just because something worked well in their last employment, doesn’t mean it will work well for you. Think of the team first, before you allow major shifts. Take calculated risks. Ask yourself: if this new change is a flop, what is the risk to the entire organization.

    For me the bottom line is your new key position should have a clear, well-defined plan that’s derived from the organization’s overall strategy and is not just a win for his position or department. If there are changes to current systems,  personnel, and partnership, they need to be quantified by an audit and carefully implemented. There’s some truth in the old saying, “the evil you know is better than the evil you do not.”

    Where have you seen the new hire syndrome play out before?

  • Critical Brand Mistakes You Must Avoid

    Your organization’s brand is more important than you might realize. Branding is not the “voodoo of marketers” but the sum total impression of everything you are as an organization. In a nutshell it is the essence of who you are organizationally. Communicating it properly is essential; not doing so can be disastrous. Here are the most critical brand mistakes you should avoid:

    Brand mistakes

    Assume your target audience understands your brand promise. Whether you manufacture guitars or lead a local church, you must always fight the insidious thought that…just because you have been around for a while or just because you are the biggest building on your side of town…your target audience understands and even cares what you have to offer. Successful brands know they need to continually tell their story to an ever-growing population faced with an increasingly noisy and crowed world.

    Assume those closest to yo, your consumers or constituents, understand your brand promise. This one is tough to swallow for leaders. After all, we would like to believe that those who have “bought” into our product understand what we do and offer. Not really. Even in my own company I see that happening. The A Group has two divisions:  marketing and technology. Some of our technology clients act surprised to hear we do high-end, research-driven marketing; while some of our marketing-only clients sometimes say “I had no idea your company does that.” That’s not on them. It’s on us. We live with the day-to-day dynamics of our microcosm and fail to be intentional in communicating the complete scope of what we offer.

    Fail to create a transferable and memorable way for your brand loyalists to pass your brand promise to their network. I call this group of influential, satisfied, and highly motivated people “sneezers.” They love your organization, and their products and are more than willing to let their network know about you. However, brands often fail to create simple and effective ways in which the sneezers can be successful. Churches are often victims of this. Ask a happy member why he likes his church and answers are all over the board. “People are friendly and we have a great youth program,” said a woman I interviewed lately.  No one ever thinks his church is not friendly—well, I met a guy who actually thought his church was “not very friendly”—and if I am not interested in the youth program, then the brand promise of friendliness plus good youth program might not be compelling enough to engage me or cause me to come for a visit.

    Create brand promises that are not fulfilled by your product or services. This is not only a mistake, but a mortal sin for brands. Making claims or promises you cannot deliver on. I learned this lesson the hard way in my early days of consulting, even before I started The A Group. I had designed a direct mail piece that made specific claims about the quality of experience and production for an event. Another organization putting on a similar type of production asked me to design something very similar and with the same claims. Since they were in different cities and several weeks apart, I obliged. Both pieces were successful in driving people to the event. However, the “copy cat” event had the claims, but not the infrastructure to deliver its promises. It was a fiasco. I heard that people were not only disappointed…they were angry. Please don’t look at someone else’s design or claims and adopt it because you like it. In the real world, not the pretend world, people expect to get what you promised them in your promotion.

    What other brand mistake would you add to this list?

  • Without a Clear “How” Your Organization Vision is Irrelevant

    Your organization might have a good grasp on its vision: you know where you want to go. Most business or ministries I have worked closely with have a very well-defined vision statement. Some talk about their calling, and some still have what I have heard described as a “sense of destiny.” But in my experience an organization falters or fail to reach its vision not for the lack of direction, but by not having a clear understanding of the “how.”

    the importance of the how

    Vision, by its own nature, is the “what” question every organization must answer.

    What are we all about?

    What are we accomplishing?

    What defines success for us?

    All these are important and even primarily important, meaning, without clearly answering them, the following questions do not matter. But once that’s done, every organization must answer the next and critically important question, “how are we going to do that.”

    In my experience as a consultant, organizations that are stuck often understand their “what” but have been stopped on their tracks by not answering clearly the “how.” These leaders can see where they want to be and can imagine what that preferred future looks like, but they cannot figure out the proper steps that will get them there. It feels like the times you found yourself on a busy highway where you can see your destination from your car, but you cannot figure out the right path to get there. After all there are too many options, too many ramps, access roads, and exits and a clear path to your destination is nowhere to be found.

    Take a look around your organization. It might be a ministry, a business, a church even a legacy not for profit. Your vision statement might be framed on the wall for all to see, but if your strategy to get there is not clear, then chances are you are not going to make it. Being busy and being effective are not synonymous.  Your organization might be trying a lot of “new stuff,” throwing things up on the proverbial wall and hoping they stick.  While that will keep everyone busy, you will not move you forward. Without a clear “how”

    How well has your organization defined its “how”?

  • How to Deal With The Unhappy Vocal Minority

    The vocal minority is the bane of every dynamic leader’s existence. While 98 percent of your organization might be content, it’s usually the discontent 2 percent who make a lot of noise. You cannot lead any type of business, church, or group without having push-back from a few people, sometimes even a single unhappy person. While every case is different, I have learned a few lessons with dealing with the unhappy vocal minority.

    angry

    Don’t underestimate the power of emotions. Anger, frustrations, outrage, and shame are powerful motivators. People who are emotionally charged lose perspective. What was once an annoyance suddenly becomes a cause worthy of their personal crusade. I have seen otherwise reasonable people hurl vicious personal attacks, most of them untrue, when they become emotionally charged by an issue.

    Don’t overestimate your ability to appease them. Conciliatory leaders tend to want to spend time with their detractors and reason them back into a resolution. In my experience, that seldom works. Often the emotionally charged are also unreasonable and will continue to sabotage the process.

    Don’t let them grow. Much like a cancer that spreads to nearby cells, unhappy people attract more unhappy people and will recruit those whom they can influence. Once you realize that the emotionally-charged situation is not going to be resolved by reasoning and dialogue, cut your losses help them find the exit door. If the vocal minority has more staying power than you do, send out your résumé and pack your bags. Your days are numbered.

    Hope for the best, but prepare for the worst. Know your audience and prepare accordingly. There’s nothing more damaging for a leader than to to walk in a leadership ambush. Understanding the dynamics of the issues and the players involved in a potentially emotionally charged meeting will help you navigate a tough crowd.

    If you don’t effectively deal with the vocal minority, you will eventually lose your supporters who will slowly back away from your leadership. This becomes a leadership death spiral where the longer you cater to the detractors, the more you ignore those who need you the most.

    Have you ever dealt with a vocal minority? What happened?

  • Work Smarter Not Harder

    Working hard and working smart are not synonyms. Yes you can work both smart and hard, but you can also spend a lot of effort and fail at the end of the day. Here are a few principles on how to work smarter that I have learned by watching successful leaders and managers as well as those who got them wrong. While these principles are simple…even obvious…they seem to elude us quite often.

    Work smarter

    Do what only you can do for your organization. Just because you can do something, doesn’t mean you should. Once I was the technology expert for my company–doing everything from troubleshooting network connections to installing printers and drivers. Granted, there were only 3 of us in the early days. Today I don’t even know how to use the fax machine or get a conference call started. I had to let those things go or I could never do the critical tasks only I can do for the organization.

    You are hired to get the job done and not to be busy. Some people justify their salaries by the sheer amount of activity they create. You were not hired to be busy; you were hired to be effective. You must have a firm grip on your supervisor’s expectations of your output and make sure you do that.

    Become an owner. No matter what position I had in any of the jobs I’ve ever worked in, I always felt that the success or failure of the organization was dependent on how well I performed. As your sense of ownership in your organization grows, your sense of entitlement diminishes.  After all, you don’t ever hear owners say, “that’s not what I’m paid to do.”

    Set expectations early and often. Whether it’s an assistant, a second in command, or a volunteer, you need to set clear and measurable goals from the beginning. A critical mistake managers make is to provide someone with a written job description at the time of hiring and that never gets updated or evaluated again until things are not well. Job expectations are tied to specific projects. If you can’t measure the small stuff you will never be able to assess the big picture. Take time to define a win for each project and evaluate them at completion.

    Hire well. It’s easy to get married, but painful to divorce. Find the 3Cs: Competence, character, and chemistry. Spend the time to hire the right person. Avoid the rush to “fill a position.” The wrong person in your team could be costly. As a matter of fact, the wrong hire at a key position could cost your job and in the case of small businesses, the business itself.

    Find the right distance to manage from. Micromanagers are too close; this lowers trust, disempowers subordinates and destroys their motivation. Absentee managers are too far away; they provide insufficient guidance, don’t keep track of work being done, and aren’t there to listen and provide answers to questions that come up. The optimal distance is in between. Provide direction and guidance, let your subordinates know you’re keeping track from your own vantage point, and check in with them periodically.

    Which one of these have you found most challenging in your experience?

     

  • Five Professional Types That Can Derail Your Team

    You don’t wan to mess with these guys, much less have them on your staff. If any of these professional types finds his way into your team, make sure you deal with them swiftly and remove them from power as soon as possible. In my experience, the longer they stay, the faster your business or ministry will be derailed. It’s not a matter of if, but of when.

    Deceptive professional

    Old School Board. No these are not school board members who are old, but old board members who have lost touch with anything current. “Social media? That’s just an0ther fad.” I have seen more dynamic ideas die during ministry presentations due to board members’ inabilities to grasp the importance and significance of communicating with digital natives. If your board has more people in their 70s and 80s than people in their 30s and 40s you might be in trouble, serious trouble.

    IT Terrorist. This is the guy who holds all good ideas hostage on the fear of “It’s a security issue why we cannot do that.” or “We would have to revamp all of our systems to be able to do that.” Those words send fear and trepidation down the spines of ministry leaders as well as CEOs everywhere. I find that often they either don’t know what they are talking about or if they do, they don’t want to go through the hassle of changing. And in either case, the organization loses.

    Insecure Leader. No great idea can come from any other person but himself. The insecure leader will hire poorly because he is threatened by talent. And if he makes a mistakes and manages to bring someone on board who’s smarter and better than he, he will marginalized the poor guy until he’s ready to quit. If you have an insecure leader working for you, watch closely his direct reports and watch the talented ones leave.

    Incompetent saboteur. He’s not incompetent at sabotaging ideas. He’s just incompetent period, and therefore, will sabotage any idea that threatens his job. His thinking is more like “Why try and fail, if I can stop the idea from even getting off the ground!” He’s always the guy giving you all the reasons your next idea will not work. Unfortunately, the savvy saboteur will agree with you in a meeting and undermine your efforts later on.

    Ego maniac.“If it’s not about me, I don’t want to have anything to do with it.” That’s the egomaniac’s modus operandi. His personal agenda trumps the win for the company and his team. While he might be a superstar, his self-interest will end up doing more damage to your team than good.

    What other professional type would you include in this list?

  • The Art of Selling Creative Services

    Selling new ideas can be tough. If you are a creative type, that’s even tougher. Usually people who need your services realize they need help but often don’t trust the young, creative professional because, by and large, creative people scare them. From the way you dress, to the language you use, all the way to your non-corporate haircut, you can make your potential client nervous. The sooner you realize this dynamic, the sooner you can overcome it. It happens to me quite often. I’m creative, opinionated, and Brazilian. I make a lot of people nervous. Here’s a simple strategy I use when dealing with those non-creative professionals.

    How to sell your creative ideas to non creative people

    Understand where their pain is. What do they “think” they need from me? Sometimes what they need and their perception of the need are not the same. Regardless, you must always start from their perspective, no matter your assessment of the situation.

    Speak their language. I met with a CPA firm not long ago. I knew better than to talk about “the customers’ stories intersecting the company’s storyline thus creating a rich new narrative.” That kind of talk would have me escorted off the premises.

    Alleviate their pain with your solution. After you understood what their felt needs are and figured out how they want to get the information, then it’s time to connect the dots for them. But you can only do that by starting at their pain point and using the language they are accustomed to hearing. Most people lose the deal at this point. Contextualization is not just a missional term, it’s a business one as well. The right solution presented in a way that’s foreign to your audience will get voted down every time.

    What other help would you offer to creatives working with non-creatives?

  • Leadership 101: The Team is More Important Than Any One of Its Members

    I’m responsible for my team. Anything or anyone who threatens the well being of my group becomes an issue I must deal with it. That is true even if the problem happens to be a team member…even a friend.

    leadership team effective

    That was a difficult lesson for me to learn. As a young manager, I remember coming to the realization that a good friend I had hired for a leadership position in the organization I managed was misplaced. While he had the temperament and personality for the job, he lacked the organizational skills to be effective at a  high level. No amount of training or coaching would bring him up to par. I agonized for months about what to do, even though intuitively I knew he could no longer lead that program.

    In the meanwhile I saw his performance continue to falter, his team flounder, and the entire organization under-perform.

    I was frustrated.

    His team was frustrated.

    He was frustrated.

    By the time we parted ways there was a lot of collateral damage done. I sacrificed the well being of the entire team on the altar of my friendship. At the end I barely saved the friendship. Everyone lost on that one. Everyone.

    I learned then that my role as leader is to protect, resource, and guide the entire organization forward. What’s right for the team is ultimately right for everyone, and that applies to myself as well. If I made decisions that are best for one team member, but not for the whole organization, we all lose. While this is a lesson you can learn for yourself, I hope you trust me on this one and save yourself a lot of grief.

    Have you ever been in a situation where the wrong person was allowed to stay on to the detriment of the entire team? What happened?

     

  • In Business, In Order to Grow You Must Give Up Control

    In business, you need to learn when and what you need to control. Figuring out this formula can be the difference between growth and stagnation. One day I came to the realization I was stifling the growth of my business because the very skill set that allowed me to get to a certain success level could not fuel the growth beyond that point. Even worse, I was having a difficult time attracting and keeping gifted and skilled professionals on my team. The wake up call came several years ago as I found myself in the ER with chest pains.

    business control freak

    I like control. My family refers to me as “Captain Schedule” when we go on vacation. However, being a control freak has its advantages. After all, if you control everything, you can never blame others for a failed project, a bad hire, or even a flat soufflé. As an entrepreneur, I benefited in the early days of my company from having a good grasp on everything that was going on…from cash flow projections, to hard drive storage capacity, to the details for every project of every client.

    While it doesn’t take a genius to figure out the reality that one person can deal with only  a limited number of moving parts, it’s extremely difficult for those of us who have a need to feel in control to step back and look at our own situation through an objective lens. Instead of changing the way we operate, the control freaks of the world try to figure out ways to be more productive, to sleep less, and to get more done than anyone else around us.

    I still like control. It’s part of how I’m wired.  But today I have built a team of incredibly competent professionals whom I’m proud to work alongside. I strive to make the contribution that only I can make and stay out of their way, for the most part. Letting go has been difficult and I’ve made several mistakes along the way, but here’s what I’ve learned:

    Hire slow. Fire fast. In order to give up control of anything that’s dear to you, including the very business that’s your livelihood, you must trust someone in three critical areas: competence, chemistry, and character. Never, ever compromise on these. I wrote more about the three “C”s as I call them here. But the moment you realize you made a mistake, take care of it quickly. Nothing erodes an organization’s morale and performance faster than a disgruntled or incompetent team member.

    Byte size ownership. One of my early mistakes was to dump too much too soon on a new hire. That’s not fair to them, nor to the entire organization. Start small, correct the mistakes, celebrate the victories, and move forward to bigger and better things. Building trust is a process, and one you cannot short change.

    Don’t abdicate your responsibility. Know what you must know. As a leader, I must not relinquish the responsibility for the organization’s well being, including financial, directional, as well as operational. While I might not be deep in the details, I must have a solid grasp of these essentials. “I did not know things were this bad,” is not an indictment on an organization, but on its leader.

    Motivate. Do not control. Control is an illusive drug. Controlling people is not only wrong. It’s downright impossible. I prefer to motivate people and find ways to resource them with tools that will make them want to do their best. Highly motivated, talented people don’t need to be micromanaged, or coerced into better performance. They have an inner drive that needs to be guided, nurtured, and deployed. If you are having to stay after someone for them to perform, you have hired poorly.

    Are you a control freak or do you just go with the flow?