When Steve Jobs spoke about what he did at Apple he said, “What I do all day is meet with teams of people, and work on ideas and solve problems.” While his personal contribution to the company’s success was no doubt immense, without the fantastic and hard working team of people around him who shared his passion and vision for the future, Apple would never have been the company we know it as today.
It turns out that having World Class, high-performing teams are the little known driver of business success, with research published in a White Paper from Bank of America and Merrill Lynch stating that the ‘The ROI of a high-performance team is anywhere from 10-100 times that of lower-performing teams.’
Do you know the difference it would make to your bottom line if your team’s performance improved by just 10%?
Research by Drs. Zenger and Folkman aimed to quantify that impact, and found that a significant multiplier effect exists on a business’ bottom line for every percentage improvement in team output.
In a large proportion of companies in which labour costs represent about 50% of their total expenditure, they found that a 10% increase in productivity would in fact increase the business’s profits by a massive 100%.
Having a great product is the cornerstone of any successful business. Yet having a great product on its own does not guarantee that a business will be successful.
Equally, having a great leader is the driving force of many great companies, but even the late Steve Jobs would tell you that it wasn’t the most important ingredient in Apple’s success.
The truth is that for a business to achieve and sustain a high level of success, what it needs above anything else is for its people to work and act as a highly competent team towards a very clear, shared vision. Only then will it achieve true greatness.
Spending time developing and creating World Class, high-performing teams in your business is therefore not only important, it is imperative to achieving long-term, profitable bottom-line growth.
To your team’s success,
