Building a business from the ground up can be challenging but rewarding. Although it can take patience to develop unique products and services while surrounding yourself with talented individuals, most businesses that put in the work can see positive increases in their revenue streams and profitability.
However, one of the most important things to get right when running a business is having a dedicated team of employees willing to go the extra mile. Still, this isn’t easy for businesses to master. As organizations begin to scale, most feel certain constraints that can negatively impact productivity and potentially stall growth efforts.
To overcome these issues successfully, businesses should adopt a resilient attitude in adapting to changes in their operations while looking for better ways to collaborate and improve their teams’ capabilities. In fact, there are some great examples businesses can learn from some of today’s top brands that have already done the same.
Common Team-Building Roadblocks Businesses Face
As businesses begin to grow, they often experience certain challenges that can test their ability to remain resilient. Many of these challenges can materialize internally, with employees beginning to struggle to keep up with changes or maintain the same level of enthusiasm they once had.
This often creates inevitable roadblocks, making it hard for a business to move forward. Some of the common team-building challenges that can surface include:
Poor Communication Practices
A good majority of businesses put a lot of effort into ensuring they maintain healthy levels of communication with their employees. Still, many organizations experience highs and lows when it comes to how well departments collaborate with one another.
One of the common working formats for many businesses today is having a decentralized workforce. While allowing this level of flexibility in employee scheduling and working location can be highly convenient, it can often result in information silos, with only certain teams having the information necessary to manage projects effectively.
Fragmented communication in a business can severely harm its progress. Just as electricians and plumbers must work closely with contractors to ensure bathroom remodels, or living room expansions go smoothly in home renovation projects, businesses must prioritize transparency between their departments to succeed.
Loss of Trust From Employees
Employees need to respect their employer to feel confident enough to give 100%. However, to develop respect, employees need to trust their leadership teams and feel valued more than just another number in the organization.
Although trust can be difficult to earn, especially in the early stages of an employee’s tenure, it can easily be lost. Unfortunately, when a company puts the majority of its focus on developing new revenue streams and maximizing profitability, it can start to lose focus on developing strong relationships with employees.
When employees begin to lose trust in their employers, it can often lead to negative attitudes that can quickly start to degrade the company culture. This makes it much harder to keep employees and attract new talent.
Unclear Company Purpose
Simply increasing revenue doesn’t mean a business can or will be successful. As a business grows, it becomes increasingly more difficult to maintain alignment with initial business objectives, leading to a disorienting state that can negatively affect operational efficiency.
As company departments begin losing their cohesion, this can damage a business’s long-term sustainability. Many times, these issues might be subtle at first, with employees forgetting about their primary responsibilities or missing a few deadlines. However, over time, these seemingly minor issues can become a much larger issue.
Resistance to Change
For many people, change isn’t something that is easy to accept. While it’s easy for businesses to say that they’re “OK with change” or “willing to improve their processes,” the reality is usually much different.
Change can make many individuals uneasy, especially when it means leaving a certain comfort zone. This can apply to both business leaders and employees who are tasked with updating their workflows or shifting their daily priorities.
However, having too much resistance to change can be a major roadblock for organizations that want to grow. Leadership teams clinging to outdated sales strategies or having too many employees who don’t feel the need to learn and develop their skills can make a business stagnant and eventually start moving in the wrong direction.
Successful Companies That Have Managed to Overcome Leadership Issues
No business’s growth journey begins without finding a way to overcome various challenges and build a sense of resiliency over the years. However, organizations that are willing to address these issues often become major success stories for other businesses to follow.
Below are a few examples of businesses just like this that have proved with a bit of perseverance and adaptability, you can continue to grow your organization successfully:
Zappos
Zappos is a popular online retailer that has built a great reputation for offering excellent customer service and fast delivery of its products. But while it continues to be a leading e-commerce brand today, the company’s journey hasn’t always been smooth sailing.
When Zappos began expanding its reach and operations, it ran into the same problems that many businesses do when they grow to a certain size. Departmental silos began to emerge, and team communication began to suffer.
However, former CEO Tony Hsieh put in place a unique Holacracy format that completely removed the traditional top-down hierarchy that most organizations still maintain. This unique approach empowered employees to take more ownership over their work and helped to eliminate many of the communication bottlenecks it was experiencing.
Ford Motor Company
Most people are familiar with Ford Motor Company’s long record of success in manufacturing some of the most innovative vehicles available today. However, over the years, it hasn’t proved easy for the company to maintain the quality and efficiency it now has, especially when considering how its products are designed and marketed.
When Ford began expanding its assembly lines and incorporated newer manufacturing automation, they began to experience major gaps in coordination between engineering departments across their global plants. Rather than allowing this situation to continue, Ford took action by introducing cross-functional team assignments in all of their factories.
The teams that Ford put in place consisted of a collection of engineers, design teams, and marketing professionals. This cohesion across departments helped revitalize Ford’s production and distribution capabilities.
Apple
Apple has always been known as a global leader in innovation, designing cutting-edge products for all types of consumers. In fact, much of their success can be attributed to their constant pushing of boundaries when it comes to incorporating the latest technologies available.
However, having a culture heavily ingrained in creativity and risk-taking hasn’t come without certain challenges. Many years ago, Apple recognized that its fairly complex internal structure could potentially limit the creative spark that made its products so well-received.
To help combat these issues, Apple implemented a new type of functional collaboration and open communication format with all its departments. This allowed and encouraged all employees to exchange their ideas freely with upper management, and projects were assigned to smaller, more agile teams to help everyone take more ownership of the company’s future success.
Start Building Stronger Teams
Building a cohesive team is crucial for any organization. While achieving this efficiency level can be challenging, by following the examples of successful, well-known brands, organizations can see significant improvements in the resilience of their leadership teams and employees.
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<This is a guest post by Dalip Jaggi>
Author Bio: Entrepreneur, technologist, and passionate business leader sum up the core of Dalip Jaggi, co-founder of Revive Real Estate, a PropTech company with a goal to democratize house flipping. Since its 2020-inception, Revive has since become the smartest solution for homeowners to maximize their home’s sales value across the nation.
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[…] Helping your team to have a shared sense of purpose is an important component of helping your company vision come to life. When everyone works together to achieve the same goals, more is able to be accomplished and milestones are more easy to attain. […]
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