At year-end, assess your team needs. It is customary for practice owners and managers to assess the financial health of the practice at the end of the year. Review your company's performance compared to previous years and to your goals and objectives that you set at the beginning of the year when you built your budget. In building your budget, it is important to project your costs, your largest of which is typically labor or people. This is an ideal time to assess your people costs, their performance, and your projected needs to continue to strengthen your team in the future. Ask the following questions:
- How did your team (people) costs compare to last year and to your budget for the year?
- How was the performance of the team over-all, and of the individual team members?
- Where does your practice need to improve, and what is needed to facilitate that improvement?
- Do you have the right people on your team to accomplish your goals?
- Do you need another skill set that can be trained or will it require bringing it in via a new employee or outside consultant?
- How can you continue to build the leadership capabilities of your team? Leadership is crucial. Invest in it.
- What objectives do you want to accomplish in the future?
- What is the plan to accomplish them?
- When will you build and communicate this plan to your team?
These questions lay the foundation for your year-end team assessment and when conducted with your senior leaders, it will provide a powerful foundation for building team unity and cohesive strategy for the coming year. Include your team in this assessment process as if they are part of the solutions and planning, they will adopt the results with more enthusiasm.
