To Write with a Broken Pencil is Pointless

If I offered you a broken pencil to write with, you'd probably think I am crazy. But how many "broken pencils" are you trying to work with on your team?

Faced with a tough economy, or even simply the day-to-day craziness of business, many business owners and managers feel they must "make do" with the team that is currently in place. "Even if Harry is bad at filing, at least he's done it for years and knows the system."..."Yes, Sally has been consistently avoiding the phone work, but if I continue to bring it up in our performance reviews, she eventually does it." Are you trying to run a business at its optimum levels of performance with an "OK" or "acceptable" team? Are you crippling yourself, your team, and your results by trying to use broken pencils?

Remedying this situation does not always mean wiping out your current team and starting over. In fact, most business owners and managers have a gold mine of talents in their existing team; the problem is that those talents are often being underutilized or misused. A simple rearranging of tasks according to employees' talents is often one way of turning an OK team into a wildly successful team. You could consider it...sharpening the pencils.