Cory Jane under the high ball
I have spent more time than usual discussing rugby over the last month or so. I have been on several juries that have ultimately executed a few referees, watched the Welsh visitors to Wellington file in and out of the Welsh Bar, across the road from our office here at Boost and entered a texting war with one of my brothers, who bet me $100.00 Australia would be the ultimate winners of RWC 2011! Ha! It has been, on a number of levels a really great event.
And then of course there’s been the actual rugby. I, like many other people in New Zealand sat at home on Sunday night to watch the ABs take on Australia, feeling quite nervous (that’s a bit of an understatement actually). I read somewhere this week that one of the All Blacks felt that time passed really slowly (may have been Cory Jane) and I know exactly what he means. It was a tense, exciting, hard hitting 80 minutes….and that was just at our house.
One of the features of the game was Corey Jane’s mastery under the high ball. The newspapers have been full of praise and his response?
“That’s our job as outsides to catch the high balls. We pride ourselves on it. We’ve got a 100% rule where we try to take them all. We work hard on that at training and if we didn’t catch them there would be trouble”
Sounds reasonable doesn’t it? Someone has a job. They are given specific targets to achieve. They understand how success affects the team and how a failure to execute well will disadvantage the team. They practice the skill so they become masterful at it. One assumes that deficiencies are coached. And the result is that almost all of the time the task is executed really well.
There should be no difference between understanding a role as a winger for the All Blacks and understanding a role as a receptionist or builder, insurance agent or whatever.
All roles have individual components. Ensure that you identify all of them so that your employees know exactly what you expect of them. Let people know what constitutes success in each component. Teach them how to execute their tasks so that you get the results you want. Acknowledge success, rectify failures and be sure that everyone knows how one aspect of their job overflows to the next. Cory Jane could catch high balls all day, but if he doesn’t pass them, run with them or set up the next phase he’s not doing his job, he’s doing one part of it really well but it won’t contribute to the desired end result.
If you want standout performance from your employees make sure that you put systems and structures in place that communicate your expectations and measure success. Motivate them to perform all of their roles and tasks really well by letting them know how it fits into the overall success of the organisation.
At the very least, provide meaningful job descriptions and conduct regular performance reviews.
If you’ve got a question about Job descriptions or Performance Reviews and how they can assist your business, drop us a line and we will do our best to help you.