What blocks the team spirit in business?

The world cup is the key topic everywhere.  Although not really a football fan, I do like to watch top class sport - so sometimes end up watching a match.  As Ireland did not make it that far, I now back Switzerland and today they rattled quite some cages! An amazing victory over Spain – well done guys!

My company pulled out the stops – public viewing on campus!  With free beer and sausages (accompanies every good Swiss event) and plastic raincoats for those brave enough to not dive for cover from the rain.  But what was really interesting was the combination of senior leaders standing beside administrative staff, middle management, etc; Swiss, French, German and a big bunch of ex pats living and working in Switzerland; baby boomers, gen X, gen Y; male and female – the perfect diverse team all united in cheering on Switzerland (Hopp Schwyz!!!) with their bratwurst and bier – an amazing atmosphere!

The team are all Swiss nationals but if you look at the picture, a nice mix considering it is a male sport and for relatively young males.  In addition the trainer is German. 

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And the country has gone a bit mad as well; the two major supermarket chains were announcing since Tuesday that if Switzerland wins against Spain, Thursday is 10% discount of everything in the store.  A major hamburger chain is selling hamburgers for 1 CHF (normally 2.50) on each day the Swiss team are playing etc….

Now stop for a second and reflect on this – we can generate a real wining spirit regardless of hierarchy, gender, age or nationality for a football team – what stops us doing this in our daily business?  The hierarchy or culture? The lack of a common mission? Maybe lack of mission communication?  It is important to start addressing some of these not so obvious hurdles and leverage this energy to deliver amazing results.  

Lets start by being inclusive, then aligning the team behind a common goal (sorryJ) and pushing for diverse teams that reflect better the customer base.  We have a lot to learn from sports teams!

Reengaging the baby boomers

Last week I had the pleasure of presenting at a D&I Champions meeting on the topic of Generational diversity.  The room contained approximately 40 persons from many countries, male, female, gen y, x and baby boomers all united in their passion about diversity being important for business.  One of the challenges they had articulated was how to get to grips with this generational diversity!

I shared a great clip from you tube – best search engine - with some scary facts about the aging populations, decreasing number of youngsters in the workforce etc.  We moved on to discuss what events or technologies have shaped these different generations and more importantly what motivates them.  I don’t need to reiterate this all here as enough has been written about on this subject.  The big question that emerged is when are companies going to get the wake up call and understand that they have a sizable part of their workforce who hover around 50+ with an abundance of experience, an effective network and a lot of value to add to the organisations. 

Think of the opportunities that companies have with this particular segment – but to tap into these opportunities, they need to move beyond their current patterns of thinking.  Many companies engage external coaches for both new and experienced leaders, to coach, reorient etc.  In principle a good thing as frequently the external view is needed, but the possibility of using internal coaches for a part of this does not yet seem to be on their radar screens.  An immediate ROI when you consider how much money big organizations spend on external coaches in areas where the expertise is already available internally….  Consider using the experienced associates to support projects – not necessarily lead but to support new leaders, help them keep the project on track, identify key hurdles, and manage  those all important stakeholders.  

Do you know of any companies who do this? Would love to hear about them