Ten steps for building a team.

1. Start with the right people. Let the excellent and good people know what they're doing right.

2. Do something about the mediocre performers in the next 90-days.

3. Hold a company-wide strategic planning session. Get people together and involve them in planning the firm's competitive strategy. Management should hold back and let other employees speak first in this session. The joint planning process is very important because it draws on a well-known principle of psychology that people tend to be involved in implementing what they're involved in creating.

4. Review the plan quarterly: This sounds straightforward, but most people don't do it. Get away for two to four hours on a quarterly basis and discuss the following:
· What goals have we completed?
· What goals are in progress?
· What goals are no longer relevant?
· What goals have not been completed and what needs to be done to complete them?
Keep this discussion positive and it'll create a sense of confidence in people that they can set goals and complete them. You want the planning and review process to be a living part of your company's culture, guiding how people operate. These meetings should be high energy, high involvement, problem-solving opportunities, not just places to disseminate information.

5. Teach your key executives what they need to do to be successful delegators and coaches.

6. Complete a team review of each team member's strengths and weaknesses. Have people do written assessments of themselves and everyone else on the team and then review it with the team as a whole.

7. Make sure there are no places for poor performers to hide in the company, especially on the executive team. If the teams allow everyone equal time to talk, the top performers will clearly stand out. Eventually, others may decide that they can't keep up the pace necessary to succeed and seek opportunities elsewhere.

8. Develop a performance-based measurement system by asking:
· What do people think they're being paid for?
· How close is that to the firm's "critical success factors?"
· Do people understand that it's the success of the company that provides their
paycheck rather than being on good terms with management, or their longevity, loyalty or effort?

9. Celebrate wins. Most companies don't celebrate enough. Frequent small and inexpensive celebrations that take more creativity than money send the message within the company that "we're winning."

10. Champion the team philosophy. Draw on your own enthusiasm and be ready to jump up at a moment's notice and tell people about your team vision, the kind of people needed for it to be successful and the benefits that'll come to everyone as the team reaches its goals. Use the same energy and conviction in your internal selling as if you were calling on your biggest customer. Other team members need your energy.

Teams can produce quality, productivity, innovation and creativity by lowering costs, taking out many levels of supervision and allowing greater flexibility. However, one of the most important things teams can do is attract and retain quality people. Once you have a real sense of teamwork in place, people will fight to work for your company because it builds on the fundamental human need to be a part of something larger than ourselves. This's why families, tribes and communities are so important to us. You can draw on that need in a company setting as well, with great benefit to the employees and the company.