MBA1959 Why You and Your Team Need Pressure

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Is it time to reimagine your future? The right business skills may make a difference in your career. At Capella University, we offer a relevant education that's designed to focus on what you need to know in the business world. We'll teach professional skills to help you pursue your goals like business management, strategic planning, and effective communication. And you can apply these skills right away. A different future is closer than you think with Capella University. Learn more at Capella. Edu.

We've all heard of Parkinson's law. Work expands so as to fill the time available. So if I ask you to build an IKEA shelf and have it completed in the next three days, the vast majority of people will complete it in about three days. But if I give you three hours, many will get it done in three hours. Some will get it in four hours, some even five. But none that see it through are going to take three days. And that's because of the pressure that time gives us. This is good pressure. This is actually great because we rise to the occasion when we're under pressure. This is very apparent in sports when the game's on the line, when it's the finals, when it's the last round of the Olympics and they're competing for gold. This is often when the athletes break records, do incredible things. Why? Because the bar just got raised. Okay. They need to bring out the best version of themselves so that they can ensure victory. And the same goes with you and your team in your company. Listen, I run a software company, Webinar Ninja, and in software, you're constantly releasing new features, new updates, and you're often working towards a launch date. These are really important in our company because it holds the whole team accountable to make sure we get what we need to get done out in the world in a timely manner. Now, it wasn't always like this. We actually had a period of time a few years back where we threw away launch dates. We basically said, it takes as long as it takes for us to complete this feature, and guess what? Far less things got completed that year. But worse, the team members did not improve, did not do their best work, they were not challenged, and unfortunately, it became a very mundane workplace. People think that pressure is a bad thing. They think, oh, I don't want to put too much pressure on my team because it's too stressful. No. Pressure allows us to really challenge ourselves to bring our best selves to the table, like I mentioned. And when your team is not working, when they're on holiday or it's the weekend, they're relaxing, we're asking them to rise to the occasion when they're working. This is why we share our plans, our roadmap, what we're working on, and when they need to be done with the entire team so everybody knows what's expected of them. We then break down that plan, let's say, for the quarter, into weekly goals, and then we hold them accountable and say, hey, where we're at with that weekly goal, this is called keeping your foot on the gas. This is called making sure they feel a bit of pressure, by the way, in those goals, in those tasks we have to do every week to hit our quarterly goals are things I have to do as a leader of the business. And by making it public, I'm putting pressure on myself to lead by example. I can't ask people to do something and work under pressure if I am not willing to do it myself. I have to go first as a leader. Now, we really like to push the envelope as much as possible without obviously burning out our team. But sometimes when you do this, you don't always hit your deadlines, and that's okay. This is like the saying, if you shoot for the moon, if you miss, you land amongst the stars. Which means if you miss a deadline, you miss it by a day or two. That's okay. It's better than not having any pressure and any deadline and not really producing great work in a timely manner. I can't tell you how many amazing things we've innovated over the years with this technology type of mentality, with this type of practice in our team, we've also solved some really tough problems because of that pressure. Now, what you want to do with your team, no matter what position they're in, they're an engineer, they're a designer, they're a copywriter, they're a customer support agent, they're an ea. It doesn't matter. On a regular basis, you can apply a little bit of pressure by extending their skill set, meaning you're going to give them tasks that are a little bit outside their comfort zone, something they've never done before, something that really stretches their role a little bit. So say, for example, it could be something as simple as getting one of your customer service agents to present to your entire team how they use your latest customer service software. This stretches them a little bit. It makes them feel like, okay, I'm doing things a little bit outside of my scope of my job description, but I am pushing myself to become better than I was yesterday by doing something different. We have a front end engineer that learned an entire new programming language to improve our software and became an absolute wizard because he took it upon himself to put himself under that pressure and say, hey, I'm going to be the expert in this language now. And that came from cultivating this type of culture in our company. Of course, I don't want to take all the credit. Evgeny, who is our engineer who did this, took the initiative and actually got it done. If you have a copywriter, if somebody's writing copy for your website and your email newsletters and things like that, a stretch goal or task or project could be writing an ebook, getting it published, putting it out in the world and making it your calling card for your company again. These projects have deadlines, they have timelines, they have goals. And it keeps the pressure. Now, the pressure that is supportive, that helps them get to their goals, doesn't happen by accident. You have to monitor their progress. You have to check in on them, if not on an everyday basis, then at least on a weekly basis. What's going on with this? Syncing up with them, holding them accountable, that's what keeps the pressure going. Now. You can't be under pressure at all times. We'd like to release the pressure valve every so often in our business at least four times a year. So after a big release or launch or feature that we just shared with the world, we like to release the valve, all right, where we have a little bit of downtime, no deadlines. We work on other tasks like improvements, and this lasts about a week or two. We like to do this during the holidays. We like to do this during, you know, maybe leading up to a holiday so that it's go, go, go pressure release, be proud of your work, celebrate your wins, and then let's talk about what's the next project. Then the pressure builds up again.

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To wrap up today's lesson, Controlled pressure on yourself and on your team is a very powerful thing that can help you exceed your goals. Take your business to the next level. Now. This inherently will happen when you're starting your business. You're hitting the ground running, you're really pushing, pushing, pushing. You have the tendency to put your foot off the gas when things start to kind of get better, when things start to get comfortable, meaning that you're paying your bills and you're making a profit and you'll start to lean back a little bit. This is when these types of practices are even more important. Because in business and in life, there's no stasis, right? There's either growth or there is decay. So make sure you're always growing. One thing I want to stress is you have to make time to celebrate and praise your team when you hit your milestones. Okay? Pressure is one thing and it can help people bring out the best in themselves. But they need to be rewarded, they need to be praised, they need to be recognized for that accomplishment. This is confirmation that their efforts were not ignored, that their efforts count, that they are significant to the success of your business. This also includes yourself. So treat yourself when you do pull off something great in your business. Thanks so much for listening to the $100 MBA show. If you love what you hear, hit, subscribe so you don't miss an episode. Before I go, I want to leave you with this. As your business starts to grow and your team starts to grow, you start adopting this culture amongst your managers so your department managers where they understand that they to toe the line, they need to hold people accountable and make sure everybody's singing from the same song sheet during your cycles. In the beginning I was doing all the management of pressure. I was doing all the praising, I was doing all the celebration for them, I was doing all the goal settings and breaking it down into micro goals. I still kind of do to an extent on a high level. But as your team starts to grow, you have to pass that on to your other managers so that they can continue to reinforce these messages in your team even when you're not around, even when you're not available. So you put out the big picture goals and then it gets broken down into micro goals for each department by each manager. Thank you so much for listening and I'll check you in tomorrow's episode Q and A Wednesday I'll see you then. Take care.

Is it time to reimagine your future? The right business skills may make a difference in your career. At Capella University, we offer a relevant education that's designed to focus on what you need to know in the business world. We'll teach professional skills to help you pursue your goals like business management, strategic planning and effective communication. And you can apply these skills right away. A different future is closer than you think with Capella University. Learn more at Capella. Eduardo.