The team's the limit

Not the sky. Although that may be what consultants will try and make you believe. In the end, the consultant will move on. If you need a consultant forever, then this is no longer a consultant but a fixed part of your organization (and expenses). So the consultant will move on. And leave you and your team behind. So the extent to which the processes, the culture or the knowledge will change following the consultant's intervention, depends on the team.

In my experience, a consultant hardly looks at the team in place. Typically, they will explain you all the great things that other companies out there achieve, the best practices, the state-of-the-art. And you'll be feeling pretty embarrassed that your organization has not yet achieved what everyone else out there has been doing for ages. Obviously all the other teams out there (and their leaders) are way ahead of you.

The consultant does not look at your team, and does not take into account how your team interacts and creates value for the organization. Of course, there will be a "change management" component included with the offer, with a great-looking gap analysis and a few training sessions. This analysis does not focus on the team or its members, their interactions and their experiences; it focuses on the processes, culture or knowledge (whatever the subject of the intervention is).

And that is why so many consultant interventions end up fizzling out or at the most do not deliver the black-and-white gains that were touted at the onset. An organization performs through its teams, not through the consultants that come in. Of course, consultants have their value in helping the organization move to the next level, and in bringing expertise and experience from other missions. But if your team is not the central part around which the change or improvement is built, then the disappointment (including frustration and finger-pointing) is guaranteed.

Fighting turnover ? Work your team.

There is no crisis in South-East Asia. Companies are growing and recruiting. Finding new staff is not a major issue, but keeping them is. Business leaders complain that employees have no loyalty to the company. And that is true to some extent: the era where people spent a whole career with a single employer is without a doubt behind us.

The old adage that employees join an organization because of the company’s reputation, and leave because of their direct boss, is also true in this part of the world. An employee who is put under (work) pressure or reprimanded for not performing, will think first about escaping the situation.  The issue the employee has with his or her boss will hardly be addressed in a direct way. There will be some gossip or anecdote-sharing with close friends in the company, but very few other alerts. Quite often the employee will just hand in the resignation notice and try to minimize the number of days he needs to stay around and face the boss (the one month notice period is rather theoretical !).

Yet in South-East Asia there is one more reason employees tend to stay with a company, despite a difficult relation with the boss. And that is their colleagues and team mates. This is very different from other cultures I have experience with. Thais for example can tolerate pretty well a so-so relationship with the boss (whom they will try to avoid as much as possible) as long as they can stay around with their friends.

Although turnover and employee engagement is a challenge for all companies doing business here, there is some comfort in knowing there is a real return in investing in your team’s overall coherence. Being friends at work is often seen in the West as superfluous and not relevant to the business. After all, in the office, work comes first. As a leader, let your team develop their office fun activities. Put your boss hat aside once in a while and participate. Your team can make the difference between the boss as boss and the boss as having fun with them. And it could just make the difference of someone deciding to stay after all.