FBO Tip of the Week: Team Chemistry-A Key Component of Contagious Company Culture, Part 2 of 3
/By John L. Enticknap and Ron R. Jackson
Aviation Business Strategies Group
In Part 1 of this series, we said a spirited and contagious company culture is essential in delivering a great customer service experience because it sets the tone and feeds the passion of the operation.
A key component of this type of culture is team chemistry. Good, athletic teams with winning cultures will often point to their internal chemistry as a factor for their success.
But where does good team chemistry come from? How does it take hold and why does it flourish in some companies and not in others?
Certainly, having the right combination of team members plays a big part. But perhaps more importantly is having the right management team in place that's been trained or knows intuitively how and when to nudge the ship in the right direction. It’s important to lead by example, set the tone, act and react consistently, and recognize and reinforce good behavior.
FBO management that has a team-oriented mindset will effectively infuse a healthy culture into the organization where it becomes infectious and adopted by the stakeholder employees.
Many companies try to impose repair for their internal culture problems by attempting to manipulate the behavior of their employees. Quick-fix gimmicks like providing monetary rewards or merchandise incentives may alter a behavior pattern in the short term, but the effects are often short lived and it doesn't take long for the same old habits to find their way back into the culture.
The remedy? Change the cultural mindset; cure the problem.
Changing the cultural mindset is a conscious decision and, yes, it can be done. In other words, the manager or management team first has to be able to recognize when there is an internal cultural problem. As mentioned in Part 1 of this series, an independently administered SWOT (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats) analysis will help determine what's working and what's not.
Then the management team has to be willing to adopt a cathartic or energizing process that involves all the employee stakeholders. When employees feel their opinions count, an adjustment in mindset takes place. They become more open to change.
Remember, it's not the chemistry of each individual team member that counts. What matters most is the team chemistry that thrives collectively and is managed wisely.
In our next blog post, we'll provide an example of an aviation company where team chemistry flows freely and is highly contagious.
About the bloggers:
John Enticknap has more than 35 years of aviation fueling and FBO services industry experience. Ron Jackson is co-founder of Aviation Business Strategies Group and president of The Jackson Group, a PR agency specializing in FBO marketing and customer service training. Visit the biography page or absggroup.com for more background.