640 | How to Prevent Team Drift: Keeping Everyone Aligned with Your Vision

Does your team seem busy but disconnected? Are you repeating the same things over and over, wondering if anyone's really listening?

In today's episode, we are talking about how to prevent team drift and how to keep everyone aligned, engaged, and moving forward with purpose. That is coming up next.

Welcome to the Chris LoCurto Show, where we discuss leadership and life and discover that business is what you do, not who you are.

Welcome to the show, folks. I hope you're having a fabulous day wherever you are. Today we are talking about something subtle but critical for every business owner, every business leader, everyone. And that is Team Drift.

Now, what is Team Drift?

It's when people lose focus. It's when communication breaks down. It's when you feel like you've said something a dozen times but nobody's changing. So you'll hear it in vague priorities, you'll see it in missed expectations.

And if you're not paying attention, you'll wake up one day and realize your team is running in different directions. We call this the shotgun approach.

Recently we had a client tell us, I feel like I'm saying the right things, but nothing sticks. My team nods, but then just goes back to doing what they've always done. So if that's you, I want you to know you are not alone.

So many leaders deal with this. This happens to even the best teams, but you don't have to stay there. You don't have to stay stuck in this situation.

So let's dig into the reasons teams drift and five ways to re anchor your people to the vision and culture that makes your business thrive.

Vision Leaks—So Recast It Relentlessly (00:01:59)

So number one, vision leaks. So you've got to recast it relentlessly. Casting vision isn't a one and done task.

I know it seems like it should be, hey, guys, we're going that direction and that's all you have to say. And then everybody's just going to remember that because their whole entire life revolves around your vision, the company's vision.

It does not. It leaks. It gets away from them. They if you're not consistently telling them, even weekly, you can do this.

So we have our staff meeting every single Monday and we're always talking about, you know, what's coming up or what's going on or what are we focusing on?

And we continue to recast vision in our own staff meeting. It's so funny that you don't even think about it anymore. It just happens consistently.

This is what we're working on. Here's what's coming up. This is what's happening with our new Launch. This is what's happening with these events. It's a consistent drumbeat of this is where we are headed. Right?

Even talking about stuff that's happening a year from now, focusing on our bigger events, whatever it is, stuff that we are doing to prepare the business move and all that kind of stuff, physical move, that is all of that is something that we talk about on a consistent basis.

Why? Because people forget. Priorities shift in people's minds.

New hires don't catch it by osmosis. If you're not saying it, you may have told it to everybody else, but what makes you think the new hires are going to get it?

So if you're not regularly repeating the vision and tying it to real work, it's going to leak out, it's going to be forgotten. People are going to move on.

I always like to ask the question when we're doing something like a strap plan. If I go, we're sitting here at this table with this leadership team.

If I go back to your business while you stay here and I ask somebody what's the vision of the company, can they tell me, can they tell me what destination we're heading to next?

So something you may do. We've coached many businesses to have like a vision snapshot so that every, I don't know, we do Monday morning meetings.

Whenever you do your meetings, which you should be doing meetings, you take two minutes, reconnect the week's work. So here's what you guys are going to do this week and here's how this ties into our long term vision.

And I would also, how does it tie into your mission, your purpose for existence? Right. But here's where we're headed. Here's what you're going to be doing, here's how it ties in.

I can tell you within 30 days you will see the morale of the team start to shift because they're not just showing up to a job, they actually have a purpose.

They know what the purpose is, they know what direction they're heading in and they know how what they are doing aligns with that. That's another thing that we do all the time. As we talk about, we brag on the team about how things that they're doing.

You know, we will share customer testimonies and it's like, guys, this is what you're doing because you're doing what you're doing in your role.

This, this, this, this is how this happens and this is how we're affecting clients and their, their companies and their team members and their families. As well.

So don't wait for retreats to talk about vision. You know, don't wait for special occasions.

Reinforce it in team meetings, you know, one on ones, performance reviews, strategic decisions, whatever it is, help people to know this is where we are headed.

Define the Culture—And Keep It Visible (00:05:28)

Number two, define the culture and keep it visible. Now, I am not saying put your culture up on a plaque on a wall somewhere and just hope that everybody walks by it and reads it every single day and commits it to memory.

That's not what I'm talking about. Drift happens when your culture becomes assumed instead of lived. So you can't expect people to reflect the culture if it's not clear, if they're not clear on what it actually looks like.

So what I mean is, if you're assuming that everybody knows the culture and everybody's walking it out, then you can't expect it to happen.

Especially as you grow, your team needs to know what's normal, what's not, what gets celebrated, what is bad, what should we not be doing? What gets good? Consequences. What gets bad, bad consequences.

So if you're just assuming that your culture is happening because you said it once, because you put it up on a plaque or something, then I can promise you you're going to be really disappointed when you find out that people are going against your culture.

You have to teach it. You have to teach it. You have to show them what's right. You have to show them what's wrong.

You have to call out and celebrate what is right, and you have to call out and give consequences for what's wrong, what's bad, what we don't want to have happen. These are things you need to do. Some of you need to force culture into your business.

You know, maybe you've got a bad culture where you are right now. Maybe you've had enough outside people come into the business as new team members and they're slowly changing culture.

Well, what are you going to do about that? You need to adjust that. You need to change that. You may have to force what. What you want culture to be, which means that you may actually have, you know, some casualties from this.

If you have a culture running amok, then you probably have a person or two that doesn't need to be in that business right now, Right?

So you've got to make sure that team members know exactly what culture is supposed to look like, what you expect of them, what are your core values? You know, what are the things that we celebrate, what are the things that we give consequences for?

You know, what are those things that new team members need to learn and hear over and over again. And how do they see it lived out?

If they, if they hear you talking about culture in a staff meeting, but then they never see you recognize it. You never talk about when somebody's doing good culture, you never talk about when somebody's doing bad culture.

And I'm obviously don't call somebody out in a team meeting, but just, you know, some of the things that may be happening that goes against culture, you can talk about that vaguely enough and people will get the idea.

Right, Right. Without pointing out who's doing it. So if I don't actually see it lived out, I don't know. I don't know if it actually exists. I don't know if it's happening.

So something that's a, a, a common thing you will find with a lot of business owners is that as you grow, especially if you grow rapidly, what you'll probably find is that some of your new hires will be undermining your culture.

Right? It's not out of rebellion, it's not out of, you know, malice, but because no one defined the expectations. Nobody created a cultural playbook.

You know, this is what it looks like. When you do and you align team members to that cultural playbook, then you will find they'll stop undermining your business or undermining your culture.

If they don't, then part of your culture should be, if you don't fit the culture, don't let the door hit you where the good lord splits you.

Right? So help them to see and understand. And you will be pleasantly surprised when people stop undermining your company's culture. So define key cultural behaviors.

What do you want to see? Then you have to model it. You have to celebrate it. You have to, you know, you have to correct it, you have to recognize it, all of that, and then you have to repeat it.

Put all that in place to make sure that you have a strong culture happening inside of your business.

Create Rhythms That Keep People Grounded (00:09:39)

Number three, create rhythms that keep people grounded. Now, consistency is the antidote to drift. It really is. You need rituals of alignment.

You need regular meetings, you need regular check ins, you need communication cadences. You need to keep everybody on the same page. This stuff needs to happen.

And I know there is a bunch of you out there that are listening to this, just going, oh, gosh, that's the last thing I want to do right now.

I get it. Sometimes you just wish that you could say something or walk something out or explain something and everybody just falls in line and everything goes Incredibly well.

But you have to realize there's a really good chance very few people take as much ownership for your team or for your business as you do, because they have other things going on in life as well.

So if you will continue to put things in place that keeps it top of mind, that keeps it consistent, then they can take as much ownership as you.

But you may be living in it, going, this is all I can think about is this is how this should happen and this should go, and, you know, what we're trying to accomplish and what we're doing, and yada, yada, yada, and yet it's not consistent enough for other folks.

So you need to create those rhythms for them to experience it. Right? So use weekly meeting cadence. And, you know, that includes team wins.

You know, what are your top priorities and why? Why do you have these priorities and what are they doing and how are they leading towards the. Our. Our strat plan, our, you know, our process that we're doing.

You know, review some KPIs and how well that they have gone and how well people have done. You know, do a quick tie back to the company's mission, the why, the purpose for existence.

Hey, guys, so and so did this over here. And this is how this fits into our mission. This is, you know, so and so did this. And that's a big part of our core values.

Be teaching it, be creating those opportunities, right? Tell them, share with them, celebrate with them, but point them back to the things that you want them to stay consistent about.

If you don't want the team to drift and you don't want to have to go through a whole process of trying to bring everybody back around again, then make sure that you're spending a small amount of time.

It doesn't have to be huge, it doesn't have to be a ton. It just needs to be enough that keeps them consistent.

And if you will do it on a consistent basis, then what you will see is your team will get synced, they will get aligned, they will blow you away with how well they will do with the very things that you expect.

But if your mindset is, I told you once, you should just have this, then you're probably going to find you're going to be disappointed a lot because that's not how they're going to operate.

So ask yourself, do we have weekly, monthly and quarterly rhythms that drive our unity, or are we just continuously reacting to fires? If you find yourself, we call it professional firefighters.

If you find that you or your team are professional firefighters, Then that's the only consistency is that you're consistently putting out fires.

And if fires are consistently popping up, that explains that we don't have good consistent rhythms on other things, other aspects of the business.

Like solving problems before they become fires, like doing processes with accountability, like making sure that we are going through career reviews and helping people to make better decisions and having tough conversations and all the things that we teach.

Guys, if we're not doing those things, then you cannot be surprised that your team drifts.

So if you will be consistent and it doesn't have to be an incredible amount of time, it just needs to be consistent, then you will be shocked at how well your team will do and how less drift you will get.

Address Mismatched Priorities and Silos Immediately (00:13:49)

Number four, address mismatched priorities and silos immediately.

Folks, many of you know you have silos, but a whole bunch of you have no clue that you have silos.

I will tell you, this is a, a very difficult part of running a business.

Well, successfully, you, you can be successful with silos, but I'm telling you, you are losing resources in a lot, a lot of places and you are creating frustration and stagnation and struggle and, and strife and, you know, different silo wars and all kinds of crap because you're not recognizing that we are not going in a unified laser focused direction.

Instead, we're in a shotgun approach. We're all going in different directions. What is a silo? A silo is a division, a department, an area of a company that's only focused on what they do.

Now some of you might hear that and go, what's wrong with that? Well, when I don't care about the rest of the company, I don't take part in making sure the rest of the company is successful.

Chris, I don't pay the people in that silo to do that. You should. At least the leader, at the bare minimum, the leader should be focused on, hey, we should be integrated.

Yes, we're doing what we do, but how do we make sure we are helping and not hurting other areas? How do we make sure that we're solving problems for other areas instead of just, you know, keeping our head down on what we are doing?

When you have silos, you are not. There is no way that you're going in a unified laser focused direction. You can't, because if you were, then there wouldn't be be silos in the first place.

You would have unity, you would have collaboration. You would have folks seeing things in other areas and helping them out and helping to solve problems and helping to you know, drive the entire team to.

Or company to success on these things. Drift creates friction between departments and leaders because departments and leaders are not focused on each other.

And I'm not saying that you got to stop doing what you're doing and then just go focus on some other area.

What I'm saying is, how do we integrate? How do we work together? You know that they do work together. They just probably don't work incredibly well together.

You've got sales and accounting that are admin that are battling with each other and struggling. You know, you've got different areas of your business that-- that are struggling with each other because they're not there.

Focused on how do I make this easier for that area, how do I solve things for them.

Nope. They're only focused on making sure that you're proud of what they are doing. And if that's the way you look at it, yep, I'm super excited about this department.

But this department over here sucks. Then guess what? Your-- Your leadership vision sucks because that's not how you should be running teams.

You need to destroy the silos and get people working together moving in the same direction. Again, I'm not saying everybody's got to spend half of their time focused on some other area.

How do we integrate the areas so that they're blessing each other and helping each other instead of creating areas where they just don't talk to each other or battle or struggle.

Right. So if your leadership team isn't aligned, guess what? It will show up in your staff. People will duplicate effort. They will miss deadlines.

They're going to pursue different goals, and it's because your leadership team is not aligned. Your leadership team is not unified. Now, as I say that, many of you are going, well, you're just wrong. Chris, I can hear you. How do I know you're saying that?

Because of all of the leadership teams that have sat at the strap plan table and were shocked to discover that this group of people that like each other and talk really well together weren't actually unified.

They're the kind of folks that. Oh, I'd take a bullet for the people around this table. Yes. But let me show you this, this, this, this, this, this, this. All these areas, you guys aren't working together well, but that's not my area.

Aha. And I will tell you, this year, we've done I don't know how many strap plans so far this year, and we got a bunch more to go. That has been a heavy emphasis. I've been teaching this for years.

But we've just finally made it a heavy emphasis of like we are going to help companies get this leadership team unified and focused on a laser focused team, you know, vision direction so that we solve things for the company, not just.

I'm going to sit here while Frank is giving his report on his area and man, that sounds like he's got some problems over there and that kind of sucks for him.

But I'm, I'm not even really listening because that's not my area.

One of the things that we've been helping is bringing leaders together and using the collective intelligence, taxing the collective intelligence to solve company problems, not just individual areas.

Listen to me, you want this.

Every, every StratPlan we've done this year, this has been a heavy emphasis where we are taking leadership teams and helping them to come together and make company decisions by taxing the collective intelligence and causing team members, leaders to care about each other and, and to look into that area and go, how can I help Sarah over there and how can I help John while he's doing what he's doing and what can, what information can I give?

And this isn't just on their shoulders and we're not just dumping this on them and go, hey, it's your responsibility to go make it happen.

Instead, as a leadership team, we're pulling together and this takes days for us to get a leadership team just to this place of understanding and focusing on it.

But it's been powerful of helping these teams go. It's our responsibility to solve sales. It's our responsibility to solve admin.

It's our responsibility to solve the PMs over there. It's our, we are going to solve this stuff and then the leader goes and leads it. But we come together as a leadership team and we solve.

So when you're not unified, you will find, just ask, sit down at your next leadership team meeting and ask, hey, what's our biggest priority this quarter?

Just go around the room, have everybody write it down, say, hey, I want you to write this down.

Write down what our biggest priority is this quarter and then have them read it off and see if everybody has the same exact priority.

Keep in mind it's a company that we are running, not a bunch of silos.

So if you discover which you're going to, that there are different priorities and you know from different areas, then you have a big red flag. We have silos.

If they all came up with the same answer, then ask them this question, how are you guys working together to execute this?

And then see what they say, because that's probably if by chance, I mean, it would be phenomenal if they came up with the same priority.

Maybe you pounded a priority, but then ask them, how are you guys working together to get to this outcome? That's where you're going to see a lot of breakdown.

So help them to discover they're not on the same page. I mean, help you to discover your team's not on the same page.

They are worried about their area and leading their area and not getting in trouble and not screwing something up. So definitely focus on realigning your leadership team regularly. If they're not unified, no one else in the company is going to be.

Invite Ownership, Not Just Agreement (00:22:19)

Number five, invite ownership, not just agreement.

So people don't drift because they disagree. They drift because they don't own the vision. So if you're just talking at your team, they might nod, but you're not going to get true engagement or ownership or buy in.

The key is to invite input. The key is to empower decisions and decision making and give, give people some skin in the game.

How much are you involving them in the vision, in the decision making process and having ownership in what we're trying to accomplish? Right.

If you're not doing it, then you've got folks that hear you dictating to them what's going on and what's gonna happen and what they should do.

I always find it funny how many companies will go into their team, have a big team public meeting and tell them all the things we're gonna do and all the things that they need to get done.

And we need to get to this number over here and this, this, this, this, this. And nobody, nobody has been asked if they agree. Nobody's been asked, how are they, do they have the capacity to make this happen?

How are they going to make it happen? There's no great strategy for making this happen. It's just a, we got to get here, guys. Let's go, let's go. And some folks will jump on board.

You know, your D's and your eyes are probably going to step up a little bit more of going, well, let's take more risks. But your S's and C's, they're going to go, why? I'm doing everything I can do right now anyways.

What more could I do to change? They're not going to all of a sudden start changing that. And some of your eyes and D's won't do this either.

You know, you'll have different personality styles that are going to be, you're not telling me to do anything different.

So I guess the thing I need to do is just keep doing the same thing I'm doing over and over and over and over again and maybe I'll get to your amazing vision, your amazing, you know, outcome, your expectation.

So by driving this vision down into your team that has no interaction with them, no involvement with them, no encouragement, no getting input, no making them part of the decision making process, you've got no skin in the game, folks.

There's no ownership to this. There's no. You might have some buy in just by the pure fact that, well, I mean this is what I get paid to do, so I'll just keep doing.

But you're not going to have any ownership of that vision. You need to shift from a monologue to dialogue. You need to let your people kind of co create and contribute to the vision's implementation.

What does it look like in your area? What does it look like in your role? How can we do it? How much capacity do you have?

You know, I mean, obviously this is, there's a lot to this, but these are some pieces that you can plug in to try and make that vision stick.

How is the. Just take a look around the room. How is each individual going to make that vision happen? What are they going to do differently or do they just keep doing the same thing?

And if they keep doing the same thing, then you can't have a vision that stretches them out of where they currently are because it just isn't going to work. So make sure that you make this a dialogue.

Action Items (00:25:41)

All right, Some action items for all, all of this. And we've got some additional resources as well.

First off, recast the vision weekly if you can. Make it, do it in meetings, if you need to, in emails.

Do it in as a part of the decision making process. Make sure that you're clarifying and documenting your culture. And then teach it, train it, force it if you have to, recognize it, call it out, repeat it, make all of that happen.

Establish rhythms that reinforce alignment. Put things in place. Meetings, whether they're team meetings, weekly meetings, one on ones, whatever it is, do things to establish that rhythm that keeps people aligned.

Also ensure leadership is unified on priorities, on vision, on mission. If you don't, don't be surprised that you have silos going in. A shotgun approach.

Also create ways for your team to take ownership of the vision. If you don't involve them in it, don't be surprised that they don't take ownership.

Additional Resources (00:26:42)

So Additional Resources: Episode 494 | How To Help Your Team Own The Vision.

Now, in that episode, Brian and Jill take a stab at what it takes to develop a culture of community and commitment around the goals that you have set.

Conclusion (00:26:56)

So things you have to know: Team Drift doesn't mean you failed as a leader, but it is a sign that it's time to reengage, refocus and recast what matters the most.

Leadership is not about direction, folks. It's not just execution. If you want your team to run with clarity and unity, you have got to give them more than just tasks and direction.

It's not just go that way, it's help them to get there. You've got to give them purpose. You've got to give them vision. So if you need help diagnosing Drift or design a structure that creates alignment with, reach out to us.

That's what we do and we'd love to serve you. And if you want leadership support, we have got you on this. So join us. Join our leadership by text community.

And get clarity, confidence, and the occasional reminder that you're not crazy, you're just leading. Right?

You're trying to lead people. It's free, it's practical, and it takes 10 seconds. At chrislocurto.com just hit the banner at the top.

So until next time, lead with purpose.

Keep casting vision. Don't let drift define your culture. Well, folks, that is all the time that we have for today. I hope this has helped you immensely. Help us to help others.

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So as always, take this information. Change your leadership. Leadership. Change your business. Change your life. And join us on the next episode.