Unified Team - A business with a unified team is virtually unstoppable. Here's how to get there.

Mel Blackwell describes himself as a generalist. He has spent 35 years helping turn struggling businesses around. He’s worked in the software industry, the forest industry, the environmental laboratory testing industry, and many more. He’s worked with startups and billion-dollar organizations. Blackwell doesn’t claim to be an expert on any particular industry, but he is an expert on how to turn businesses that are in survival mode into business that are thriving. And now he’s taken those 35 years of experience with all different kinds of businesses and put the lessons into a book, called Uncommon Sense, designed to help any business become more successful.

“Especially in the Shooting, Hunting, and Outdoor industries, people get into business because they are passionate about what they’re doing,” Blackwell says. “But they don’t always have the business expertise to be successful.”

Blackwell explained that in any business, there are two types of visions – the Destination Vision and the How Journey.

“The Destination Vision is all about the where you want to go with your business and the why you want to go there,” he says. “The How Journey is the part that’s often overlooked, it’s all about how you’re going to get to where you want to be.”

Uncommon Sense provides a blueprint for that process – and it all starts with language.

“A unified team with shared, effective language is unstoppable,” Blackwell said. “Most struggling businesses have a scrambled language, they just don’t know it.”

Blackwell said that even businesses that are doing well might still be plagued with language problems that cause the culture to be fractured, the business to run into service issues, and create an environment where problems get pushed up, not down.

“It’s like an orchestra where you’re trying to get this beautiful sound from all these different sections of the business, but not everyone is playing on tune,” Blackwell says.

That’s where the unified vision and shared language that Blackwell discusses in his book comes into play.

“It starts at the top. I call it the shepherd. The shepherd can’t be a passive, timid person. A shepherd has to be powerful to protect the flock. The shepherd has to be the one who’s willing to jump out in front of any dangers in the business that come up,” Blackwell says.

The shepherd is also the one who has to get the entire business to speak the same language. To do that, everyone needs to know not just the where and why of the company’s direction, they also need to know the how. Blackwell said that starts with what he calls the “Best Pledge.”

“The first thing you have to do is get rid of the people who are working against you,” Blackwell says. “Then you go to every member of the team who’s on board and say, ‘I’m going to do the best work of my career, and I want you to pledge to do the same.’”

That’s the first step. The one that Blackwell said most dedicated employees are quick to accept. But then he follows it up with the next step of the pledge, which can often be a little more difficult for people to get behind, but is also the most transformative.

“Then I tell them that I’m going to commit to be the best version of myself, and I need them to do the same,” Blackwell says.

Blackwell says that second part carries over into all aspects of your employees’ lives – from how they interact with their family and community to how they treat their co-workers and themselves. And once every employee accepts that last pledge, that’s when the shift in the business begins to happen.

“It’s illogical for people who are being their worst selves to implement best practices,” Blackwell said. “But people who are being their best selves can accomplish anything.”

Blackwell defines this transformative process as the “self-selves-team-teams” progression. Just like the orchestra, if you can get each violinist to play his or her best, then you get the entire violin section to play their best. Next you get all the strings sections to play their best, and finally you get the entire orchestra playing its best. Self-selves-team-teams.

“That’s when it all comes together,” Blackwell says. “That’s where the beautiful music is made.”

Blackwell says there’s a natural and logical progression in this method which he calls the ‘What-How-When’ process.

“The What is all about what you want to do as a company. If you could do anything, what would it be? Then you start exploring How you’re going to do that. What is it going to take? Only after you have those two aspects solidified do you look at the When aspect – this is what turns the What and How into powerful forces that are going to propel your business forward.”

Blackwell says that the concepts such as this, which he outlines in the book, came to him throughout the course of his 35 years helping business, and he’s seen them successfully implemented in many different industries and many different sized business.

“It’s everything I’ve learned in the past 35 years,” he says. “I wrote this because I want to help more people than just the ones in the company I’m working for. I want to help as many people as I can. I want to be shepherding the shepherds.”

Uncommon Sense definitely accomplishes that goal because the wisdom in it applies to any businesses in any industry that might not be thriving. The book released March 3 and is available at https://mybook.to/UncommonSense.

“This book is for anyone who carries responsibility inside a business,” Blackwell says. “Whether you run the whole heard, or just a smaller part of it, you need a roadmap to protect what you’re building and keep your team together when the roof caves in.”