by Ted Richards Click to listen to Ted Richards in conversation with Ray McLean from Leading Teams about how to build a winning culture and performance.
Usually on The Richards Report podcast, I discuss investing from a top-down, macro view (such as looking at asset classes like equities and other asset classes quite broadly). For this latest episode I thought it might be interesting to flip it around and get into a bit more detail at the micro level for discussion. In particular, when it comes to investing, what can help an individual business succeed or not?
To be honest, there’s a myriad of factors to consider in answering this question. You could write a whole book on this (and many have!). The specific area I focused on for the discussion was the important role that teamwork and culture can play in determining whether a business succeeds or not. As the saying goes, “A champion team will always beat a team of champions.”
For this episode, I spoke with Ray McLean, who is the founder of Leading Teams, a group of experienced facilitators that assists teams to lift their performance. You may be familiar with Ray, as he’s been very successful with some high-profile sporting teams over a few decades now. In fact, I first crossed paths with Ray around the end of 2005 when I joined the Sydney Swans from my previous AFL club, the Essendon Bombers.
Ray continues to work with many professional sporting teams, but these days about 80% of Leading Teams’ work is in the corporate area.
Ray defines culture as the accepted behaviour within a group, which also includes the behaviour you don’t accept. So if you can build your team around core values, and agree on the accepted behaviour, this will flow through to form the culture of the business.
Read more about Six Park’s investment philosophy.
In the podcast we also discuss two popular sporting documentaries – The Test (Amazon Prime) and The Last Dance (Netflix) – and the accepted behaviour these sporting teams allowed. While there are many differences between the two documentaries, they demonstrate the benefits of having alignment with key centres of influence. If your key centres aren’t aligned then a level of dysfunction and poor behaviour may be tolerated. As Ray mentions, when complacency creeps in, it doesn’t usually announce itself.
A lot of our conversation centres on sport, but he notes that there are many similarities between the sporting and corporate worlds. In particular, they’re both highly competitive and gaining just a small edge can make a big difference to the outcome.
In the sporting world it’s a given to have a team of coaches around you to help you succeed in a highly competitive environment. Over the course of my career I saw every day the benefits that professional coaching could provide to lift my performance. Investing is no different and professionals in this industry can help lift performance too, but in the past it’s been something that only the wealthy could afford. Investing is one of the most competitive industries there is, but many people have no option but to attempt to do it themselves.
The good news is that technology is now making professional investment advice much more affordable. Six Park has lowered its minimum investment to $5,000 until the end of August and we are also waiving three months of management fees for anyone who funds a new account by August 31. If you would like to find out how Six Park can set you up and manage your own globally diversified portfolio, it’s a great time get started.