Track your progress
With strategy in place to move forward, the last step to merging the organization was to track their progress to make sure the strategy was actually getting implemented and people were actually working together.
“It’s not rocket science, but it’s hard work,” Holt says. “You have to get teams on both sides coordinated, sit down and go through the [planning] process and obviously include the client in on the discussion. It takes some time every day, and that’s why we track all of this, because we want to be moving the needle every day.”
Markham and Holt say it’s important to identify key indicators of success for your combined organization.
“You only track the performance of things you want to do well in, right?” Markham says. “You track it and celebrate it.”
He and Holt initially tracked how many referrals were made from one business to another. The initial numbers are just a starting point, so if he says he wants everyone to get one referral in the first half of the year, he can use how people perform to that to change goals.
“Everyone may get one done in January,” Markham says. “Well, then you know I’ve set the goals way too low — we can get 18 done a year. I’m just using those numbers — heck, it could be 1,800 is the right number, but you have to somehow get started, and then it will tell you what the market will bear. Then you can usually stretch that if there’s the time to put the focus on it.”
It’s important that after you set those initial indicators that you adjust your expectations quickly based on initial performance instead of just going with guessed numbers.
“Start with the facts, because a lot of times people just come up with these grandiose goals, and it’s like, ‘Where’d you get that number?’” Holt says. “One of the things we did was we went in there and said, ‘What is the number? Where are we? What’s a realistic number?’ and set a plan around there. What I’m giving you is the basics, but that’s what a lot of this is — we’re building a business around the basics.”
The numbers you track won’t lie. If you start to see the numbers flat-lining, it may indicate that you’re pushing your team too hard and it’s time to pull back a little on your goals.
“There were times when we could have pushed everybody to go a little bit faster, but the fact is, everyone shows up with a full day ahead of them,” Holt says. “You have to stage this, because one thing you cannot do is you can’t exhaust your team. There’s a lot going on, so you have to make this part of the routine, part of the culture. That takes time. You can’t just change a routine or culture in a week.”
But the numbers can also help you see if you have a problem with just one or a few individuals if everyone else is meeting his or her expectations and one person or team is not.
“Sit down and lay it out say, ‘Here’s what I’m seeing,’” Holt says. “Get their feedback on what’s working, what’s not, and if you’ve got a gap, you agree this is a gap, and you go about coming up with a process to close it. You’ve just got to do this on a constant basis.”
As employees get wins, that will also help bring around the people that aren’t meeting their goals or have poor attitudes, because they’ll be motivated by other people’s successes.
“You’re going to have some that are slower to adopt, but you know that going in, and you continue to coach, communicate, and they see you celebrating someone’s successful acquisition of a new opportunity, so they’re only hurting themselves,” Markham says. “Then you just repeat and repeat until done.”
It’s been more than two years since the merger, and Markham and Holt are both pleased with the results that their organizations have achieved.
“I won’t say anything has become routine, because every 15 minutes something new is happening, but this is starting to become more routine,” Holt says.
The teams are now working together so well that often Holt and Markham don’t even know about meetings that are occurring.
Markham says, “The bridges between all the businesses within the organization are getting built every day and getting stronger every day.”
How to reach: Bank of America, www.bankofamerica.com; Merrill Lynch, www.ml.com
