The Real Reason Your Team Is Dropping the Ball (And How to Fix It)

If you've got team members consistently focusing on the wrong things, overstepping boundaries, or underperforming, I've got bad news for you. It's not their fault. It's yours, and that's because you haven't made their role clear. In the early days at Ramsey, one of my good friends, Dan Miller, taught me a concept called key results areas, KRAs. In a sense, it's a job description, but it's more of a metric to tell if you're winning. Today, one of my leaders, John Falcons, is going to walk you through exactly how we use KRAs in my business and how it can work on any team no matter the size. Thanks, Dave. If you've ever felt frustration where a team member just didn't seem to get it, you're not alone. But the problem usually isn't that they don't care. It's that they're confused. They don't know what they're actually responsible for, what they should be focusing on, or what winning looks like in their role. So they stay busy, but they're not always effective. And when roles are unclear, it creates more problems for everyone. But one tool we've implemented at Ramsey that's made a huge difference in solving this problem is a KRA. That stands for key results area. It's basically an outcome focused job description. KRAs provide a clear definition of how to win in a role. They remove the guesswork for both the team member and the leaders. A brief comparison is a job description equals tasks and inputs. A KRA equals results and outputs. So what does this actually look like? Well, let's do an example. For title, we might say sales leader. Then we have the summary. This is why the role exists. This should be outcomes based not task based. For our example, for a sales leader, their KRA summary might be having a motivated team. Next are the key results areas. This is a list of two to four areas of responsibility in a few words. These are the big things they'll focus on. For our example, maybe it's maintain a personal book of business. Next up is what winning looks like. This defines success in clear terms. One sentence is enough. Maybe this is consistently meeting personal revenue and crushing goals. Don't be afraid to put actual numbers in here if that's helpful. And last, what it's gonna take. Under each winning statement, list three to five actions needed to succeed in that area. Keep it simple. Maybe it's maintain high call activity, nurture strategic partnerships, or have a high close rate. Alright. Just like that, we've got the first draft of a KRA. Your next step is to sit down with each team member and walk through their KRA to make sure they understand it. If this is a new role, you'll get their feedback on what needs to be added, deleted, or clarified. But if this is an established role, you can just walk them through it to make sure they …