Businesses with greater clarity and direction always have a better chance of thriving in any economy. Here are five decisions you can make to give you greater clarity and direction:

1. Decide to focus on your best customers. Make all internal decisions with your best customers in mind. Your best customers hold the key to brand loyalty. Uncover who they are. This can take great effort—and a whole lot of listening, but this special group represents the key to your long-term profitability.
2. Decide to focus on building a highly functional team. Patrick Lencioni’s The Five Dysfunctions of a Team will help you identify the roadblocks inherent in team building and show you how to break through them.
3. Decide to grow from within. A company with a strong culture has a significant competitive advantage (just ask Google, Apple, Zappos or Netflix). Cultivate an inspiring work environment that breeds a unique culture aligned with core values. Remember: Your business’s culture reflects the overall image your brand represents to your customers.
4. Decide to be the best at something. This decision requires sacrifice and focus. Jim Collin’s Hedge Hog concept is a good one. Find the intersection of the answers to these three questions:  (1) What are you passionate about? (2) What can you be the best at? And (3) What drives your economic engine?
5. Decide on a more compelling future for your organization to rally around. Obsessive focus on your competitors will consistently deteriorate your business. And simply achieving your revenue goals isn’t going to inspire anyone. Zappos is striving to deliver happiness to its customers. What is your organization committed to creating or becoming?

Any one of these powerful decisions can transform your business, but they are not mutually exclusive. Want to ensure success and catapult your business into a new stratosphere of long-term profitability? Commit to all five of these powerful decisions.

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What does it take to be a world-class team member? What qualities must you possess to help contribute to and support your collective?

1) Results-Driven

You are driven by a larger vision—an end picture bigger than your own personal objectives. You keep the team’s objective in mind at all times and work diligently towards its achievement.

2) Accountability

You are accountable for your actions and responsibilities and you hold your teammates accountable for theirs. Your high level of accountability gives your team members certainty that you’ll get your part done.

3) Empathy

You are aware of your own feelings and the feelings of your teammates. You aren’t overly sensitive and you don’t engage in office politics, but you are aware of what’s not said, which deepens your connection and ability to communicate openly with your teammates.

4) Integrity

You uphold a high personal standard. You are honest, open and trust-worthy. You don’t play mind games. You do what you think is best for the team and the greater good.

5) Humility

You are confident in character and grounded with humility. You are not afraid to ask for help, admit ignorance or say you don’t understand. Humility is the universal trait of creative genius as it brings the willingness to grow.

6) Supportive

You are supportive of your team members. You find ways to uplift, inspire and honor them. In serving your team members, you serve yourself and the team.

7) Willingness

You are willing to go above and beyond what is expected of you. You serve as a role model for the rest of the team and inspire a deeper level of commitment within the team.

All seven of these attributes represent areas of growth and discovery for each of us. You might excel at certain attributes and be deficient in others, but by becoming aware of each of them, you can constantly grow in your abilities as a world-class team member.

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So why should you go through the labor of building an effective team?

Here are seven reasons to embark on this worthy journey:

Reason #1: Effective teams achieve better results. Fully functional teams drive toward compelling objectives and make them happen. Put simply, effective teams provide your organization with the ultimate competitive advantage. (This is reason enough!)

Reason #2: Effective teams create a more enjoyable workplace. We spend a large percentage of our lives at work. A more pleasurable vocation leads to a more enjoyable life. Executives on high-functioning teams enjoy working with and uplifting each other.

Reason #3: Effective teams conduct engaging and productive meetings. Meetings demand the majority of the executive’s time, but meetings are often a waste of time. Able to engage in spirited dialogue without a fear of conflict, effective teams creatively move toward a desired goal, leading to more productive meetings.

Reason #4: Effective teams increase morale. An effective team has many of the qualities of a harmonious family. With the genuine drive to support one another, effective teams stick together even in difficult times (both personal challenges and down economies).

Reason #5: Effective teams are more creative. Curtailing a lot of the bureaucratic nonsense that impedes many major corporations (think posturing and office politics), effective teams are more likely to innovate and arrive at more creative solution to industry problems.

Reason #6: Effective teams facilitate greater job security. As each team member works toward a shared vision, each executive strives to give his or her best work. When the team wins, the business wins.

Reason #7: Effective teams improve personal performance. In an open and honest environment, team members playfully challenge and keep each other accountable. Effective teams inspire the best in each of us. Increased performance is its own reward but also tends to provide financial benefits in the future.

Yes, building effective teams is difficult, but the personal and professional rewards for cultivating an effective team are beyond measure.

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