We were recently asked by a cost manager, “What should I do with a key player on my value analysis team who has no interest in being involved in their team’s cost management efforts?” What do you do to change negative behavior of your value analysis team leaders and team members? Here are seven steps that we recommend to bring about positive behavior in these situations:

1. Mandate that the team leader or member be actively involved in your value analysis process or their performance review will be affected by their negative behavior.

2. Communicate what your expectations are from them as a team member (e.g., be present at all meetings, be an active participant in discussions, follow through on work assignments, coach other team members when they need help, etc.) to ensure they have a clear understanding of what they need to do to improve their performance.

3. Reward any positive behavior that you observe with compliments, praise, and letters of appreciation to reinforce this positive behavior.

4. Train and retrain these individuals in the areas that they are weak in, such as, meeting management, project management, value analysis techniques, etc., so there are no excuses for their poor performance.

5. Support these team members by being available for questions and mentoring, and give encouragement to sustain their positive behavior.

6. Monitor these players by observing their behavior and meeting with them frequently to ask them what progress they are making, whether they believe their behavior is changing, and how you can help.

7. Take action if, after you have taken these steps, you have determined that the team leader or team member can’t or won’t change their behavior. You must then retire them from your value analysis team and replace them with an individual that can and will grow in a value analysis team environment.

The typical response when faced with negative behavior of value analysis team leaders and team members is to ignore the behavior and hope that by some magical process these individuals will somehow change on their own. This response is doomed to fail, because only those players who are eager to change will change.

Players who are inflexible, incompetent, or undisciplined will only pull your value analysis team down to their level of ineptitude, as opposed to raising the level of performance of your team to the next level. So for this reason, always be prepared to take immediate action when you observe negative behavior of your team leaders or team members, because the empirical evidence is quite clear that individuals won’t change by themselves without intervention from you or your management team.