teamwork

Focused action produces results

November 16, 2016 by Jan Leave a Comment

A strong orientation to action is one of the top ten characteristics of great leaders.

Action orientation is not as common a characteristic as you might think.

“Making an idea work is more difficult and more important than having the idea in the first place,” notes author and consultant Edward de Bono.

At many companies, there’s great eagerness and competition for being involved in new and intellectually engaging assignments. These may include deciding and designing how something will be done, such new products and services, or an entirely new division of a company.

When it comes time, though, for some of the every day, nitty-gritty aspects of turning the great potential of those possibilities into consistently bankable results…and ensuring that they continue to perform…enthusiasm may be harder to round up.

And yet, if you’re an action-oriented leader or a member of a team whose focused efforts yielded great results, there’s nothing quite like the thrill of that collective achievement.

That’s when the responsibility of leadership and the accountability for action is clearly worth the risk that the leadership role – and its need for sustained commitment to positive action – brings.

What works to move good ideas, great intentions and high potential into focused action that eventually produces tangible results?

“The most important and visible outcropping of the action bias in excellent companies is their willingness to try things out, to experiment,” note authors Thomas J. Peters and Robert H. Waterman, Jr.

Here’s the bottom line on those with an action orientation: they focus not on the ways things might go wrong, or the risks of the pursuit, or the blame they’ll lay if things go wrong.

They focus on the possibilities, the multiple ways they can get the job done. And then…sooner or later…they do.

They make their way persistently and creatively over, around or through any barrier they find.

That may involve creatively moving forward in ways they did not expect. It may involve changing the timing of their efforts. Or it may mean going back to square one, getting more information, and adjusting, adapting, refining the goal, and they way they hope to achieve it.

How to immediately make your team more effective

November 11, 2016 by Jan Leave a Comment

A problem-solving comment on Twitter one day gave me pause.

The writer said how much easier problem-solving is when people don’t “switch sides.”

“‘Taking sides’ on problem-solving teams. Interesting…and ripe for many problems,” I thought.

The primary cause for teams that are split into “sides” is, in all likelihood, the fact that they do not have a real, driving purpose and clear goals to unify them.

If they did, opposing sides would be unlikely to crop up, or it would be hard for the different “sides” to be sustained within the team.

A team’s shared and overriding purpose for existing – if strongly held by all – can be powerful enough to drive them over, around, or through any barriers or adversarial inclinations that threaten to split them, and prevent them from reaching their goal.

It brought back recollections of another dilemma that dogs many problem-solving teams.

It’s the me vs. we conflict and it can also block team progress, completely.

Here’s just one example of the me vs. we malady:

A few years ago I was working with a client to lead a team of about 45 people through a full-company self-assessment and improvement process. The team was comprised of seven subteams, each one focused on a specific part of the assessment.

After the initial training and team launch, six of the subteams were clipping along, getting their work done well, and enjoying (yes…it is possible!) the challenging, invigorating assessment experience and process.

The seventh subteam, however, was lagging, and clearly dragging.

I listened closely in their status meetings, trying to size up what was blocking their progress, and how we could get them caught up, and working as well as the other teams.

I realized one person in the troubled team never used the word, “we” in any circumstance relating to their shared goals, or the team.

Her focus was always on “me,” “I,” and “mine.”

At a subteam meeting one day, I decided to learn more about her way of thinking to see if I could turn things around for her and her group.

“What would it take for you to use the word ‘we?’” I asked her at some point in the discussion.

She stopped suddenly, surprised, even dazed, in a way.

The question was very simple, yet the discussion it led to turned out to be extremely valuable to her, and to the team she was on.

She hadn’t realized how much her participation on the team was half-hearted, uncommitted, in name only. It was as if she were standing on the edge of a pool, dressed for competition as part of the team, but she’d never jumped in…and maybe never intended to.

Or that her me vs. we perspective was hurting her work, that of her subteam, and of the full assessment team, too.

She’d thought she’d been playing her part, fulfilling her role, by getting her name on the team roster immediately, always being on time to team meetings, and consistently warming a seat. But that was about all.

The “What would it take for you to use the word ‘we?’” question led to some other realizations and breakthroughs for her and the team.

Soon, with a bit of reworking and commitment to their shared goals and team process, the once-troubled team started to develop traction, positive action, and to produce steady, solid results.

They ultimately finished their work very effectively…as I knew they could and would, eventually.

The full assessment team’s work was very successful…beyond their expectations…and up to mine.

They had to do the work to discover that they could.

Taking sides within a team, and a me/I/mine frame of mind show that a “team” is not yet a team…until they are united and driven by a common purpose and vision, as well as clear goals and team process.

The adversary you’re up against is, after all, often not so much another group, or point of view.

The real adversary? It’s the great consequences you share if you don’t figure out how to work together well to meet your shared purpose and goals.

And in any case, the most effective solution, when there are differences of opinion, often resides somewhere between the extremes that the two “sides” advocate.

So…again…find we, not just me, I and mine.

Review or refine and recommit to your shared purpose and goals.

By the way, if you’re wrestling now with a we vs. me challenge, or with different sides staring each other down on a team that’s not actually a team yet, know that you’re not alone.

Internal battles and ineffective processes affect many teams in business, government, sports, education and more.

If you know someone who may benefit from this story as they struggle with their own “my team is not really a team” challenge, please share this post with them.

Seven ways to delegate well

November 3, 2016 by Jan Leave a Comment

I’ll explain this photo in a moment.

Before I do, consider this common burden for many managers:

“What’s the hardest thing for me, at work? Delegation, definitely!”

Does that sound familiar?

I’ve heard this same frustration from entrepreneurs and managers at many companies during my career as a business consultant. It came up again at lunch with a couple of friends this past week.

How about you? Do you need to improve your ability – and comfort – with delegation, too?

Start with these ideas:

1. Be clear about the goal

Often, when you ask people what their goal is for a particular piece of work, or a project, they’re not exactly sure.

What they usually know with great certainty, however, is what they DON’T want.

You’ll improve the quality of work you delegate when you provide clear goals to the person who’s doing the work.

Make sure you know, too, whether you plan to delegate this work temporarily or permanently.

This may affect how you hand off the task.

For example, if you’re delegating the work permanently, you may need to do more training and followup than if you’re delegating the work for a one-time project.

2. Be selective about who you delegate the work to

The friend who was frustrated by recent attempts to delegate, even though she’s very experienced with delegation, believes she’s been trying to give them work that they don’t have the right skills to do.

She’s leading a team hired by a prior manager for jobs that have since changed.

“I give up! I’ve tried EVERYTHING!” she said as she described the situation.

Her team’s customers now require financial advice on business decisions they’re trying to make, in addition to the solid accounting support the team has always provided.

My friend has been trying to train and coach her employees to fill the expanded roles.

Coaching simply hasn’t worked.

If she were hiring now, she would screen for the skills her team currently needs, and skills they’re likely to need as their customers’ needs continue to change.

3. Set measures that focus attention and action

Decide how you’ll monitor the quality of the work you’re delegating. Then be ready to communicate those measures, and how you’ll use them, to the people doing the work.

In a simple, low-risk example of why this is important, our daughter, now a young adult, was about ten when she was helping organize the many colors of paper I needed for gift notepads I was creating for clients.

Anne normally works very carefully, and takes pride in doing very high quality work. I understood that she wanted to do the (frankly) boring task while she watched a TV show she liked.

When I checked the quality of her work soon after she started, I was surprised. Somehow, she was accidentally creasing some of the paper.

Before I corrected her approach, I asked myself if I’d given her the right instructions, resources, time and space to do the job right?

I had.

The one thing I had not done, I realized, was to let her know the quality standards for the work.

My customers, used to high quality work, would expect the same quality in gifts I gave them. That meant the paper…and soon, the notepads…needed to be crisp, the paper unbent, the work of gift quality.

And that meant that Anne needed to work more attentively.

She wasn’t happy, of course, that I needed her to start again, and to do the work more attentively. But we’d caught it early, and that was good.

Once she knew the quality standards and paid more attention, her work improved, as did her speed.

And, yes, it all worked with TV.

4. Communicate clearly

Communicating clearly is easy to advise, but can be deceptively hard to do.

Provide the following information, at a minimum, to the people doing the work for you:

Goals for the work (deadline, budget, and any other constraints)
Customers for the work
What successful completion of the work looks like to these customers
How you’ll monitor and assess the quality of the work
Instructions for doing the work, as necessary
Where people can get more information, if needed, while they work

Clarity and focus upfront helps prevent wasted time and rework – incorrect work that has to be done again – and hard feelings about it later.

5. Train as needed

If the person, or people, who will be doing the work have prior experience with it, they may need little training or supervision from you.

If they’re inexperienced, however, they may need detailed instructions, as well as regular feedback and coaching as they learn to do the work well, and build confidence with it.

And this leads me to the story about the photo I included with this post.

The photographer in this case was our son, Matt (who does photography and film work as part of his job and career). Now a young adult, he was about about four when he took this picture.

I’m the person who’s stretching and trying to reach Matt…and the camera. I was laughing as I tried to catch him, but also nervous that he might fall off the wall where he was running, snapping pictures as he ran.

(Anne and my husband, Gary, watch in the background with amusement and curiosity as they wait to see how this interaction will play out).

The picture makes me laugh now when I recall the moment.

Matt didn’t fall. He didn’t drop the camera. He got this amusing shot.

And in fact, letting him use my camera in the future…with training, and AFTER asking permission to do so…and then encouraging him to learn more through experiments and projects with a camera we bought for him when he was ready for it, turned out to be a good move.

It was a gradual process of delegated and self-directed learning and growth. We encouraged both our kids to learn by doing, and through experimentation and projects, in their own areas of interest.

It can be a very successful way to delegate work, as well.

Learning by doing, and through self-directed experiments, can be very successful, if the work you’re delegating is compatible with that approach.

6. Keep your team focused on your customers’ needs

In case there’s uncertainty or a debate about the quality standards for work you’ve delegated, use your customers’ requirements to find the answer.

In the example of my friend’s frustration with recent delegation attempts, her employees are proficient with what their customers used to need: timely and accurate accounting.

Their customers’ business requires more of them now, so the quality standards for their work continue to change, too.

7. Check in, follow up

Make time to check in periodically to see how the work you’ve delegated is going.

Be prepared to check in more frequently than you expect will be necessary, at least initially.

You may find that the people to whom you’ve delegated work have questions you did not expect.

Or there may be skills, knowledge, or confidence that they do not have yet, and which you need to help them grow.

That’s enough delegation advice for now.

These seven ideas give you plenty to work with if you’re trying to improve your delegation skills and confidence.

Practice, pay attention to what you’re learning, continue to improve.

You’ll find that delegation, once mastered, is an invaluable skill.

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teamwork