Give your team what they truly need to succeed.
An important aspect of leadership is knowing when to give a team the answer you are looking for and when to let them provide the answer. There are certainly times when it is appropriate for a leader to instruct a team on how a piece of work should be done or what the solution needs to be for the problem to be addressed. Leaders naturally have more information than associates and that information may influence the how or the what for a particular part of the work. However, if “telling” is your predominant mode of operation, you are missing opportunities to identify the best solutions. You will empower your team and see better results by providing them with guardrails, structure, initial thoughts for their consideration, and well-defined goals and outcomes for the work than you will if you tell them how to do their jobs.
Outcomes describe success and provide the basis for explicitly measuring progress toward goals. They also provide a common purpose for the team and can motivate them to action when clearly aligned to vision and strategy. For example, a call center quality control team may be charged with the following goal and outcomes:
Goal: Improve quality control practices to increase speed and reduce errors
Outcome 1: 95% of Customer Service Representative (CSR) errors are prevented through new practices and technology
Outcome 2: Through reduced errors, CSRs spend less than 15% of their time on administrative and follow-up work (currently 28% of their time) and more time interacting with customers
Outcome 3: Reduction in quality control team sick days and call-offs by 3 days per associate per year
Leaders have two choices: tell the team how to achieve the outcomes above or ask them for options. Leaders who provide outcomes and empower the team to determine how to achieve them, create energy and focus. Allowing the team to determine how best to achieve success creates buy-in and ownership which, in turn, increases the feeling of being invested. Be the leader who elevates his thinking by focusing on outcomes and lets the experts on your team determine how to realize the outcomes rather than the manager who mandates how success is to be had. You will find yourself with greater results and a happier team than if you give them the answer and manage their activity.
If an outcome-centric mindset and delivery approach provides a better way of doing work, why is it not fully adopted across companies? Why is it difficult to embrace this approach? What’s in the way of making this improved approach a reality? There are many inhibitors: lack of trust (my team won’t make the right decisions if I’m not deeply involved), rules (real or perceived), and resistance to change, to name a few. For most people, though, it is simply easier to think about the activities required to perform work and to manage people while they perform those activities than it is to provide clear outcomes and measures and to free the team to decide the best solutions.
But there is another reason. Finance. Not to put too fine a point on it, but the way an organization’s financials are managed drives behavior. Most companies’ Finance organizations require business cases for capital investments, large and small. Business cases require an expense stream and a benefits stream. And for most organizations, it is easier to commit to expense reductions than it is to benefits. But to get to those two streams, there must be an understanding of the work to be done (the scope) to achieve those, the timing of the benefits (the schedule), and the expense of the effort (the cost). Many business cases are built based on the triple constraints and, therefore, the behavior of defining scope, schedule, and cost (with a base expectation for high quality) and doing everything humanly possible to stay within those while fighting the natural tendency to get everything in scope is perpetuated. Change business cases to describe goals and outcomes, time them to quarters or half years rather than individual dates, and set a maximum expense spend (i.e., achieving those outcomes is worth $X and no more, so do not go over that amount) and the team can execute with greater clarity. And with clarity comes speed and lower cost. The triple constraints are terrific for articulating what teams should optimize for. They are problematic, however, when they are used as the basis for business cases.
Share your thoughts below.
What makes you feel most empowered to do your best work? What behavior makes you feel burdened or unable to do your best?
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