Vince Lombardi said “Leaders are made, they are not born. They are made by hard effort, which is the price which all of us must pay to achieve any goal that is worthwhile.” Peter Drucker, the management guru said “Effective leadership is not about making speeches or being liked; leadership is defined by results not attributes.” At the end of the day, it’s results that count. It’s leading a team to an important vision and then working with them to make that vision a reality.
A key to successfully delivering results is to have very clear desired outcomes. That however is not enough since you also need to map clear drivers of action that will lead to those targeted outcomes.
I’ve found that having a dashboard with the desired outcomes on the right hand side and the drivers that accomplish those outcomes on the left hand side is a very effective approach. If the drivers are accomplished but the outcomes don’t achieve your desired goals, then you need to modify your driver goals to accomplish your outcome goals.
Good drivers and outcomes need to be S.M.A.R.T.
S = Specific. You will want specific aspects of your process defined for the divers and specific product results or client satisfaction results from the process as the outcomes.
M = Measurable. Once the specific drivers and outcomes are defined, you will need to define the metrics to use and the measurable thresholds of success. I have found setting ranges for “green” (success), “yellow” (on the fringe of success) and “red” (not acceptable) is helpful to managing the process. When items fall from green to yellow, it’s a great trigger to inspect the process and fix what is needed to get back to green.
A = Achievable. The ranges that are set should be achievable. If they are unrealistic, then the dashboard has little value and can be demotivating to the team. I have found that setting realistic goals, and then as they are accomplished tweaking them to even better levels is a great way to proceed to ongoing process improvements.
R = Relevant. This especially applies to the dashboard drivers. They need to be actions that will really accomplish the desired outcomes. A good test of relevance is shown by the outcomes being green when the drivers are green. If the outcomes are not green when the drivers are green, you may have irrelevant drivers or you may have metric ranges that are not appropriate (they may be too loose) to accomplish the desired outcomes.
T = Time-bound. The metric thresholds need to have a time element involved. Productivity levels per period. No more than a specified number of error rates in a period. Profit margin for the quarter. Retention rate for the quarter.
Once you have the dashboard developed, schedule regular staff meetings to review the driver and outcome dashboard lights and adjust the process as needed to keep the outcomes green, leading to business success.
Delegate to accomplish the goals: Many people who start as specialists have a hard time moving into management roles because they are unwilling to give away their specialist tasks. A rule that I have found helpful is when a person is 80% as good as me at doing a task, I would give that task away to them. This is a great principle to help develop your team and also to free up your time to focus on the strategic and “non-urgent but important” aspects of leadership. I’ll share more on this in a future competency.
Set clear expectations for what you want them to accomplish and by when. Having a clear dashboard as described above is a great way to enforce accountability to your team. Leave the “how” up to them so they own their process and feel empowered.
Drive for continual improvement: continually tweak the outcome and driver ranges to continually improve the quality of the process and outcomes. Add new outcomes and drivers as the business product line evolves. We know the world is constantly changing and the competition never stops, so build into your team culture a mindset that continues to rework your process for ever improving quality and outcomes.
Remove barriers to innovation: A key role of a manager is to provide the needed resources to your team, but importantly it’s also to run interference to remove barriers to innovation and risk taking. Jim Collins writes about firing bullets and cannonballs as it relates to creating a culture of innovation: “First, you fire bullets (low-cost, low-risk, low-distraction experiments) to figure out what will work—calibrating your line of sight by taking small shots. Then, once you have empirical validation, you fire a cannonball (concentrating resources into a big bet) on the calibrated line of sight. Calibrated cannonballs correlate with outsized results; uncalibrated cannonballs correlate with disaster. The ability to turn small proven ideas (bullets) into huge hits (cannonballs) counts more than the sheer amount of pure innovation.”
Creating a team that accomplishes great results involves developing a dashboard with clear desired outcomes and drivers with SMART metrics, delegating with clarity to your team, and then creating a culture of continual improvement, risk taking and innovation.
