A better question for a better year
Two tools to help you focus on the "how" and a free course on time management that will give you 10 hours back every week
How you and your team experienced last year is equally if not more important than whether you achieved your goals. The answer to this question gives you a much needed barometer around something that not enough leaders focus on: the “how”.
How are we showing up? How are we working together? How did we achieve our objective? Was it sustainable? Can we do it again? Did it feel painful? Or did it feel like deep fun (i.e., solving really hard problems with people you admire)?
Ask yourself: how did you experience last year? KPIs aside. How did it feel? Now ask your team.
If you achieved your goals and it felt painful, the likelihood you’ll meet this year’s stretch goal is low. And if you do manage to do it, your team is going to be miserable. The experience of a year is the most important signal that can help you know it’s time to slow down and focus on the how.
Outside of the moral reason for doing this (i.e., bringing the joy back into work), there is also a very pragmatic reason. The “how” comes with a cost. $9 trillion to be exact. For many industries, the pandemic actually spurred growth, and growth oftentimes hide sins. Which is why McKinsey will often come to the rescue of the Fortune 500s and help “find efficiencies” (a.k.a., mass layoffs) in down years. What if, instead of culling the herd every few years, we did a better job of organizing the work and executing it together? It seems fairly straight-forward, but here’s the rub: it takes time. And most leaders I coach do not have an abundance of time.
But maybe your experience is different?
From what I’m seeing on the ground, teams are running hard and fast. So much so that they haven’t had a chance to slow down and ask themselves: Can we be doing this better? More efficiently? More effectively?
The answer is almost always yes. Why? Because the conditions around us change, people on teams change, the work itself changes. And when things around us change and we do not, there is disequilibrium.
What’s a leader to do?
Tool #1: Help your team focus on the “how”: I use a super simple “Start, Stop, Continue” exercise. Carve our two hours and give your team an opportunity to improve how they collaborate together.
Tool #2: Refresh your processes: How you did it last year probably isn’t how you should do it again this year. Identify something your team does regularly that is highly impactful for the business and also has room for improvement. For example, if you’re in Human Resources it might be onboarding new employees or if you’re in Sales, it might be around how we bring a new product to market. You can start with an audit of all you do and plot each thing on a 2x2:
Once you’ve identified the process that needs improvement, ask your team:
What is the problem we’re trying to solve?
What is one thing we can do differently to address that problem?
How might technology help us do this better?
How can we reduce complexity by 30%?
Finally, if you’ve gotten to this point and would love to try one of these, but can’t find the time, you’re in luck. Microsoft is making this LinkedIn Learning course by Dave Crenshaw available to everyone (a.k.a, free) for a limited time. Take this course and send it to everyone on your team to take it as well. You can book a conference room and take it together to make it more fun (and maybe order a pizza). He promises 10 hours back in your week. I can attest to this.
Don’t forget the how,
Steph