A Facebook post by dear friend & mentor, Becky Robinson, caught my eye this week. Her post said: “My girls haven’t colored much this summer. Yesterday, I bought a new box of crayons. They’ve been coloring nonstop. If I had known that was all it would take, I would have bought them a new box of crayons sooner.”
What a fabulous picture Becky paints! I can just see her girls, at the kitchen table, coloring up a storm – some inside the lines (and some not)! AND the vital idea Becky raises is a critical one for leaders to consider. Her girls didn’t miss coloring this summer until the crayons were RIGHT IN FRONT OF THEM. Leaders, you pay attention to what’s RIGHT IN FRONT OF YOU. Lesson: Always put the right stuff in front of you.
What Do You Pay Attention To?
In my work with senior leaders and executive teams across a wide variety of industries, one of the most important questions I ask is to learn what those leaders pay attention to. Most of them tell me that they spend most of their time looking at performance indicators – usually in the form of summaries of key metrics, sometimes from spreadsheets, sometimes from other dashboard tools.
Monitoring performance metrics is a GOOD THING. Yet sometimes internal systems present metrics that are EASY for us to monitor but aren’t the RIGHT things for us to monitor.
Here’s an example. A few years ago a printing plant client installed a new $20M high-technology press which could deliver speeds of 50,000 impressions an hour. The dashboard built into the press software kept careful track of impressions per hour.
However, if the color scheme was off by just 2%, the printed matter would not meet their customer’s standards. The press’ dashboard did not monitor color requirements perfectly – only a human could do that.
A run of one million pages/impressions wasn’t uncommon. Every job was easy to monitor with the dashboard metrics. Systems and incentives were created to meet a certain target of average impressions per hour. Yet if the color balance was off, the job would have to be run again (creating waste and higher costs for the job)! It was vital to monitor – and incent – both impressions per hour AND adherence to the customer’s color palette.
You can see that what is EASY to measure might not give you an accurate full picture of reality.
Here’s What Leaders Must Pay Attention To
- Strategic Clarity – leaders must constantly assess how well their organization’s strategy is understood across operations staff. Communication and reinforcement of the declared strategy will lead to clear understanding by all staff.
- Goal Alignment – Once strategic clarity is reached, leaders must constantly assess the degree to which projects, goals, tasks are aligned to your organization’s declared strategy.
- Expectations Clarity – Next, leaders must ensure that everyone in the organization has formalized ends goals (performance standards) and means goals (values defined in behavioral terms). In addition, leaders must ensure that all staff proactively commit to their performance and values goals.
- Consistent Accountability – leaders must hold all staff accountable, day in and day out, for meeting performance expectations and values expectations. Accountability means the prompt application of POSITIVE consequences (when folks do the right things the right way) and NEGATIVE consequences (when they don’t).
Change Your Habits
Every leader can improve their team’s performance and their values-alignment by changing what they pay attention to. Leaders, please let us know how your team responds to your new focus in the comments section below.
Today’s post comes from Chris Edmonds, who has been a great friend and support to the entire Bud to Boss team. Chris is a speaker, author, and senior consultant with the Ken Blanchard Companies. He’s the co-author of Leading at a Higher Level and author of the upcoming #CORPORATE CULTURE tweet. Connect with Chris on Twitter or LinkedIn, like his fan page on Facebook, and check out his blog for more great content about leadership and culture. Don’t forget to download your FREE excerpt of his new book, #CORPORATE CULTURE tweet?
Leave a Reply