Being a leader, you are likely aware of the objectives vagueness syndrome. Some two thirds of the team members of most teams seem to forever not get their objectives and priorities properly sorted on any given week.
In my consulting work I witness this syndrome on an almost daily basis, which is why The Monday Brief is a fundamental management practice with which those I coach are tasked with early in the process.
One of your key tasks as a leader/manager is to ensure that at any given point in time, those you lead are crystal clear regarding their current objective. This, of course, starts with how crystal clear you are regarding your key weekly objective(s).
If the following habit is not part of your management repertoire, you may want to consider its integration, to then be adhered to ‘religiously’, with no ‘ifs’ and ‘buts’. Should you happen to be one of those that, for whatever reason, think that this key practice is not relevant to your situation, thing again: What is your current degree of certainty that those you lead are in the same page regarding the weekly deliverables?
On Monday morning, hold a stand-up meeting or video/teleconference, where every team member hears themselves stating in front of you and their team-mates what output they are self-tasked to deliver by Friday. Come the end of the week, they then get back to you and each other to debrief how it went, how much is achieved and what is carried over to next week if incomplete.
When people operate in a team scenario, there is a critical inter-dependence in the context of timing: If I do not deliver in time, it slows down the whole operation. The weekly tasking clarity opens the way for people to ask more readily for help, cooperate and be forth-coming regarding timing challenges.
In launching a rocket to space, a half percent error means reaching the wrong galaxy. It’s the same with how you launch into the week. Your task is to make sure that every team member is crystal clear about what their weekly task is – individually and together.
Over time, this simple practice brings many benefits, developmentally and to the bottom and top lines.
90% of success is achieved by getting the simple things right
David Gommé
World Copyright 2018© David Gommé
Wow that was odd. I just wrote an extremely long comment but
after I clicked submit my comment didn’t appear. Grrrr…
well I’m not writing all that over again. Anyhow, just wanted
to say wonderful blog!
As always, so simple, yet so hard because we get so caught up in ourselves. I really like the idea of the accountability in front of the Team. Nice read.