Whether I am leading my church group, soccer team, family or a business unit worth tens of millions of dollars in sales, I’ve learned I am incapable of predicting the future. I know you are shocked – but I’m betting you can’t either. As a leader we can’t predict the future, but we can provide Clarity.
During my years in corporate I was often assigned to a business unit of restaurants that were struggling. My role was to improve operations, drive sales and profitability, and enhance the overall customer experience. With 40+ restaurants to a business unit, I understood it would be impossible to personally go into each restaurant often enough to be effective. I had to impact change through the leaders in those restaurants. But how?
I cannot predict the future, but I can provide clarity by making sure the team knows the answers to three simple questions:
What Results Do We Intend to Achieve? Why Do We Intend to Achieve These Results? How Does My Role Impact These Results?
What results do we intend to achieve? Corporate often handed down an annual plan, 5 columns or pillars wide and a page or two deep in tiny size 6 font with appending pages full of the details on executing in the field. The result was a “shotgun” approach, like throwing a pot of cooked spaghetti against the wall to see what sticks. Along the top of the page were a few goals like sales growth and profit, but there were no specific connections made between the actions below and the goals themselves. This is a major company that had been in business for decades. Stop! Complicated is your enemy, Clarity comes from Simplicity. Choose a couple priority actions and link them to specific results under the backdrop of integrity so everyone understands, “this is what we are going to do and we’re going to do it right.”
Stop! Complicated is your enemy, Clarity comes from Simplicity.
Why do we intend to achieve these results?
Each person needs to be clear on how they benefit from achieving the results. I’m sure compensation immediately comes to mind, but have you ever been in a situation where you are lagging in results – the pressure, the time commitment. When we are achieving our results, we are well on our way to higher compensation, but also, less time at work and certainly less pressure from those monitoring results.
How does my role impact results? Your success achieving the overall results will depend on how clear everyone is on how their role impacts results and how capable they are of fulfilling their role – training and hiring. In one or two sentences, you should be able to tell each person on the team how their role leads to intended results and they should be able to tell you the same. You’re always evaluating your team against this role, are they capable of fulfilling their role (did I hire right) and if so, do they have the training and tools they need to fulfill the role. If you hired the right person, trained them and provided them the resources they need. If they are clear on their role, there’s only one reason they wouldn’t be achieving the intended results, Them.