Intentions
“One of the great mistakes is to judge policies and programs by their intentions rather than their results” –Milton Friedman
I read the above quote by Milton Friedman, a 20th Century economist, early this morning. Though the quote focuses mostly on political, social, and economic programs, I found it particularly enlightening from a business and team sense.
Far from supplying a long diatribe of instances where my intentions and results matched or where they were horribly mismatched, I’m mostly interested in the process by which intentions manufacture results. What kinds of practices incubate a great intention and turn that intention into a satisfactory or excellent result? Below are some simple suggestions:
Communicate
Many an initiative has died a slow death without the nourishing oxygen of communication. Countless books, articles, and blogs speak to its importance, and for good reason. In my experience, communicating the intention is only half the battle. The leader must communicate the process or system by which the strategy will be implemented and accounted. Who is responsible for what? How will it be done? This leads to the next ingredient:
Be Accountable
If our intentions our pure, as we all hope they are, then our activities should be just as pure. If a new manager intends to conduct a great performance review of one of her direct reports, she had better follow through and prepare (and then hold) an excellent performance review. If a new coach wants to instill a more disciplined culture into his team, he had better set aside time in practice for drills that create discipline.
Face Reality
When a leader or manager has communicated the strategy and followed through on the implementation activities, he or she has approached the most difficult phase: determine if the plan and actions are working. Facing reality can be fraught with discomfort. Nobody wants to feel or be viewed as a failure. However, if we’re serious about turning our grandiose intentions into great results, we’ve got to be serious about examining the results of our activities and making changes where necessary.
What tools or processes do you use to turn your best intentions into your best results?
Dealing with Reality
In several management books I’ve recently read, the authors uniformly discuss the importance of “dealing with reality.”
For one reason or another, every organization left to its own devices will distort reality in some way. The reasons for this are many, and may include a mistaken assessment of the market for a new product, unwillingness to acknowledge mistakes, or simply being bogged down by day-to-day minutiae that prevents big-picture realization.
On the surface, it seems pretty self-evident that effective decisions are formed upon the foundation of effective information. Intuitively, most understand this. The real trick, then, is to implement tools and activities that help us overcome our natural distortions on reality.
So, what tools do you use to best identify and confront reality? Here are a few I’ve found effective in our own organization:
One-on-One Meetings. At least twice a month, every manager meets with his or her direct report to see how things are going, learn where the organization and individuals can improve, and set goals for the improvement. These meetings help to build stronger relationships, reduce communication barriers, and identify how policies and procedures are actually affecting the work force.
Accountability Meetings. Each week, we hold a 15-minute accountability meeting aimed at reviewing whether our activities are affecting our most important goals. We commit to high-impact tasks, and are accountable for their completion. If the completed activities fail to move the overall goal, we know that we need to change our attack.
Customer Surveys. After each completed job, we send a survey to our customer to learn how our services were received from the customer’s perception. These surveys have unmasked some issues we didn’t even know we had in our processes, and led us to change for the better.
What tools or activities do you use to make sure your organization is “dealing with reality?”
Lucky enough to have problems
“When we encounter problems on the job, we must realize that we are there primarily to solve problems.” –Zig Ziglar
I had a little piece of self-reflection last week as I reviewed some situations in which I become frustrated. I realized that I really don’t like ambiguity. That’s a nice way of saying I really don’t like problems. I’d rather everything work smoothly, predictably, and easily.
But that’s not how life works, and it’s certainly not how business works. Check out the above quote from Zig Ziglar. Virtually every job requires a problem to be solved, whether it be a predictable, recurring problem, or unforeseen problems.
A couple months ago, Andrew Thorn taught me an interesting lesson about problems. Paraphrasing, he said something to this effect:
Identify a problem that someone has. Develop a way to solve that problem. Finally, find someone who will write a check for solving that problem.
Makes sense, right? I’m currently reading a book written by a former executive of several Fortune 500 companies. As he shares his “war stories,” I’m absolutely amazed by the size and scale of the issues those executive-level employees deal with on a daily basis. It stands to reason that the larger the problem needing solving, the larger the compensation for solving that problem.
Beyond the fact that we need problems to solve so as to get paid, solving problems is a regular exercise that helps us grow into more capable individuals and teams. The most obvious example of this would be learning to ride a bike. As a 5-year-old, removal of training wheels can be a traumatic experience. Years later, riding a two-wheeled bike is not even considered an issue. By facing and overcoming our problem, we expand our capability to deal with more complex challenges.
Think back to some of your greatest challenges five years ago. What have you done to put them in your rearview mirror?
Consider the challenges you are facing right now. What will you do to put your present challenges behind you?
Examining Leadership 