Building a Better Business Through People #6 of 11 Fundamental Truths

Fundamental Belief # 6 Every person must have a clear explanation of what success looks like in each respective role and for the business overall.

Communication is critical to the role of every leader in the business and the challenge as your  business grows will be to maintain the access and/or visibility of the shared vision for the employees across the business. Maintaining a shared vision will require leaders to communicate it clearly and often enough that employees feel part of it. The words will not be enough as communicating the shared vision is as essential as living it out in actions.

Relationship management skills become increasingly important in order for a manager to provide feedback communicated with care and respect. Ideally, real feedback in real time when possible and peer accountability is a wonderful component to a framework for accountability. This is built into communication forums and technology tools today but the face to face exchange strengthens it. Many can find their performance management process stuck in neutral and many employees feel their managers are unskilled at discussing performance let alone coaching to performance. Despite those two factors, not a single one of us can ignore that it is an important process that has the potential to motivate an employee to organizational objectives and keep them inspired on their own journey to excellence. Performance is only one factor to consider given the fact that talent development will be critical to the majority of businesses. Developmental potential and learning and development plans will begin to allow for strategic talent pipelines. A design initiative such as this is a collaborative process between functional experts and should build on revenue driving competency development. Ultimately, the make or buy equation with talent is unique to the talent pool, the turnover ratio as well as the lead time to establish competency. The emergency evolves as you hone in on your demand. Every employee should be able to identify how to plug themselves into the business. When done well it should build on what they excel in naturally and the definition of success should be reinforced each day, each week, each month, each quarter, and annually whenever possible. The identification of success should be readily available, simple to assimilate and ideally, objective. And if personal values are to align with business values, the framework for behaviors must also be developed and upheld. Without a clear definition of success, the objective can become vague and the culture will suffer.

I have a client that is a serial entrepreneur. I have found him to be extremely effective in his work. He has metrics for all transactions for his team and every employee tied to a revenue driving competency has a metric goal. Years into the business, we met and he was observing that the employees did not understand that the metric goal was in fact the expectation. This is a function of performance management. Expectations are not goals and thus should never be communicated as such. We were able to redesign his job descriptions to include indicators of effectiveness for not only competencies but also specific measurements. In addition, the metrics as well as the effectiveness definitions allowed for transparency on what is necessary to reach the next level of performance. An effective leader absolutely must establish the definition of success. The challenge presents itself when the roles are not revenue driving but rather support departments. This is common in sales organizations with administrative infrastructure. Correlating the effectiveness of those departments as they relate is an opportunity in inclusion and team performance and when it is overlooked, the crux of a functional structure takes hold and silos emerge.

Think about these two sentiments commonly rated in engagement surveys: “The purpose of my company makes me feel my job is important” and “I am clear on my organizations goals and future direction and the way in which I contribute to them.” Last but not least, help employees know how to express what they would hope to gain in experiences by communicating career advocacy. Aim to retain what you invest in and remember to identify not the best people, but the best people given their role, the team and the business need. If someone is failing every leader should ask them self, why? This is a critical exercise in self-evaluation as a manager of choice before moving immediately to a call for separation. True, circumstances can prevail but this question should always be part of the process.