Prevent your team from making mistakes

A recent question from my client:

How do I stop my team from making stupid mistakes?

My response (paraphrased and shortened) was:

There are two things you need to keep in mind:

?? Clear expectations your team knows and understands. What exactly is expected of them, and what’s the “standard” of the performance?

?? Give them everything you can to succeed in meeting those expectations - SOPs, tools, training, communication etc

Once you have two of the above, only then can you EXPECT that performance and introduce consequences (like two strikes and out).

When you want people to "comply," you HAVE to give them context and help them understand the "spirit" and WHY they are doing what they're doing. They need to understand the bigger picture, the underlying strategy and the path we're taking. And they need to know how they'll be evaluated so that they can meet the standard. Because if only you know what your expectations are and the reasons behind the tasks, you will NOT get the best performance out of your team. You will get "button clickers" and not high-performing team members.

To illustrate the problem and how to fix it, here's a real-life "non-business" example...The above picture is from my building gym. The path to the patio area goes straight through the gym (yes, UX sucks, I know, whoever designed this wasn't thinking straight...). The patio was just opened for the first time ever (it's a brand new building).

A sign was put up to keep the path clear of equipment. But in reality, some sort of equipment is always there. Why? It's simple:

• Gym users don't understand the context of why no equipment shouldn't be there
• Without the context, they read the sign in a very narrow way - the area directly NEXT to the sign IS clear of equipment
• There was no communication on the expectations and introduction of this new "system" (that the gym equipment needs to be kept out of the pathway)

Communicate, be clear on expectations, give tools to achieve results, and draw consequences. In that order.