Category Archives: Performance

Controlling the Future

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“We have the forecast,” Samuel said. “All on a spreadsheet. We know what we need to sell by the end of this quarter.”

I looked up, smiled. “Do you mean, you know what you hope for? Do you mean, based on your explanation for the shortfall last quarter? Or is this just a guess?”

“Well, none of those. It’s just what we believe the CEO would be happy with,” Samuel explained.

“It’s nice to have an agreed upon target,” I surmised, “but do you think it will just happen from the number on the sheet or are you going to make it happen? Do you think you have the power to intervene on what will happen?”

“We are going to try,” Samuel looked determined.

“What will happen, will happen,” I replied. “Are you prepared to intervene in what will happen?”

“I told you, we will put in our best effort.”

“And, what if your current best effort isn’t good enough? Are you prepared? Look, your forecast is a target, not a predictor. We don’t know what is going to happen, nor do we control it. We don’t control what customers do. We don’t control what our competitors do. We don’t control how our supply chain performs. The only thing we can do is to prepare for whatever may happen. So, when it does, and it will, we are prepared. What does that preparation look like?”

You Are Part of the Problem

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“You make it sound like the project failed, because it was our fault,” Roland pressed back. “The customer was being unreasonable.”

I held up my hand. “Stop,” I said. “Your customer came to you with a project. Projects are full of problems. They came to you for solutions. The first rule in being part of the solution is not to be part of the problem. Your explanation sounds eloquent, even reasonable, but your customer did not come to you for an explanation. Your explanation tells me more about you than it does about the project.”

Roland’s face turned glum. “So, we learned about the difficulty of the project, the time pressure of the deadlines, the negative demeanor of the customer. You said we missed something in our post-mortem.”

“What you missed,” I continued, “was your own contribution to the problem. You knew the complexity in the project, but mis-estimated your team’s capability to deal with the complexity. You knew the time pressure, but did not know your team would mis-fire in the face of that pressure. You knew the customer was prone to anger, but did not prepare to manage expectations. These are the lessons your mistakes were trying to teach you. Until you face those lessons, your next project will see a similar outcome.”

Long Term Consequence

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“Clarity, competence, habits, conscientiousness. There’s more?” Mariana asked.

“I told you that making performance necessary was not a simple sleight of hand, or even a hat trick of three,” I said.  “The most powerful element of necessity is consequences. And, I am not talking about pizza for the team for a job well done. Necessity becomes a part of a person’s life.  Long term consequences. Over a decade, the difference in a person’s life has to do with clarity of aim, competence to perform, positive habits that build momentum and conscientiousness to persist toward the goal, in spite of obstacles. That difference is the consequence that matters in our quality of life.

“For you, as a leader, you must surround yourself, build your team with people who see performance as necessary. Not only for your goals, but for their own personal aspirations.”

Necessity Requires?

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“If I want to make high performance necessary, I have to be clear,” Mariana repeated. “And, I have to make that clarity understood. Not what I understand, but what my team understands.”

I smiled. “And there is more.”

“More?”

“More. You can make the performance standard clear, but the team may not have the competence to make it happen. Necessity requires competence. A team without competence, in spite of necessity, will never perform at standard. Necessity requires both clarity and competence.”

Mariana nodded. “And, if they are not competent?”

“You are the manager,” I replied. “If the team members are not competent, why did you pick them?”

“At the time, I didn’t know if they were competent. They looked competent, sounded competent. I thought they had potential, that’s why I picked them.”

“Competence starts with potential. You assembled the team. Then, what did you do?”

“Well, we started with training,” she explained.

“You described, you demonstrated, they tried, you coached, they tried again, they practiced, you tested, they practiced more. You put them through drills, pace and quality. Pace and quality, until you, as the manager were satisfied at their level of competence. Necessity requires both clarity and competence.”

Mariana sighed acceptance.

“And, there’s more.”

More Powerful Than Yelling

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“We missed our target,” Mariana complained. “Again, we missed our target.”

“How so?” I asked.

“There are just so many hours in the day, so many minutes in the hour. I just can’t get the results we hoped for,” she explained.

“You are not getting the performance you want because you have not made it necessary,” I said.

“What do you mean?” Mariana wanted to know.

“Raise your hand,” I continued. “Raise your hand as high as you can.”

Mariana was puzzled but complied.

“Now, raise it higher,” I smiled.

Her head dropped, but she raised her hand higher.

“So, why didn’t you raise your hand as high as you could, when I first asked?”

“I don’t know,” Mariana replied, still puzzled.

“You didn’t do it, because it was not necessary. I did not make it necessary for you to perform at that higher level.”

“So, to make performance necessary, high performance necessary, as a manager, what do I do? Yell at the team?”

“Yelling only works in the short term and is only practiced by parents who have no children. Parents who have children know that yelling does not work. Yelling does not create necessity. Necessity is much more powerful than yelling.” I nodded.

“So, how?” Mariana was curious. “If necessity is so powerful, how do we create necessity?”

“There are many ways,” I continued to nod. “Let me ask again. When I first asked you to raise your hand as high as possible, you thought you did, but you didn’t. Why not?”

“Well,” Mariana thought harder, “I thought you just wanted me to raise my hand high. I didn’t know you wanted me to stretch.”

“Part of necessity is clarity. Not clarity in my mind, but clarity in your mind. Clarity in the mind of the team. We cannot make something necessary unless the standards of performance are clearly perceived by the team.”

A New Year, A Resolution

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“I have my New Year’s resolutions,” Romo announced.

“Let me see,” I replied, taking the extended piece of paper.

“I limited the list to three,” he said. “Last year, I wrote down six and gave up on all of them within a month. Maybe I can focus a bit harder.”

“First, I commend you for writing these down,” I nodded. “Writing requires thinking. Why do you think last year’s resolutions were abandoned so quickly?”

“I don’t know. When I came up with them, they seemed easy enough to do, but, then life happened and the wheels came off.”

“The problem with resolutions is they seem to be something to do,” I replied.  “The way you write them, the way you speak them uses an old voice. If those resolutions were already within the person who wrote them, they would have been accomplished long ago. The change is not with something you do. The change is with who you are. Only a new person can accomplish the things on this list. It is a new year, who is the new you?”

Daily Grind and the Grand Scheme

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“They just don’t seem very motivated,” Rafael explained. “I try to give them a pep talk every once in a while, it seems to energize them for a day or so, but then it goes back to the same old grind. I mean, yes, the things we do are repeated day in and day out, so I can see it gets a bit boring. It contributes to turnover on the team. It even gets ME a little down at times.”

“Yes, the grind even infects upper management,” I replied. “Why do you think that is?”

“I told you, it’s the repetitive nature of what we do. Some days are busier than others, but at the end of the day, we just look forward to coming back the next day to do it over again.”

“You produce these products, day in and day out. What do these products do for your customers?” I knew the answer already, but Rafael had not made the connection.

“We manufacture safety products for the construction industry,” he said. “Perimeter flags, traffic cones, safety vests, hard hats. Not very glamorous stuff.”

“And, so you see your work as just an endless stream of orders that come in every day? One after another, day after day? One day like the day before?” I asked.

Rafael nodded. “Pretty much.”

“What if you shifted the way your team sees the work from an endless chain of events, to see the purpose for the products you crank out? When was the last time you took your crew out to a construction site to see the way your equipment is used? Or invited a safety manager from one of your customers to talk to your team about how important your products are and how much they rely on the quality of each piece?”

“Never,” Rafael sat back. “That sounds crazy. We can’t bus a manufacturing team to a construction site,” he explained.

“Really?” I nodded. “Most work is boring and monotonous if all we think about are the events of the day. The only way to truly understand the work is to understand its purpose, how it fits into the grand scheme. Nothing changes about the mechanical assembly of what you do. The only thing that changes is the way you see your impact on the world around you.”

Breakpoint

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“I know you want me to press my team, stress test my system,” Naomi agreed, “but what if they are simply not capable in that pressure?”

“When things are calm, wouldn’t now be a good time to find out?” I replied. “Identify the breaking point now, instead of after it is broken.”

Naomi looked reflective. “I can do that. I can run drills, like a sports team in practice. And, I know I am looking for the breaking point, but what about the wobbly point?”

“Capability is much like performance. The best indicator of performance is performance. The best indicator of capability is capability. And, the problems that must be solved, the decisions that must be made have to be within the capability of the team member. When you assign a decision to someone who does not possess the capability for the decision, what happens?”

“That’s easy. First they avoid the decision, deflect the decision, or find a scapegoat for when it inevitably fails,” Naomi said, without hesitation.

“There’s your wobble, that’s what you have to pay attention to.”

Ran Out of Gas

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“I haven’t heard from you in a while,” I said. “I assume it’s because everything is going swimmingly with your efficiency process.”

“Yes, yes,” Duncan replied. “I’ve been meaning to call you, but we have been so busy. Frankly, I was hesitant to call, because the efficiency process has stalled. But, we have been so busy that we haven’t been able to focus on our metrics. We haven’t even collected our metrics in over a month. If we want to look at our efficiency trends, we likely will have to start over.”

“What does your gut tell you?” I asked.

“My gut says we got a little busy one week and fell behind. Then we got busier and our metrics lost their priority. Now, we are so busy, the project is off the rails.”

“Do you see any connection between your busy-ness and the loss of focus on your efficiency project? There was a guy driving from Chicago to Florida, on a tight deadline. He ran out gas. Said he didn’t have time to stop to refuel.”

Best of Intention

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The intention to become a high performance company, or the intention to become a high performance team will not attract high performers. It may attract curiosity. It may attract attention to your attempts, but you will not receive commendations for trying.

The only measure of performance is performance.

You will only attract high performers when you are in a state of high performance. And, that starts with you. Yoda says, “Do or do not, there is no TRY.”