Category Archives: Teams

Of Competence

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“Where do I start?” Melanie asked. “I have things that I will ask my team to do. Each thing has a performance standard that is necessary. If you say the only measure of performance is performance, where do I start?”

“Before you put performance to the test, you must assess, take an inventory of your team. What are the things we examine when we look at performance?” I asked.

“First is competence,” Melanie replied. “If the team, and its members, are not competent, they will fall short.”

“And what is competence?” I pressed.

“Competence is a combination of capability and skill,” she nodded. “Capability is the cognitive ability to see the goal at some time in the future, organize the activity to get there and accommodate all the obstacles that may or not get in the way.”

“And skill?” I said.

“Skill is made of two things,” Melanie thought out loud. “There is always some technical knowledge that must be accounted for, but then practiced performance, over and over until the action is smooth, without friction.”

“So, competence is where you must start,” my turn to nod. “Is your team competent to accomplish the goal you have in mind, as the manager?”

The Measure of Performance

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“I don’t know what happened,” Bella said out loud. “We met, we planned, everyone had their role, we all committed with the best of intentions.”

“And?” I asked.

“And, the project failed,” she replied. “I mean, I have to give the team an A for effort, but at the end of the day, the project fell short, the customer was disappointed and we lost the rest of the contract.”

“So, you learned a valuable lesson,” I nodded.

“Yeah, what’s that?” Bella pushed back.

“That, of all the things we do, all of our planning, all of our training, all of our meetings, the only thing that matters is performance,” I said. “The best measure of performance is not a spectacular plan, or lofty intentions. The only measure of performance is performance.”

Trouble

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“One, right after another,” Charlotte flatly stated.

“I’ll give, what?” I asked.

“We solve one problem, three more pop up. We solve one of those and three more pop up. It’s no wonder our department is so far behind goal, we’ll never catch up,” she said. “Trouble always seem to find us.”

“Trouble is mostly a mental state,” I replied. “If you are a victim of trouble, you are correct. It will always find you. Trouble either grabs you by the throat, or you grab trouble by the throat. It’s all in the way you see it.”

The Same Problems Follow the Same People

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“As I look at my team,” Logan began, “the problems I see and the problems individual team members see are sometimes different.”

“When that difference exists, it clearly demonstrates the difference in your aim, your goal, and the goals of the individual team members. The goals you have will dictate the problems you have.”

“You know I have always wondered. There was someone who, during the job interview constantly complained about their former boss. At some point, they came very close to calling him an asshole. I didn’t hire that person. For some reason, I was certain that I would be the next asshole in that person’s life.”

Thinking, Talking, Doing

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“I’m a little disappointed with my team,” Jesse nodded, looking down.

“And?” I asked.

“We were in the meeting, talking about a new method in one step of our production. It’s way faster and prevents the defects we were seeing during that step. I know it seemed strange to the team, but they said they would trust me and do it the new way.”

“And?” I repeated.

“It was like we didn’t even have the meeting. They talk a good game, but what they say and what they do are different. I wish I knew what they were thinking.”

“Does it really matter what they were thinking. My guess is they were thinking you had a new way. They were thinking it seemed strange. But, they were thinking they trusted your new way. Thinking, even talking is no assurance of behavior. If you want insight into someone’s behavior, watch what they do.”

People Problems

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“People problems,” Sebastian shook his head. “It’s always people problems.”

I smiled. “Yes, you can think people create all your problems, AND they are also the only ones who can create your solutions.”

“So, I can have it both ways?” he chuckled.

I continued to smile. “The way you see your people will determine the problems that land in your lap, and whether those problems arrive with solutions attached. If people are only the source of your frustration, you will find only more problems. If people are also the source of your solutions, you will find inspiration and joy. You get to decide how you see your team.”

Learning From Mistakes

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“We got it,” Roland said. “This was very painful, to examine the sequence of events that caused our last project to fail. It cost us a lot of money, wasted energy and almost got us sued. But, I think we know how it happened. Expensive lesson.”

“So, you are trying to learn from your mistakes?” I replied with a question.

Roland nodded in agreement. “I think it is important, part of our debrief, a post-mortem.”

“It’s valuable to look at your mistakes,” my nod matched Roland’s nod. “What did you miss?”

“It’s a very tough client. They had an unreasonable timeline, very demanding, put us under a lot of pressure,” he replied, as if his team had been tortured.

“I assume you knew this client?” I stared. “I assume you looked at the project schedule, and agreed to it. You knew what the stakes were. These are NOT things you missed. What did you miss?”

“I was just trying to tell you why it was such a difficult project for us,” Roland pushed back. “Final analysis, I don’t think we missed anything.”

“People always tell me they learn from their mistakes. Mistakes are rarely that instructive. The reason we don’t learn from our mistakes is that we fail to examine our own contribution to the problem. You are going to have difficult customers, with unreasonable demands inside a high pressure project with tight deadlines. All of that was known before you signed the contract. What you missed, your failure in the project was not due to the project. The failure was your assessment of your internal capability, or lack of capability. Your contribution was that you ran out of talent.”

Management Panacea

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“I have a new team,” Alex announced. “We had a tough week. I think I may have thrown them into the deep end of the pool and just expected them to swim.”

“How so?” I asked.

“I know it was a complicated project, but it was the next project on the schedule, had to be done,” he described. “Lots of moving parts, a bit of coordination. Problem is, this new team didn’t even have the basic fundamentals down, much less the ability to sequence each step of the process.”

“And, your game plan?” I wanted to know.

“I was thinking about one of those team building programs, you know, get everybody to know each other. I hear good reviews for that type of activity.”

“Do you really think that’s the problem?” I shook my head. “You have a new team, no skills, no understanding, practically incompetent. No little program, no matter now popular, is a substitute for incompetence. That team building exercise may be useful down the road, but what would be a more important first step?”

Perfectly in Flow

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“My team struggled with this problem all last week,” Regina was almost giddy. “I took one look at it and knew exactly what to do. Like a pop up fly right into my glove. It’s really satisfying to solve a problem, almost by instinct.”

“You seem pleased,” I responded.

“Perfectly in flow,” she replied. “Athletes get like that sometimes, where the world slows down, they are one with the motion that perfectly connects.”

“And, your team? What of your team?”

“They were relieved. It was a really hard problem. They discovered the cause, and generated some alternative solutions. It was actually staring them in the face, but the real solution, the one that saved the day was the first part of one alternative connected with the back end of another. Honestly, I don’t know why they didn’t see it.”

“And, you, in flow, took their discovery away?”

Regina’s delight turned cold. “It’s not like I took candy from a baby,” she defended. “I solved a problem for them.”

“So, the next time your team struggles with a problem, what are they going to do? Who are they going to call on?”

Increasing Customer Service

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Regina was proud, “We just got an increase to my annual budget for my customer service team.”

If you engage with your customers through email, you can use various tools like timetoreply to improve response times instantly.

“Oh, really?” I replied.

“Yes. Two years ago, we had a small team and our customer service scores were 1-2 on a 5 point scale. Not good.”

“Okay,” I agreed.

“I spent a lot of time working on how we respond to the various glitches in our product and warranty claims. Turns out, there were five problems we had to deal with most often, so we trained hard on those.”

“And?” I nodded.

“And, our scores improved. I got the green light to hire ten percent more to the team. Last year, we actually won a customer service award, averaging 4.8 on our scores.” Regina was bursting with pride. “And, this year, I got the go-ahead to really ramp up the head count on my team.”

“Regina, did you ever have a conversation with your operations team to talk about the five things that created so much customer service traffic?”