“A well run company is boring and quiet. Emergency and crisis have been planned for or addressed.” Peter Drucker
I’m not sure I completely agree with Mr. Drucker but there is a lot of truth to his observation. When we as leaders, owners, and managers create the environment where the team is empowered and clear on what they do, what they are responsible for, and the results they need to achieve, the machine can really run well. In 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, Stephen Covey challenges us to spend most of our time in Quadrant 2, Important but not Urgent. Important but not Urgent is the Proactive/ Planning quadrant. It is the sweet spot where we work on the things that our skill set and talent bring the most value and impact to the relationship, family, department, or organization.
When we as leaders, owners, and managers, work in our most productive areas and allow our team mates to work on their areas of biggest impact, it does create a team oriented, focused, empowered, accountable environment. Our team mates must also have the ownership and clarity to achieve the results we have empowered them to achieve. When we move out of our area into someone else’s area and try to suggest, dictate, control, influence and question their competence, then let the drama begin. That culture of micro managing, fear based, lack of trust and empowerment, creates a lack of ownership, creativity, and a once passionate team member that now has learned to wait to be instructed. Wait to try to solve. They wait to make suggestions. The fear based/ controlling/ lack of timely decisions culture, encourages waiting. Waiting allows and creates situations, that we should be anticipating and solving, to reach crises/ urgent/ emergency levels that need to be solved now. Super stressful, less profitable, less encouraging, less satisfying, way to do life or business.
We should be looking to our team to help us anticipate possible road blocks or challenges or change in relationships or results and to bring to our attention possible red flags and possible solutions to dodge or adjust before the crisis/ emergency is created. Meeting with them weekly to go over their metrics, find out what is working, what is not working and agreeing on how we can help them get the results we have asked them to achieve and that they want to achieve.
I taught a class recently at the Greater Atlanta Home Builders Association on “How to Grow as a Manager”. We started the class with the definition of what we as owners, leaders and manages are required to do to create great results through others. Our job/ task is: The work of creating and maintaining an environment in which people accomplish goals efficiently and effectively. So, the biggest struggle I see is that very difficult transition from Doer to Manager. Out task list should look different and our calendar should look different. It is difficult to move from doing a lot of stuff to creating and maintaining an environment. Jim Collins challenges us in leadership, owners and managers to “Ask 50% more questions than statements.” We want to ask questions to understand what is going on or what happened so we can address the environment that created the issue and improve the environment to help our team mates get better results.
I also recently read this statement from Patrick Lencioni, “Management is the act of aligning people’s actions, behaviors, and attitudes with the needs of the organization and making sure that little problems don’t become big ones.”
We can do this. You can do this! Let’s take 30 – 60 minutes in the next week to lock in on what we do that brings the most value to the situation/ organization and then look at those around us and identify the talent that can do some things better than us and empower them to own that. Make sure they understand what you are asking them to do, how they need to do it and what results we are expecting and then meet with them weekly to listen and see how things are going. Let’s move from Emergency. crises and drama to empowerment, productivity, team work, profitability and maybe even a little fun.
If you need help with this transition let’s set up a time to chat.