Right Attitudes

Ideas for Impact

Performance Management

Never Skip Those 1-1 Meetings

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The weekly 1-1 meeting with direct reports is usually the first casualty of managerial overload. A few email exchanges or ad hoc encounters aren’t a reliable alternative for the open line of communication set forth by a regular 1-1 meeting, especially if an employee needs a problem addressed or priorities adjusted in changing situations.

Idea for Impact: Keep your commitment to do whatever is feasible to preserve your 1-1s with direct reports—in both schedule and content—even if it means having an abbreviated meeting or adjourning to later in the week.

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How to Lead Sustainable Change: Vision v Results

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In the Drucker Foundation’s Leader to Leader (1999,) Harvard Business School professor John Kotter proposes one of my favorite visuals on the essence of noticeable results that bear witness to a leader’s vision of change:

This illustration encapsulates why some organizational change initiatives succeed while others never get off the ground or break down after a while. Kotter observes,

Results and vision can be plotted on a matrix that has four dimensions. Poor results and weak vision spell sure trouble for any organization. Good short-term results with a weak vision satisfy many organizations—for a while. A compelling vision that produces few results usually is abandoned. Only good short-term results with an effective, aligned vision offer a high probability of sustained success.

Idea for Impact: The only way a leader can produce a well-paced, sustainable, and transformational change is by mobilizing the people around her to appreciate the benefits for them in her vision of the desired future. Ongoing results oblige visibility into progress and will catalyze the organization’s commitments.

Read Kotter’s Leading Change (1996,) an influential missive on change management.

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  4. Don’t Reward A While Hoping for B
  5. Eight Ways to Keep Your Star Employees Around

Direction + Autonomy = Engagement

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The best way to achieve results as a manager is to give your team clear objectives and then allow them to approach the tasks in whatever manner that makes sense. You can suggest deadlines, schedule check-in appointments, and make yourself available for questions. People tend to take more pride in their work when they aren’t micro-managed. Delegate results when you can and interfere only when you must.

Observe the strengths and weaknesses of each employee and assign tasks based on what will allow each individual to thrive. When employees feel invested in a task, whether because they volunteered for it or because it employs their strengths, they are more likely to take ownership of their work and excel on the project. Have faith in your employees’ ingenuity and give them much latitude in how they do things.

Idea for Impact: Often, the most potent motivator for employees isn’t money—it’s the opportunity to learn, expand responsibilities, contribute and gain appreciation, and be recognized for achievements.

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  2. A Guide to Your First Management Role // Book Summary of Julie Zhuo’s ‘The Making of a Manager’
  3. General Electric’s Jack Welch Identifies Four Types of Managers
  4. How to Manage Overqualified Employees
  5. Leaders Need to Be Strong and Avoid Instilling Fear

Employee Surveys: Asking for Feedback is Not Enough

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Nothing undermines employee trust faster than inviting employees to provide feedback about their work experience and then not following up.

Don’t take the employee satisfaction survey results at face value. Don’t discount the importance of the findings by brushing them off, “the data were what we expected” or “there were no real surprises here.”

Show that you’ve listened to what employees are saying. Initiate strategic conversations with selected employees and explore critical issues in more depth. Establish cross-functional teams to react to the survey’s findings. Let the team consist primarily of non-senior employees. A senior manager could sponsor and support—not manage—the team and see an action plan through.

Idea for Impact: Employee surveys, focus groups, and discussions that don’t change how an organization functions ultimately undermine employees’ faith that their leaders really care what the employees think. Close the communication loop.

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  4. Are Layoffs Your Best Strategy Now?
  5. Can’t Ban Political Talk at Work

Don’t Over-Measure and Under-Prioritize

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There’s a difference between what you can measure and what you must prioritize.

If you let the data drive the process, you’ll end up with an abundance of metrics that you don’t really know what to do with. Don’t build metrics based on what is easy to measure instead of measuring what matters.

While you might want to track many metrics, you need to prioritize a few of them—just the ones that matter most for your team. Start with strategic goals, and frame the data collection and analysis around those goals. Be clear about these goals in your internal communications.

Idea for Impact: The more you measure, the less prioritized you can be. Don’t fall into the trap of trying to measure everything. Focus on developing reliable metrics and models that consistently link the data to your team’s performance. Measure what matters.

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  3. Numbers Games: Summary of The Tyranny of Metrics by Jerry Muller
  4. Incentives Matter
  5. Rewards and Incentives Can Backfire

Why Sandbagging Your Goals Kills Productivity

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Sandbagging is managers believing they can accomplish more if they lower the bar and set goals their team can easily hit. Sure, managers often purposely set comfortable goals so that there’s room for “under-promise and over-deliver.”

Setting low goals may appear a clever strategy, but it’s a recipe for underperformance. Sandbagged goals don’t demand much in the way of performance when managers already know precisely how their teams will achieve the goals.

However, sandbagging can let teams down. Under-setting goals actually does what it’s created to avoid—teams eventually find such easy goals boring and demotivating. Low goals require little and inspire less, and ultimately undercut productivity. According to this study by Chancellor University’s Steve Kerr and Douglas Lepelley, when goals are fixed “too low, people often achieve them, but subsequent motivation and energy levels typically flag, and the goals are usually not exceeded by very much.”

Idea for Impact: To generate the greatest levels of effort and performance, set demanding goals outside your team’s comfort zone, but not so challenging and unattainable as to break your team’s morale. Aiming to achieve extraordinary things—hitting the farthest target and missing—can often be more worthwhile than successfully hitting a easy target.

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  4. Goal-Setting for Managers: Set Tough but Achievable Challenges
  5. Don’t Reward A While Hoping for B

Employee Engagement: Show Them How They Make a Difference

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The sure-fire way to assist employees find meaning and fulfillment at work is to get them to have even a small interaction with people who directly benefit from the work they’re doing.

One research showed that radiologists developed a stronger sense of the significance of their work if a photo of the patient were attached to an X-ray. “It enhanced their effort and accuracy, yielding 12% increases in the length of their reports and 46% improvement in diagnostic findings.” Radiologists typically don’t interact with patients directly—they work in the background providing interpretation services to other doctors.

Idea for Impact: People are inspired less by what they do and more by WHY

How people see themselves and their meaning and purpose in this world may be the most significant incentive of all.

Empower your employees, especially those that aren’t on the frontlines, with direct reminders of task significance. Invite next-down-the-line customers (virtually or in-person) to share meaningful insights, give appreciation, and share feedback. Promote regular dialogue with customers to help stay relevant and become responsive to customer issues as they arise.

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  3. A Sense of Urgency
  4. Treat Employees Like Volunteers
  5. Seven Easy Ways to Motivate Employees and Increase Productivity

The #1 Reason Why Employees Don’t Speak Up

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Notwithstanding management’s well-intended open-door policies, employees avoid voicing concerns when they don’t feel safe doing so. They think it’s more harmless to “duck and cover” than to speak up and help the organization.

Employees don’t want to jeopardize their jobs. They don’t want to be labeled troublemakers and alienate themselves from co-workers and supervisors. In some cases, employees’ fears may not be of immediate retaliation but instead a deferred reckoning that could upset their careers years down the line.

The self-preservation motive is so dominant that the perceived risks of speaking up are very personal and immediate to employees. In contrast, the potential benefits to the organization from sharing concerns seem distant and abstract.

Consequently employees often instinctively play it safe by keeping quiet. Often, they rationalize their implied compliance by saying that the concerns are none of their business—and wishing that somebody else would speak up.

Idea for Impact: The freedom to raise questions, concerns, and ideas is at the heart of an open organizational culture. Unless employees are convinced that they’ll be supported to do the right thing, they could hesitate to speak up and help remedy problems before they can blow up.

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  4. Why Incentives Backfire and How to Make Them Work: Summary of Uri Gneezy’s Mixed Signals
  5. A Sense of Urgency

How to Start a Hybrid-Remote Work Model

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As the pandemic subsides (at least for now,) many companies are summoning employees back to the office. Some companies are giving workers a combination of remote and co-located work.

To initiate a hybrid-remote model for your workplace, first reconstruct how your team gets its job done. Ask, “What activities can be remote?” instead of “what roles can be remote?”

Not every activity can be equally performed in a remote setting. Take into account the level of human and physical interaction needed for every task.

Consider breaking down business activities that were formerly bundled into a single job. Mix and match responsibilities and tasks in keeping with employee competencies and individual needs.

Every employee responds to work circumstances differently. Some employees are eager to return to work—especially if they’ve struggled with blurring home and office during the pandemic, or if they fear disadvantages such as a lack of visibility for promotions.

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Create a Diversity and Inclusion Policy

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The moral and business cases for diversity are well known—a diverse and inclusive workplace earns deeper trust and more commitment from their employees.

Having a diversity and inclusion policy is simply the right thing to do—leaders have to make their values and intentions clear.

As a company, you’re not legally required to have a written diversity and inclusion policy. Nevertheless, it’s a good idea to create and actively use one.

Diversity and inclusion are ongoing initiatives—not one-off training. (Sadly, diversity classes are sometimes just a tactic for reducing employee lawsuits.) A policy encourages your employees to treat others equally with civility and decency and helps managers value employees for their strengths.

In many discrimination claims, employers may have a defense if they can show that they took all reasonable steps to deter discrimination. A comprehensive policy and recent appropriate training can help employers distance themselves from liability for acts such as harassment by an individual perpetrator employed by your company.

A policy also demonstrates that your company takes its legal and moral responsibilities towards being a diverse and inclusive employer earnestly.

Idea for Impact: A strong diversity and inclusion policy can help your company embed good practices—not only across your organization but also throughout your supply chains, including the customers and the communities your company serves.

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  5. Seven Real Reasons Employees Disengage and Leave