Your business hums along best when your direct reports are depressed and your colleagues focus solely on their silos of responsibility. Right? No one believes this. We cherish ideals like “I own it”, “I make a difference and so do you”, and “I innovate and inspire.” These ideals are designed to bring out the best from each of us both as individuals AND as a team.
This article briefly discusses some of the common corporate behaviors that sabotage and subvert our ability to live up to our ideals. Hopefully you’ll walk away from this article “inspired” with strategies to “make a difference” and avoid these destructive behaviors.
Thought Leader Frequently Missing Meetings
How many times have you been to a meeting where one of the key players (head of legal, your boss, your boss’s boss, etc.) didn’t show up? Everyone’s time is wasted. Four people in the room at $75 an hour for 30 minutes. That’s $150 burned each time it happens. But worse, these four people that did make the meeting, were told that they don’t matter. They “don’t make a difference”. Their time in aggregate and individually aren't worth even a moment of curtesy from the thought leader.
What about the missing thought leader? They likely have a very good reason for missing
- Overbooked his/her meetings.
- Been busy with a last minute M&A details
- Been called away to put out a fire
- Been overwhelmed with meeting fatigue
- Really doesn’t like you (hope this isn’t true; but who can tell from their behavior)
What should have happened
This is dead simple guys. If you aren’t going to make the meeting and you know it in advance, then send a leader a reschedule or cancellation request. IF you get dragged away before the meeting, and it becomes clear that you are not going to get free in time for the meeting, then you still need to call, or text the meeting leader or a second in command that you aren’t going to make it. Better your meeting colleagues waste 5 minutes than 30.
Got meeting fatigue? Schedule fewer meetings. Delegate projects and ask the leader to submit a 2-6 page narrative summary with ‘topic summary’, ‘solution summary’, and ‘next steps with owners’.
Failure to Delegate and the closely related problem of Failure to Disseminate Information
We touched on this with the last problem. Thought Leaders (Subject Matter experts, Leadership, etc.) typically have a hard time letting go of their ideas. After all, they are the ones who best understand the intricacies of what they have proposed. Who better to steer the ship than the captain most familiar with this new and strange port?
Unless you truly work in a room full of cats, you need to get past this mind set. Appoint a local project leader. Work with him/her to define an end goal or goals and a general strategy. They should report back to you at least weekly in writing and you should have a 15 minute meeting after you've had a chance to review the week's notes. Mind you, no more than 15 minutes. If you've got six projects, then schedule your 15 minute updates back to back. Don't slip. On the rare occasions that your presence is required (client meeting, etc.) go for it.
Finally, your teams must communicate. You'll need to encourage this. The more communication that occurs within and across your teams, the more productive and engaged your people will be.
Imagine you are a top level subject matter expert and you bring to the organization an external company that might be a valuable M&A target. Now imagine, you never hear back from the M&A team but later find out that your lead is being acquired. Clearly you will have made a difference ...but you're not going to feel like part of the team.
Not all information should be shared between projects whether they be M&A or product development. Some information is just too sensitive. But failure to communicate at least in broad terms denies your people the opportunity to drive innovation and develop synergies.
Whatever YOUR background is, some of your people will have a different background and will see alternate and sometimes better opportunities. Offer them the chance to "own it" so they feel like they "make a difference". Daily communication is the key to this.
So ask yourself "why aren't we doing this?"
Originally published on LinkedIn.
