You have a great team with the right skillset. You have given them all of the resources they've requested. They're working hard. They are meeting daily and you are getting progress reports and dashboards that indicate that they are making progress. You’re tempted to start sitting in on their meetings, just to see for yourself why it still seems like nothing is moving.
Because it’s been months, and you have nothing tangible to show for all their efforts.
Proceed with caution. You obviously don't want a failed project in your portfolio, but once you start micro-managing there is no going back...and that's a career killer. You can't maintain your strategic focus (also known as your job) if you are mired in the grind of tactical project work. Whether this is your intention or not, you will become the decision maker, the planner, the chock point before any action is taken. This will eat up your calendar, at the very least.
You were put in your position to provide strategic direction across your teams. Your value to your organization is not in your ability to micro-manage your people. Your value is in your ability to guide them into self-sufficiency and direct their efforts in strategic alignment with the company’s overall goals.
So then, what should you do?
The response at this point is typically to reach for something to “goose” performance. To look for some way to motivate your team into delivering something substantial. Motivation, however, is not always the issue. Efforts to spur and reward activity sometimes result in (among other things):
Aggressive delivery of “vaporware” or products that fail to respond to project criteria.
Editing data fields used to measure progress to boost the appearance of progress.
Team attrition as the pressure mounts.
Quick delivery of untested and unsustainable (and ultimately unusable) product.
Completed implementation into a resistant organization that fails to fully integrate the change.
Some of these results won't even be noted until a year or two post implementation, which means the return on the investment is retroactively negated and the failed implementation or completion has created increased resistance to what comes after it.
Before investing time, effort, and resources on techniques to motivate your team, you should focus some attention on making sure they really do have everything they need. You can give yourself a quick check with the following questions:
Is the task you’ve assigned even possible?
Really look at the project parameters. Have you approved a project design that the team has the skills and authority to execute? Is your team competing for the attention of key stakeholders in the organization? Is the project getting pushback from high levels of the organization? Is the timeline too aggressive to implement well? Is the budget sufficient to support the effort?
Take a fresh look at what you’re asking of them to make sure it’s actually manageable. Nothing dispirits a team quite as much as trying to deliver a project that is undeliverable.
Is your support of their work thorough and visible?
I've found that the expression “given enough rope to hang yourself” is used a lot when referring to leadership support. Make sure you aren’t the leader that assigns a project and then sits back to see if your team can prove it out. Your role is to get in there with them, provide guidance to keep them moving, remove obstacles as they come up and to visibly show powerful and consistent assurance to the entire organization that you intend to see this project into implementation.
Are they clear about what you need from them and why?
This is actually the most common reason teams fail to deliver against expectations…the expectations are not clear, and the leader has not connected their expectations to impacts.
Do you have pressure from above to show progress or dump the program? Tell them.
Do you have information that the timeline must be hit, or the program will get lost in the middle of something bigger and get deprioritized? Tell them.
Is there a critical executive stakeholder that is just waiting for the program to fail so that they can replace it with their own? Tell them.
If you share your motivations, your team is likely to rise to meet them.
Do you really know what your team needs from you?
This will likely require at least one face-to-face meeting with them, some preparation, and some patience. If it was easy for them to identify what they need and tell you, they would have already done it.
Here is some guidance to help you prepare:
Give them pre-work for the meeting.
Tell them why whatever they are working on is important.
Explain the precise challenge you are trying to resolve with the project.
Send them the questions you are going to ask them (start with a variation of the first three on this list).
Let them know what would make this a productive and successful meeting for you. What are your goals for the meeting? What does success look like?
Invite someone into the meeting to take notes for you so that you can focus on the conversation. And make sure you schedule enough time for it.
Meet with them and open the conversation. Try not to respond in real time to their requests. Use this as a time to gather input that you will evaluate and work through later.
Complete the meeting by letting them know that you will get back to them on everything discussed.
Have the note-taker send out the notes from the meeting to you and everyone involved in the meeting. After you review them, of course, and make notes in them on how you intend to handle.
How will you action those of their requests that are easy.
What's your plan for the more difficult ones that they’ve prioritized as important.
What's your response to the items that are just not actionable…be as specific and clear as possible as to why.
Depending on the complexity of your response you can either send an email with the following or schedule a follow up meeting to cover:
Actions you've already taken.
Rationale behind your inability to respond to the ones you can’t honor.
The plan for the ones that require more time to implement.
What you need from them going forward (for example):
Include specific milestone markers you have identified into their reporting and explanations of any impediments they encounter in executing.
Identification of specific instances or stakeholders for which they need additional “air cover” support from you.
Any additional information you need on an ongoing basis to support your planning on the longer lead items.
Whatever you need to support your visible support of their work up the leadership chain.
Making sure your team knows exactly what your expectations are is crucial. Don’t assume that you have been clear. I have seen rigor on this single step completely turn an entire project around. It's also worth noting that I have seen this technique result in dramatic improvements in the dynamic between those leaders and their teams.
Important Note: if you have any indication at all that your team is reluctant in any way to provide feedback, hire a good facilitator. A good facilitator can perform miracles in making the space feel safe for you and the team to exchange all the information needed in order to start making visible progress. The facilitator should also help keep you on track and not allow the meeting to divert into “problem solving” or “defending your position” which will derail the intent and lessen the value of the meeting for you.
And there’s more, of course (there’s always more). These are just a few of the more common ways that I’ve seen leaders inadvertently cause inertia in their teams.
If you have covered your bases and sincerely believe that it’s a motivation challenge you’re dealing with…consider checking out my ongoing series on Leaders and Workforce Morale. There seems to be no shortage of articles to let leaders know how they are killing morale…but the advice on how to go about fixing that is vague and largely not actionable. I’m making an effort to fill that gap.
Do you have additional questions about this or ideas? Comment below or send me an email. I’m always looking for a fresh perspective.
You ready for what’s next?
