Founders and senior level executives are often caught in a trap. They're responsible for certain activities that drive the lifeblood of a company, often both critical and timely: think sales, raising capital, product launch, key customer meetings. Yet, they may lack a key operator whose sole job or expertise is to tend the organizational garden that needs constant tending, weeding, and planting. The needs a center of gravity, it needs a heart beat, that when regularly cared for, avoids crisis. Get into prevention, consistency, and follow through.guide a team that may lack people with the confluence of talent AND experience to execute day to day. This leads to a cycle of not fully baked decision making and a cycle of crisis management. In this cycle, the senior level leader is now stuck fighting fires with all the time they have available. So here, I wanted to lay out an approach and some solutions to breaking the cycle.
1) Have values AND specific communication guidelines. Live them and reinforce them throughout the Company. Stay on top of this.
2) Expecting your (team) direct reports to have and consistently use a project or task management system. Of course, it's best if everyone uses the same one.
3) Run your 1 on 1's (sync or async) from the leaders task/project list. Look ahead for opportunities that may require coaching. In this case, work with them on "how" their going to deliver, not just "what" their going to deliver.
4) Empowering and coaching others is the only functional way to scale. You need to set the tone and momentum, reinforcing "the company" way that work gets done.
5) Take mistakes as opportunities and be a coach, guide, and mentor. When you give feedback, be (1) clear about the issues, (2) make a clear recommendation of what would have been better AND (3) make sure the employee knows how to check and make sure their on track in the future.
6) Be the change you want to see. You've got to be a good model. So be sure and reflect on how you're communicating and the messages you're sending with your approach.
Comments