They Won’t Hit What They Don’t See

Let’s face it, if we expect the members of our teams to take more responsibility than we do, we ain’t leading them! And if we want our teams to achieve the kind of results that’s only possible by always meeting (and frequently exceeding) what’s expected of them, we absolutely have to make sure that each team member is completely clear on what those expectations are; we’ve got to remove confusion…

If every single person who’s a part of our team were in the 5% of folks who always exceed expectations that I referenced before, we’d either have the best team in history or we’d have a whole bunch of folks who were on their way to leading their own teams. While either of those would be outstanding, the likelihood of that truly applying to every one of them is fairly low - and that’s OK. That’s where our work begins though…

In conversation with a business-owner friend a few years ago, he shared an example with me from an interaction he had with one of his key team members just days before. They were discussing progress on one of the construction projects his team member was overseeing and he asked what their goal was for the day. While that team member wasn’t necessarily trying to be a wise-guy, his response of “going home at 4:30 this afternoon” sure did come across that way! If that key team member had that as his primary goal for what the team accomplished that day, what are the odds of anyone on the team he was responsible for having a more specific goal?

Many folks hear a story like that and blow it off as something that would never happen with their team, but scenarios like that are far more common than most of us would like to admit! Quite honestly, the fellow who gave that response was (and still is to this day) one of the top performers in that company - a company that’s been fairly successful for more than half a century… He just happened to provide an incredibly transparent answer that shines what I believe is a very bright light on a widespread issue! And that issue isn’t something that’s isolated just to organizations that struggle to make ends meet.

In that particular case, the owner of the company realized that he needed to be more clear in setting goals for daily and weekly progress on each project his crews were working to complete. When his crew leaders, like the fellow who was previously focused on going home at the end of the day, had a very distinct objective for where they should be on a daily basis, their teams had a much better shot of actually achieving those objectives. I’ve never known anyone to be able to hit a target consistently that they didn’t know existed. To that end, I’ve seen very few folks consistently miss targets when they have a clear picture of what they should be aiming for…

I’ll stress again that this example comes from a company with a solid history and strong reputation in the community, not some fly-by-night crap show just trying to skate by. If even some of the best organizations in any given industry have confusion within their teams as to what they’re working to achieve, I believe it stands to reason that not having clear expectations kills more profitability than we realize. The more clear we can be in defining exactly what is expected, the better our chances become of separating ourselves from our competition. Being in that 5% that consistently exceeds expectations doesn’t require a lot of extra effort, but it does require some extra. That extra starts with clear expectations in each area of performance so we’ll map that out next before diving into the specific steps we can take to help our teams deliver...