Meeting (& Exceeding) Expectations Drives Results

The cost of confusion hits our bottom line(s) in so many ways; increased downtime clarifying details, quality errors (regardless of our industry or process), delayed deliveries, and even lost customers. All of those things kill profitability! When we think about the statement I shared previously from Nicki Rankin’s LinkedIn article, “Managers are tasked with productivity and numbers for their department or division,” it’s not hard to understand why those managers get so frustrated when their team members under-perform… What’s often missed is just how common poor performance really is.

In August 2015, I had the opportunity to be with a small group of folks in a private session with John Maxwell at the beginning of an event that would complete the first stage of the licensing process to use some of his material. While this “small” group consisted of between three and four hundred people, it was just over 10% of the folks who would be participating in the entire event in the following few days and far smaller than any live venue where I had heard John speak prior to that. One of the things he stressed in the session, since each of us would be completing the process to use his material (and carry his name) in the days that followed, was how hard he had worked throughout his career to build and maintain a strong reputation. He also shared how much he struggled with the idea of licensing people he didn’t know personally to represent that reputation.

Before throwing any stones in John’s direction for coming across as having too much ego or pride in the reputation he worked so hard to earn, I’ll challenge you to consider what it feels like when one of your team members (or children) does something that shines a negative light on your organization (or family). It can hurt, right? Especially when that something is so contrary to the values we hold most dear…

The thing that stood out to me the most during that three-hour session, and still rings so true today, was what John asked of each individual in the room. His request was that if we were going to use his name, we would commit to always exceed the expectations of every individual or organization we worked with. He went on to share a statistic that both drove home the importance of doing that AND emphasized how infrequently anyone ever does it. John said, “80% of the population falls short of what’s expected of them on a routine basis. Around 15% does the work necessary to deliver just what’s expected of them and they stop right there. Only 5% ever take the initiative to exceed the expectations placed on them.” After explaining that, he went on to challenge us to consistently be in that 5% and he shared several steps he had taken throughout his career to make sure he was doing that himself.

Today, one of the things Cindy and I do every time we meet with a potential client to discuss work we may be doing for them, we go through a series of very detailed questions to be sure we know exactly what they need, how we can best support their needs, and how we help their team members achieve results that deliver significant returns on what the invest through their time with us. We learn as much as we possibly can about the organization as a whole and about each individual we’ll be interacting with through the process. By doing this, we’re able to tailor everything we do to their industry and the issues they’re dealing with at that time. Quite frankly, it would be irresponsible on our part if we didn’t do that!

When we accept the responsibility for leading others, even if that’s only tied to a title or position within the organization we work for, we’ll be required to go beyond what the majority will ever do - and that ties right back to the numbers John shared… As leaders, we also need to understand that many of the members of our teams may never take the steps necessary to remove the confusion that will keep them from meeting (or exceeding) what’s expected of them. That will nearly always be up to us!

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 crapshow 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 the 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 let’s map that out before diving into the specific steps we can take to help our teams deliver...

Pulling Ahead of the Pack…

I know very few people who jump out of bed each morning full of vim and vigor in pursuit of mediocrity. In fact, most everyone I’ve ever known to accept average as the highest level of success and achievement they believe possible has seemed to loathe getting out of bed and to dread each step they take throughout the workday… Since the first time I heard average described as being “as close to the bottom as it is to the top” or as “the best of the worst or the worst of the best,” I’ve wanted to be as far away from average as I could be! Building a team that consistently exceeds expectations, that 5% I’ve referenced a few times so far, is a sure-fire way to pull ahead of the pack and leave average in the dust, but it will require us to make sure each team member can see the targets we need them to hit VERY clearly!

An article from ZenBusiness.com by Tony Jeary called Exceeding Expectations: The Key to Value shared it this way:

It is rare for anyone to exceed expectations unless they do it on purpose. To exceed expectations on purpose means that you have an understanding of expected performance, and you realize that expected performance is in no way extraordinary. It becomes tougher when you realize that exceeding expectations requires more effort to surpass what might be described as “acceptable performance.” Acceptable performance is in fact mediocrity and mediocrity is usually the norm. The problem is that it’s hard to sell mediocrity!

Our role as leaders, if we truly want to capture the profitability that’s killed by confusion and missed expectations, is to provide each member of our teams with a clear understanding of exactly what’s expected in every area of their performance AND clear expectations as to why mediocrity isn’t enough!

I often talk about the HR Manager I worked for through much of my career in manufacturing. He was technically my boss’s boss but let’s just say he was always very actively engaged in making sure I knew what he expected of me… Whether it was during my time in behavior-based safety or when I moved into a human resources role full time, He was ALWAYS very clear about his expectation that if I attended any event - training, conference, workshop, whatever - I applied something immediately afterward that had a direct impact on improving productivity and profitability. Most success in the safety and HR world is measured by issues that are, in theory, prevented. If a facility had 15 incidents one year but only 12 the following year under similar business conditions, the general consensus was that the safety team was successful - and maybe even exceeded expectations. For the human resources department, spending less year over year on recruiting or reducing unemployment costs would, in most organizations, fit that same mold. Achieving those things were certainly part of what he expected but he also expected me to be able to implement initiatives that tied directly to improving overall productivity. This was rarely an easy expectation to meet, let alone exceed, but he was always intentional about explaining why this mattered - and that was rarely tied to appeasing Wall Street…

When I mentioned counting steps long before the Fitbit became popular, it wasn’t simply for the sake of looking at ways to make someone’s work easier. This was just one example of how we used very meticulous data to implement change that would reduce the time an individual needed to perform a task and increase productivity - thereby meeting the expectation that HR Manager had of me! In his article, Tony Jeary also stated that, “The expectations you exceed today become the seed for new opportunities in the future. This may seem to be an obvious fact, but many people fail to connect today’s actions with future opportunities.” While there were many times that even meeting my boss’s boss’s expectations seemed almost impossible, him setting those expectations and holding me accountable to them has indeed become the seed for more new opportunities than I can count!

If we’re going to do this same thing for the teams we lead, we will have to be as intentional about setting clear expectations that define the measurable results necessary to stay well above average and pull ahead of the pack. As we wrap this up, we’ll look at some very specific action steps we can each take to do that!