Organizations waste a lot of time communicating badly.

They fall into the trap of talking about things that have already been decided, or not talking when input is genuinely needed.

Problem 1. People don’t speak up when they should

Executives don’t know all the answers (even if they act like they do).

They rely on healthy debate from their team to get all the important information, opinions and concerns out on the table.

Without that, they can’t make a good business decision.

But the other side of the story is that people often feel punished for speaking up.

When they try to give feedback to the executives they get shot down. It feels like their inputs are unwelcome.

If this happens often enough they stop even trying. Why bother if my ideas are never acted on, and I only get grief for speaking up?

Problem 2. People keep talking when they shouldn’t

I have seen management teams waste huge amounts of time by revisiting decisions over and over again, questioning the direction and circling back for more data.

When this happens, the organization is slow to engage because they perceive the continued discussion to mean that the direction is still in question. So they wait for the answer instead of moving forward. Or they continue to add to the conversation, raising even more issues or data to help inform the decision.

SInce the executives think the decision has already been made, they get really frustrated that people are slow to act, not engaged, and stalling forward progress with more questions, inputs and arguments.

DEBATE or GO?

One of the best tools I have used to fix this is a simple model of Debate Phase vs. Go Phase. I make it clear that for every initiative or decision, there is DEBATE time and there is GO time.

Debate Time: Talking, Questions, Input, Arguments are welcome.

During debate time, I make it clear that I want to hear people’s opinions. I want to hear the arguments. I want everyone to fight for their point of view.

That’s how I get the best and most complete information.

Make a Clear Decision

After debate time is over, I make it clear who owns the decision, and make sure the decision gets made.

GO Time

Then I make it clear that we are in GO time. The decision is communicated and the action is officially kicked off. This is the time to engage in the work, not in the debate. The debate phase is over.

Expected Behavior & Trust

This simple frame and set of labels builds an atmosphere of higher trust because people can understand the rules of the game. They know when and how to participate without getting their head handed back to them.

You give them a chance to feel safe raising their opinions or arguing the point (which you need them to do) because by definition you are in debate phase.

By setting this structure, you can make it clear that during debate time, the expected and valued behavior is to speak up.

Then once you announce the decision has been made and make it clear that it’s GO time, people trust that you will stick to the decision, and that the expected and valued behavior is action, not more talking.

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Stand-out Leaders

What makes the top leaders stand out it is not their skills, or experience.

Once you get to compete for the top jobs, everyone has impressive skills and lots of relevant experience. So how do you differentiate?

It’s also not just about execution.

Execution is critical, for sure. Yes, you need to be able to set a compelling agenda and deliver on it, but again, that’s entry stakes — it doesn’t make you great.

Where is the greatness?

The higher up you go, your value as a leader is associated more with who you are as a person, than with your skills.

I’ve noticed that there are 3 traits that the best leaders have.

1. They are who they are
2. The communicate well
3. They pick the right people and make them great

1. Great Leaders are who they are

They are people whose words and actions match what they genuinely think and feel on the inside. This is sadly pretty rare.

Egos, agendas, fear, and politics all pull on us to say and do things that we don’t quite believe, but serve to please others, smooth things out, or defend ourselves.  Most people cave in to this pressure.

The best leaders stick to their values

They say and do what they really feel and think.  They bring the core of who they really are to work, and they talk about what really matters to them.  When you see a leader behaving this way it obvious that they are being authentic.   It’s not hard to spot.  You can’t fake it.

You can fake opinions or positions, but you can’t fake authenticity!

This authenticity builds trust and and makes people eager to follow

2. They communicate well

The best leaders communicate well, consistently, often, and to everyone.  They invite people in.  They let people know what is going on.  And to the first point, they tell people what they really think.

One-to-one communication

Great leaders listen.

They don’t just go through the act of listening, they listen with active curiosity because they are genuinely interested in learning the other person’s point of view.

Execs that go through the act of listening, but don’t actually respect the people they are listening to, nor really care to understand  the opinions they are hearing, may get some leadership points for the show, but they are not connecting and they are not learning.

Group communications

A steady heartbeat of communications from the top lets people know that you are there, and that you are engaged.  What you say is almost less important than the fact that you commit yourself to saying it on a regular schedule.

Communicate every week or two without fail.

You will score huge leadership points with steady, quality communications.

When people feel in the loop, they are much more motivated, less worried, and more productive, and they consider you to be a better leader than someone they seldom hear from.

Persuasiveness

Great leaders are persuasive.  You don’t need to be a world class public speaker to be a good communicator.  You need to understand people and how to persuade them.  That is why listening and learning helps.

Persuasive communications light the path you are asking people to travel, and sell the reasons why they should go with you.  The best leaders do this all the time.

3. They pick the right people and make them great

The right people

There is nothing more important to effective leadership than to build a team underneath you that is so capable, that you can free yourself up to solve higher order problems.

I will repeat that for emphasis. This is really key!

There is nothing more important to effective leadership than to build a team underneath you that is so capable, that you can free yourself up to solve higher order problems.

Don’t cover for a weak team

If you are personally stepping in to do the work because you have weak spots (people on your team not capable or motivated enough to step up to do more) then you are holding yourself back as a leader.  And you are failing to deliver enough value to your business.

Make them Great

Hire stars, give them big work, support them, and let them excel.  Help them be amazing.  Create an environment where the team works really well, and the individuals can grow to solve bigger problems over time too.

Why this works

I used to wonder why I was so lucky to always have such remarkable, talented, experienced people want to work for me.  What I finally realized is that it was two things:

First, I picked the right people for the right jobs so they could work where they have natural strengths and really thrive in their work. And second, I gave them the room and support to stretch beyond their current capabilities.

So the magic of why they wanted to work for me was that they felt respected and they could be proud of their work. They got to personally achieve more than they knew they could, and got recognized for it.

People like to be amazing and they like to be recognized for it.

In contrast, other bosses did not respect and maximize their gifts and give them the opportunity and support to be amazing.

This feels almost too good to be true, because you end up getting the best people and they move mountains for you.  And all you need to do is show them trust and respect and get things out of their way.

I guess the hard part comes along if you feel threatened by great people.  See also, How to hire a star, and Are you smarter than me? which talk more about this, and have some great reader comments too.

Most people inherently know that they should delegate more, and delegate better, but one big obstacle keeps them from doing it…

It might not come out right

…so I better jump in and make sure
it is going OK or just do it myself.

Who’s at fault?

It it doesn’t come out right, the uncomfortable question this raises is -
did this person fail to do a good job because:

1. They are not good enough at the job? or
2. I am not good enough at delegating?

It’s not about getting comfortable with worry

The real secret of successful delegating is not to learn how to deal with the emotional discomfort of letting go, and learning to live with being worried about the outcome, or accepting bad outcomes…

It’s about preventing reasons to worry

Your job is to delegate, let go, NOT micromanage… AND create structure, support and processes so you ensure that it is going to get done right.

You don’t deal with the worrying, you ensure it’s not necessary.

Ways to build comfort and insurance into the project
without micro-managing

1. Let the person create the timeline, define the deliverables and how you will measure them.  The encouragement and trust goes a long way, and you either get the pleasant surprise of a better plan than you would have come up with, or you get an early warning that this person needs more support.

2. Tighten the Outcomes.  If you are concerned that the person is not capable enough to run with the project, Instead of a 6 month outcome, discuss outcomes that occur every two weeks.

3. Focus on the outcome, not the activity. No two humans will do a task exactly the same way.  If they deliver the outcome, it shouldn’t matter how they do it.  Let them worry about how and what.  You worry about WHY, and what needs to be true when it is done.

4. Create an actual process and tracking system for long term or repetitive tasks – a software development lifecycle with checkpoints is a good example.  But why not define a project lifecycle with checkpoints for a quarterly analyst presentation, a press release, or a marketing campaign?

5. Third party reviews. Get yourself out of the position of always being the one to judge whether a deliverable is good enough or not.  Get the actual consumers of the deliverable to review and provide feedback.  Your employees will learn far more this way.

6. Don’t forget to inspect and measure things along the way.  If you set up a timeline with review steps along the way, you must follow up.  A great deal of your comfort comes from the fact that people take you seriously and actually do the committed work.  A long time mentor of mine always put it “You get what you INspect, not what you EXpect”.

7. Teach. When you are delegating things you are personally good at, always think of delegating as a teaching opportunity. If you need to sometimes jump down and do the work yourself, make sure someone is watching and learning.
See also Let People Fail.

Bottom line…

You need to delegate effectively if you want to get anything significant done, get anywhere in your career, and save yourself from an un-doable workload.

If you are either doing the work yourself, or worried about the work not getting done, you need to change your strategy.

You can delegate and feel comfortable that the work is getting done as long as you do the higher level work of setting up the systems, processes and measures that ensure the right things are happening along the way.

Note to the micromanaged…

I will write another post on this because many people suffer from this.

But the short answer is, you need make your boss comfortable that he will get what he wants in some way other than by micromanaging.   Some of the techniques above can be useful with your boss too.

Category Note: I filed this post under “CONNECT Better” because it is critical to always be building a broad base of support. Getting your team and others to accomplish work that you need done is a critical element of business effectiveness and career success.

This week our member webinar was on
the topic: Delegate or Die.

TOP 10 IDEAS
ON DELEGATE OR DIE

Delegating = Building Value

1. Don’t think of delegating as giving work to other people, think about it as making sure the highest value work gets done at the right levels.

2. Make sure you understand what the right strategic work that should be done at your level is.  Don’t fail to delegate well because you don’t know what else you would do!  Your job is to build value and capacity over time.  You can’t do that if you are consumed by work that should be done by your team.

3. People will not automatically line up to let you do the right level work.  You are the one who is in charge of defining it and making it happen.  Be the one to negotiate what work gets done by you, your boss, and your team.  Get higher value work delegated from your boss, and keep your boss out of the weeds, and your hair.

Don’t jump in and do the work yourself

4. Your job is not to “cover” for work by your team that is not good enough.  Your job is to make sure you build a team that can deliver excellent work.  If you don’t (this is where the “or die” part happens) you will be stuck working several jobs because you have failed to build the right, capable team.

5. If you can’t delegate to a person, you can delegate to a process.   Look for repetitive or chaotic work, and invent systems and processes to streamline and offload time consuming activities.  This frees up time for higher value work too.

Delegating is a Teaching Opportunity

6. Don’t’ take for granted what you know.  Share the secret.  Communicate how you would assess the task or evaluate the quality of the deliverable.  Provide clear descriptions of desired outcomes, create templates or give examples for what it looks like when it’s finished.

7. If you ever do need to jump in in a crisis, make sure you are not working in isolation – make sure you use it as a teaching opportunity.  Educate someone along the way, or you will be stuck again next time.

How to Delegate Well

8. Avoid the two ends of the spectrum – Micromanage and Abdicate.
Micromanaging is managing every detail and activity (you might as well be doing it yourself). Abdicating is giving something over so completely you are not owning the success, just hoping for the best.  This is typical for work you hate or areas you don’t know about, and a savior comes to work for you.

9. The trick in either case is to set a clear desired outcome for the end result and then a set of intermediate outcomes along the way.  That way you keep ownership for the successful outcome, without managing all the detail along the way.

10. A critical factor, for effective delegating  – a must – is to create frameworks and processes so that you get fed information about progress that makes you feel comfortable that the work is getting done, so you don’t feel the need or temptation to either jump in, or require too much detail along the way.

Members: Downloads are FREE

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It’s ugly out there…And I want to help.

So I have decided to make
membership FREE for you into 2009.

Career Insurance & Opportunities

Membership topics next year will help you:

• Build and preserve your value to your company
• Strengthen your Personal Brand value, and
• Grow your opportunity base for your business and career.

Members get access to:

• Monthly Webinars
• Monthly live coaching time with me
• Podcasts of the monthly member calls
• Transcripts of the member calls and live discussion sessions
• Articles and more.

If you are not already a member you can join here for free.

THINGS YOU CAN DO RIGHT AWAY

1. Browse the Archive

Is there anything you missed this year?

2. Download Podcasts

All the member webinars are available as podcasts.

Here’s what the membership topics were this year: Download away!

Authentic Networking                 Making Room
Investing in Strengths                 Your Personal Brand
Ruthless Priorities                       What really matters to You
Building Your Credibility             Leading vs. Managing
Networking vs. Politics               Making time & Energy
Managing Your Boss

3. Tell your friends

One of my favorite comments I got from a member was that Azzarello Group is my secret place I go to get tips how to operate.  I share the site with my friends, but not my peers. 

If you know someone who would benefit from having another career advantage in their toolkit, (who you are willing to share the secret with!) please forward this to them, and encourage them to look around and join.   Membership will be free to them as well. 

And I’d really appreciate the referral.

4. Sign up for January’s webinar on Increasing Your Value. 

I am very excited about this one, as we will be joined by Jack Mollen, EVP or HR for EMC on the topic of Increasing Your Value to your Company, sharing an “insiders view” of how companies are assessing their workforce and what you can do.

You can register for this webinar now, right here.

5. Give me feedback

I want to make membership even more valuable.

If you have any thoughts, questions, or topics you would like to see covered next year, please leave your comments below or email me. 

One of my personal brand values is “useful” so I am always striving to make the topics as relevant and useful as possible:

• What have you valued the most? 
• What would you like to see next? 
• Have I annoyed you?

The “Group” in Azzarello Group

As we conclude 2008, it’s hard not to think about the big challenges we face next year, personally and professionally, in this remarkably ugly economy.  But there are bright spots to be found and things you can do to stack the deck in your favor. 

I look forward to working with you, sharing my experience and insights, and connecting you with other really smart people who I admire and learn from, as well as each other.

I hope Azzarello Group membership gives you a place to go when you have real questions, and a significant advantage as you build your career!

Thank you to our long time members!
If you’re not already a member, you can join for free here.

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The Lead:

You will achieve more success
if you clarify the main point
for all of your communications,
and make it the first thing you say.

(You can stop reading here.)

“Don’t bury the lead” is good age-old advice, but not just for journalists and marketers.

How often do you get an email where the request for you to do something is so obscured or so near the bottom that you never see it?

How often are you in a meeting or a conversation where the point is revealed long after you have lost interest?

It’s an easy trap to fall into:

We all like to share the context of whatever we are talking about so we can show how cleverly we got to that point.

Sometimes we just have interesting stuff that we want to use to “warm up” the audience with before we spring the main point on them. Or we think the main point will have more impact as a closing statement than an opening one.

Or sometimes we are just lazy and disorganized and don’t really know what our main point is in the first place.

It makes a real impact if you force yourself to clarify your one main point and say it up front.

It also saves time!

We waste a lot of time communicating things that just don’t matter.

So it’s also helpful to train the other people around you to do this too!

Some ideas to Lead with the Lead:

(So you’ll get more done, build credibility and save time.)

An email:
Subject: I need your decision on [this issue] by 3pm on Tuesday.

Body:
My recommendation is “NO”.
I’ve provided the information below.

A negotiation:
I often use this approach when I am negotiating.  The fishing and the dancing around really bore and irritate me, so I start with:  This is exactly what I want or this is exactly what I can offer.

That then starts a long discussion where the other party is negotiating and I just keep repeating my main point.  (By the way, this works almost all the time.)

A Yes or No question
YES.
…
or  NO.

If you stay in the habit of burying the lead you will lose opportunities, sacrifice credibility, and burn time.

If you would like to get updates of this blog in your email you can subscribe here.

As managers it is critical part of our jobs to steadily build capacity in our teams – not just to deliver work.

It’s important not to get too drawn into, or stuck in, the content of what your team delivers.

You need to be leading the people and developing the team, vs. managing (or doing) their work.

We all get tempted to jump in, especially when you feel like it’s easier to do it yourself, or that you are better at it than the people that work for you.

Remember — That is not your job.

You create way more value for the company by developing 10 people to deliver at your level, vs. adding one more person “you” to deliver at their level.

Each time you step up to a bigger job, you need to let go of more content and more detail.

You need to do more strategic things specifically to build capacity and capability in your team so they can contribute more and more value (not necessarily more and more work).

Some people think that if they stop doing the work at a lower level that they are slacking off or that they will lose credibility by not knowing all the details, or will be viewed as not carrying their share of the load.

You are actually more guilty of slacking off by staying in the detail, and not putting in the effort to think and act more strategically.

Some ideas to build capacity and work at a higher level of value as a leader:

1. Build a plan to drive the overall strategy for your team and its contribution to the business.  Look for game-changing opportunities.
2. Create systems and frameworks to execute, track, and measure the work so you can feel comfortable that you know what is getting done without diving into the detail.
3. Create a specific learning agenda for your team such as understanding the financial realities of the business, getting closer to customers, or competitive awareness & positioning.
4. Help them become better leaders, and to focus on the development of their top talent.
5. Focus on energy on defining clear outcomes, and improving team alignment, effectiveness, and communication.
6. Find ways to steadily reduce the cost of things you do every year to make room for new things.
7. Continually make connections outside your direct organization to create positive visibility for your team and a broader base of support.

By staying over-busy with the details, you are not doing the job the company needs you do to.  Even though you are delivering work, you are depleting value vs. building capacity.

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