Measure and report whatever you want, just make sure it provides an answer to a strategic question.
If the number you are sharing with your team is not a direct answer to a question, it is just a number, and I bet you will soon be tempted to report a different one when things do not go as well.
Questions stick, and they define where you are going.
If after 15 months of covid crisis your organization does not have a plan to promote virtual get-togethers with colleagues, it failed.
If the only meetings are work-related meetings, if the participants rarely are from outside your team, if 1-1s keep being cancelled and postponed – because, you know, managers are busy -, it failed.
If there are no conversations around mental health, well-being, separation between work and personal life. If it is not offering some sort of incentives for therapy. It failed.
If the only times the company and the teams meet, it is the managers doing the talking, and all the other employees listening, it failed.
If what gets rewarded is still achieving personal goals, if cooperation is not actively stimulated, if teams are just a way to build walls rather than a way to reach out and help, it failed.
Just because your numbers are cool, it does not mean your people are too.
If you have not understood this during the past 15 months, you’ll probably never get it.
You are probably not the strongest.
You are probably not the smartest.
You are probably not the most fearless.
You are probably not the nicest.
You are probably not the greatest.
You are probably not the most positive.
And yet you are here. With the responsibility to make something strong, smart, fearless, nice, great, positive happen.
Work with your limits and don’t let them hold you back.
The world needs you.
Imperfect.
Can you ask somebody to help you?
Can you put your ego aside and recognize that somebody else might have a perspective on a matter that would actually improve your own understanding?
Can you step on your fear and embarrassment and ask a simple question that might unlock tremendous progress?
Can you suspend your judgment and assumptions and open yourself to listening to what the other has to say?
Can you accept that somebody would care as much as you do?
Help is the most precious thing there is, for all the parties involved.
We do not leverage that enough in business and organizations.
Fear can hold you back, and it can hold back those who look at you for guidance.
As parents, more often than not our own fears fuel the “don’t do that”, “don’t go there”, “that is not safe”. Our kids won’t climb the tree, won’t walk to the grocery shop by themselves, won’t try that stunt with their bikes, won’t go in front of the whole class to present an idea. They are marginally safer, infinitely more anxious and fearful.
And since parenting and leadership are strongly linked, you look at managers and you see how much of their fears dictates their behavior and that of their teams. Better play it safe, please upper management, don’t say when things are wrong, praise everybody, and keep communication to a minimum.
Fear is an important feeling when we label it as such. When instead we avoid it, pretend it’s not there, morph it into reality, then it becomes a blocker for our progress and for the progress of those we care about.
It’s just not worth it.
You've got this 