Results are the currency of organizational success. The fine line between organizational failure and success is the topic of much debate and research. Achieving results is predicated on a multitude of variables. People act and react differently within organizations and teams. Processes are followed, ignored and informally altered by employees. Identifying why some organizations fail and others succeed is not an exact science.
In my experience and research, as a leader and student of organizational success, I have found there to be a cyclical sequence of actions and tasks that enable success. These nine steps make up my Success Loop.
#1 Practice Transparency
When leaders practice transparency, they invite employees into a safe environment. Safe environments encourage employees to speak up without fear of punishment. A transparent leader conducts adult-to-adult conversations, sharing context, data, and updates such that employees understand the reason for the mission and goals. Transparent leaders often speak of their challenges and growth in a way that endears employees to their leadership.
#2 Create Trust
Transparency breeds trust. Trust enables our employees to move forward with confidence when they know our attributes and vision for the future. Trust begins to congeal teams who respect their leader, not as a position high on the organization chart, but rather as a leader who cares about their well-being and success. Leaders create a trusting bond with their employees when they provide proof, through their actions, that their words are trustworthy.
#3 Set Goals
After transparency and trust have been granted to your team, goals then become shared intentions. For your employees to feel engaged with organizational goals, they must feel safe to pursue them. A safe environment stimulates innovation and invites the broad experience of employees to make the goals realistic and operational. As the above diagram demonstrates, however, senior leaders tend to start with goal setting and proceed immediately to the execution of the tactics to achieve the goals. When multiple steps of the Success Loop are skipped, the likelihood of appropriately and successfully executing on the goals is diminished. There are no short-cuts.
#4 Establish Roles
Too often, organizational leaders merely force goals on a pre-existing organizational structure that was designed to achieve very different goals. Each new creation of goals requires that leaders assess current roles in light of new strategic requirements. It is rare that an existing organizational design will adequately serve a new set of goals. A lack of organizational flexibility or interest in creating a fit between role and goal is a primary cause of organizational failure.
#5 Create Clarity
Once goals are determined and roles have been defined, extraordinary efforts must be taken by senior leaders to bring clarity to all employees. In my experience, this is a common failure of many organizations. When leaders fail to take the time to clarify the goals and roles with each employee, productivity and engagement are sub-optimized.
#6 Gain Commitment
Once each employee clearly understands the goals, as well as what is expected of them to reach those goals, commitment to the pursuit of those goals should be requested of each employee. This often-ignored step is essential to success. A caution though, an employee’s response will not be genuine if a culture of trust and transparency does not exist. If a punitive environment characterizes the organizational culture, employees will not truly commit, but instead merely agree out of fear.
#7 Give Direction
Once an employee has expressed a deep understanding of what is required of them and they have committed to do the work, then discuss the proposed direction. When treating direction as a dialogue versus edict, employees are more likely to give their thoughts on the task at hand as well as improve the final set of directions. In a fear-based culture, directives are generally superficial, inadequate and not followed.
#8 Execute the Tactics
Only after careful crafting of the culture, expectations, and roadmap to success should individuals begin executing the tactics. Those efforts that have benefited from deep insights and discussion are more likely to succeed. If a short-cut is taken from goal setting to immediate execution, as demonstrated in the graphic, success will depend on the ineffective and inefficient use of hierarchical power to cause employees to move toward the goal. The efforts of the team will be without focus, energy, and engagement when forced upon employees as a job they must do.
#9 Gain Feedback
As results are exhibited, multi-directional feedback should be gained by discussing the results with each team member. Employees should feel at ease in speaking freely about what worked and what can be improved. Feedback from the leader to the employee will help them grow in their role. As a culture of feedback is experienced, transparency is improved, thereby beginning the success loop for the next set of goals.
Success Loop is an excerpt from Rod Brace’s Culture of Success Workshop – a one-day event for leadership teams. For more information on bringing the workshop to your team, email Rod at rod@reliahealthcare.com