Removing constraints

Sometimes it’s not what you need to add to make progress, but what you need to take away.

What limits the speed at which your group makes progress?

What or who is keeping you from excellence?

Removing a constraint is like taking your foot off the brake in your business.

Often, removing something is faster and easier than adding.

What or who needs to be removed to do better?

Get on it!

Win today, and improve your ability to win again tomorrow.

A manager’s or leader’s job is to bring out the best in other people while accomplishing the organization’s goals.  

You don’t want to accomplish goals while (or by) killing the spirit of your team members, because you’ll reduce the chances of doing well tomorrow.

Accomplish goals while at the same time improving your team’s ability to accomplish goals tomorrow.

That’s good leadership.

MBWA

“Management by walking around”.

Want to learn stuff you can’t from your desk and understand what is really happening?

Get up from your office and walk around.  Go to the warehouse, the shipping dept, and on the shop floor.  

Go to your vendors and walk their shop floor.

Walk the parking lot when everyone is getting in or leaving.  

Look in the dumpster.  Say hello.  Ask questions.  Just observe.

MBWA is very valuable.

Failure is feedback

You don’t learn much by doing things that work all the time.

Every mistake is data.

The faster you try, the faster you learn.

Try – notice – adjust – try again.

Let’s get better.

Now. 

Let’s go.

What’s the problem behind the problem?

Get to the root.

What is the problem?

What problem caused the problem?

What problem caused that problem?

Solve that first.

“Make me feel important”

A manager yells at an employee and calls them incompetent.

What do you think the chances are that the employee will want to do their best and make the manager look good now?

This doesn’t work.  It never has.  It ends badly for both the employee and the manager.

If you make people feel important, they will want to do their best.

Praise them.  Train them.  Tell them you believe in them and want to help them achieve their own goals.  Smile at them.  Laugh with them.  Have fun.  Learn together.  Be humble.  Be nice.  Take the blame, give away the credit.

Keep people happy and engaged and they will do their best.

Lose your team, lose your job…

Once a leader or a manager loses the respect and listening of their team members, it’s over.

No one can save them once their team decides they can’t be trusted, they are only out for themselves, the leader doesn’t like me, or they don’t know what they are doing.

Their people will tune out and leave.

Hopefully, that is not you.

Do you have managers like that?

That “indispensable” trouble maker….

If you have been in business long enough, you probably know what I am talking about.

A key position is filled with a person you think you cannot live without.  Maybe they have been there “forever”.  Maybe they are the spirtual center of their department.  But the department, or the whole company, is struggling to move forward, and this person is at the center of it. 

They probably blame others, or tell you how much they do to keep this place going, or may even try to keep a team of others as their allies with gossip or favors to shield themselves.

But this “indispensable” key player is resisting change even as they nod their head when you talk about it.  They say the problems are insurmountable, or slow walk change, and hope you forget about it.  They either pretend they work so hard and long, even as they do the minimum (milking hours if they get paid that way, maybe), or they actually do work hard at the old way.  They may be hiding out.  They hate change, even though they may complain about the problems they have had in their department for years.  Here’s my advice – 

They gotta go.

Nobody like this is indispensable.  Whose business is this anyway?  If they were your competitor, they would be a mess and easy to beat.  But they are at the center of your team.  Let them go seek mediocrity somewhere else.  You cannot have an A team with C players – especially managers.

When you let this person go, you will feel like a great weight has been lifted.  People will come forward and tell you how this person was holding them back, or things you did not know.  A new leader will come forward who can and will do the job much better.  Or you may redesign your org chart to fill in the opening.

Do not be a hostage of any dysfunctional employee just because they have been there forever or seem so important.  The position may be important – yes.  But if they don’t do the job well, then they are not. When you get someone to do the job well, then they will be important.

Move forward.  Let’s go.

To see the path, take the next step.

We often wait for a sense of absolute certainty before we take the first step, convinced that we need a map, a destination, and a clear view of every obstacle. But the truth is that clarity is a reward for action, not a requirement for it. From the standing position, the horizon remains fixed and distant. It’s only when you begin to move that you will see hidden turns and new views that were invisible from the starting line.

The fog only thins as you walk through it.

I can tell you I have started many projects, businesses, and adventures without knowing how to do it, what I would face, and what steps were necessary.  There was only one way to really find out.  Do it.  Go.  Get started.  Take the next step.

A few of my favorite things to talk about in my School of Entrepreneurship are – 

“Action illuminates the next step”, and talking about driving at night.  You can only see as far as your headlights shine.  Not far, but enough to drive a bit.  Then you get to see more, and you can drive that bit.  When a turn shows up, you can take it.  When an obstacle appears, you can deal with it. You can take a long journey this way. Each step taken is necessary to get to the next.

Abstract fears you had at the start turn into actionable steps and tangible tasks. By the time the full route is revealed, you’ll realize that the “path” was simply the collection of steps you were brave enough to take.

What do you want? Where do you want to go?

Get started. 

Public Scoreboards

What do you want more or less of right now?  

What team members are in a position to get more or less of it?

Make a scoreboard with each of their names on it, and review it in a meeting.  Tell everyone what the goal is and by when.

Tell them what you will be measuring.

Give them the resources and support to make it happen.

Then post the scoreboard in a public place and update it on a regular basis.

The high performers will want to do even better and crush the rest of the field. 

The low performers will raise their game because they do not want to be last.

After 6-12 weeks, celebrate the winners. 

Then change what you are measuring because the old scoreboard becomes part of the wallpaper after a while.

Try it!