Role and Goal Clarity

The most important factor that ensures good team work is establishing the role and goal clarity, especially as the organisations go bigger. Bigger in this context would even mean just be more than 20-30 people. Let me use an analogy to explain this success factor.

Imagine an Orchestra where the individual musicians aren’t clear what their role and goal is. Role would be to play an instrument and the goal would be to strictly adhere to the music notes as well as to the conductor’s instructions, mostly visual in nature. Jazz on the contrary is impromptu music where the number of musicians involved is far lesser and thus apart from some overall understanding clarity is not really necessary.

When organisations are small I would refer them as a Jazz band, where not having role and goal clarity in itself is an advantage to allow everyone to perform to excellence only with an overall understanding. As organisations get bigger they move towards an Orchestra. Have you been to any Orchestra with around 50 musicians without music notes in front of them or without a conductor?

However when it comes to organisations, especially during the ramping up phase, very normally neither is the need for role and goal clarity appreciated nor do the employees are convinced in needing the role and goal clarity. The result obviously is a huge hit to both the top and bottom line as well as huge problems in any kind of healthy team work with everyone wondering why we aren’t able to deliver the same way as when we were smaller.

Role Clarity is established by thoughtfully (considering the necessary interfaces with the other functions and hierarchy levels) crafting the Job Descriptions that then must be approved by a cross functional leadership team. The Goal Clarity is established by defining the Goals of the organisation and then the individual functions in an interactive session involving the leadership team. The key here is to involve the entire leadership team so that the Goal conflicts, quite common in organisations, are addressed openly and the Goals appropriately modified. Once the roles and goals are thus established, the deployment can then be done to all the employees in a cascaded manner through the hierarchy.

My next blog will be on the next success factor of using structured reviews to meet the goals.

Delighted Stakeholders

Any business can only sustain if its stakeholders are satisfied and can flourish if its stakeholders are delighted. Stakeholders for any Business are Customers, Management (Shareholders), Employees, Business Partners and Society.

The key to delight is to meet the invisible but intrinsically desired needs over and above meeting the visible needs which are like hygiene factors if not met will lead to dissatisfaction. It is also very interesting to note that over time many invisible needs become visible needs. Excellence is all about sustainably meeting the visible needs as well as sustainable identifying and fulfilling the invisible needs of the stakeholders. The first step therefore is to regularly review the visible and invisible needs of all the stakeholders. I have listed some visible and invisible needs of the various stakeholders to get an idea of this concept of visible and invisible needs.

Customers consume the products and services that any business creates. Visible needs could be on time delivery, defect free products and services, etc. Invisible needs could be an added functionality like the intuitive operating systems of smart phones or forward integration of some sub-assemblies, etc.

Management (Shareholders) promote the business. Visible needs could be smooth running of operations, accurate and timely reporting, achievement of planned top and bottom line, etc. Invisible needs could be significant increases in top and bottom line, unexpected awards and recognitions, etc.

Employees are the most important asset of any business; the resource that runs the business. We can analogically compare all the cells in our body to employees. Visible needs could be status, remuneration, fairness, etc. Invisible needs could be the freedom of choice, unexpected praise, etc.

Business partners are all those external to business necessary to run the business. Visible needs could be demand forecasting, on time payments, etc. Invisible needs could be transparency and fairness in dealings, relationships, etc.

Society would be all those external to business which is impacted by the business. Visible needs could be compliance to legal regulations, acting with responsibility, etc. Invisible needs could be initiatives for inclusive growth, establishing of industry standards, etc.

 
As I have mentioned earlier it is necessary that the leadership team debates and identifies these visible and invisible needs and develops strategies to systematically meet them to delight the stakeholders.

Sustainable Success

The saying success breeds success is very true even for organizations. Precisely this is why sustainable success with recognitions and awards is very much essential for the psychological health of the organization.

That is why I have this success factor up in my listing even before looking into how and organisation can achieve this. I would like to use the analogy of geeting good grades in school or college to put forth my point of view.

How frequently have you come across students who haven't been doing well through out the year, but get esceptionally high grades and end up with recognitions and awards. I am sure you have found some. Have these been able to repeat similar success on a sustainable basis, year after year? Now I am quite sure that you would not find anyone!

Getting recognitions and awards on a consistent basis not only gives us a pat on the back but also reinforces our approaches and gives our brain a sense of security which in results in the increase of dopamine, a simple organic chemical in our body. Increased dopamine provides a positive feeling that is conducive for further learning and discovery.

Imagine what positive energy will be flowing around in organisations with high dopamine employees!!!

How are we going to get to this stage can be answered easily if we check out the stretch we have in our targets. Are the targets stretched enough to encourage the additional learning and discovery but easy enough to sense success, get recognized for the success and get awards. Many a times it may also be necessary to choose to participate in such events where competition is not that severe, especially at the early stage of an organization wanting to become world-class.

I will explain my  though process on target setting in the Goal and Role clarity blog.

For now I want to conclude by suggesting to create an environment and set targets that are achieveable so that success can breed success.

Leadership Team Voice

Let me start this blog by going straight to the point on leadership team having one voice.

In many organisations, especially from the SME sector generally it would be just one leader whose voice would have to be adapted and owned by the key managers for the unit to be successful, since a leadership team may not exit. This situation is really very effective when the organisation is relatively small, may be a couple of employees who know each other by the first name and are very close.

The moment the organisation size or the number of employees in an organisation crosses ~50 a hierarchy would become necessary to lead and manage the employees as any effective span of control of direct sub-ordinates is max 10. Once this condition is already a reality or the SME organisations want to grow then identifying and nurturing a leadership team is mandatory for sustenance and consistency in performance.

I remember a joke about the various parts of the body wanting to compete and demonstrate who the boss is. For those of you who haven't read this google to find out. What moral from this becomes relevant for my blog is the thought of our organs not working in synchrony with the others and the crisis that we get into very fast.

In organisations when the leadership team hasn't identified, discussed, debated and agreed upon in consesus that one voice one can see a lot of noise in organisations. When I say voice I mean the leadership team to have a common understanding on Goods & Services, Competencies, Passion and Conscience. When this is achieved and consistently communicated within the organisation music is achieved.

Have you given a thought if your organisation has a leadership team and if the leadership team has one voice?

The process of finding this voice needs investment with the leadership team meeting together, preferably with a neutral moderator as a group executive coach, over days firstly to get to know each other better and then to start identifying that single voice in consesus.

I am sure you can identify many companies who not only have realised phenomenal growth but also consistently delivered exceptional results. You may further want to check and confirm the existance of the single voice in the leadership team of these organisations.

I welcome you to go on the journey of discovering that single voice.