I’m often asked and I don’t have an answer.
What’s the trick, they say. There is no trick.
A lifetime of observation, collecting ideas and talking to the best… there is no magic answer.
No, there is no magic to… management.
Just a lot of juggling. Juggling priorities, balancing resource. Walking a tightrope…
… don’t look down is the best advice!
Like a really good driver; one eye on the road, one eye on the rearview mirror.
Anticipating…
… reading the road. What is a cyclist? A cyclist is your responsibility. Give them room, expect them to be erratic and subject to the road surface and the wind…
Like a really good manager; respecting the past, taking the best of it into the future.
Anticipating…
… reading your people. Your your staff, your workforce. They are your responsibility… give them room.
Expect the unexpected.
If there is no magic, what is there? Nothing happens without people and…
… there might be three words.
Three words to help people and organisations in their pursuit of excellence. Three words that, taken together are probably the only tools-in-the-box, you’ll ever really need.
Here they are;
- Intention,
- attention and
- exploration.
Let’s start with intention.
It’s a better word to use than the usual one. The lazy one. The sloppy one… ‘goals’.
I don’t like it.
Goals are wrong for all sorts of reasons. Good goals are SMART; Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant and have a Time-line. For a goal to succeed you need all five…
… how often do we have all five? How often is there a full-house?
You can be as Specific as you like about goals, waiting lists for example. You can Measure them ‘going up’ and ‘coming down’. They are very Relevant, for the millions waiting. Attainable?
The workforce is not robust enough, nor big enough to make promises and a time-line would be little more than management by wish-list.
When no one expects a goal is achievable, it’s demotivating. Watching it slip-away, is about as demoralising as dropping an ice cream on a hot pavement.
Intention is better. It’s our intention to reduce the number of people waiting, using every resource we can muster and we will celebrate every success, however small, in achieving it.
Our intention… the emphasis on ‘our’. Unlike goal, which, inevitably, belongs to someone else. Our intention… means all of us, playing a part, intent on delivery.
Goals are done to people, intentions are delivered by everyone.
Attention.
Pay attention to people, listen… for sure. But, it is more than that. It’s easy to slip into the mind-set that doing the day job is the job…
… nothing more is achieved, motivation is lost. Good enough becomes good enough.
Well done, patting-a-back… of course but there’s more. Paying attention, listening to what people say and you’ll learn.
Are they worried about paying the bills, are they using food banks? Do they have an unhappy relationship, can’t get enough child care, a sick relative or a work grouse that they’re nervous about expressing.
Pay attention and you’ll discover the real person.
What has their attention should get your attention…
…the person you are responsible for. Getting the best out of people means the whole person must be at their best.
If you only see that person at work, ask yourself, what do they do, achieve, worry about, outside work?
If they don’t bring their whole person to work it means they might struggle through the day and go home to a pile of problems. How can you help?
Or, they have the time and space to want to learn more, do better. How can you encourage them?
Exploration.
You might call it review or performance management. It doesn’t work. It’s old-school management.
Writing in the Harvard Business Review, Peter Cappelli and Anna Tavis tell us;
‘[reviews]… hold people accountable for past behaviour at the expense of improving current performance and developing talent for the future, both of which are critical for organisations’ long-term survival…’
They’re right.
The alternative? Exploration. Explore, how are we doing? Note the ‘we’. The organisation and the employee, together.
Each dependent on the other. Neither can be a success without the other.
Explore what works and why. What doesn’t and why.
Explorers discover new things, places and ideas for the future.
Appraisers find faults in the past.
Exploring limits and abilities is a different way to get inside accountability and make people part of the solution and not the problem.
Three words, that’s all. No magic.
News and Comment from Roy Lilley
Contact Roy – please use this e-address roy.lilley@nhsmanagers.net
Reproduced at thetrainingnet.com by kind permission of Roy Lilley.
