Leadership & Safety

If you’ve worked in a corporate environment, or any environment quite likely, you may have encountered the idea of status reporting via traffic lights. That is, Green when things are going well; Yellow (or Amber) when things aren’t perfect, but not awful; Red when things are off track.

Different companies I’ve worked at and consulted at have different definitions for each of these colours. And in some cases, they’ve created additional statuses (“our project is deep orange, trending to canary”, whatever the hell that means). But that’s not the point.

At one company, I was facilitating a weekly update with each of the leads presenting their status updates to the rest of the group, including the SVP who oversaw the entire group. He was great, and this story is really about him, and how he led. Let’s call him Mark (not his real name).

One after one, each of the leads got up and shared their update. What was going well. What they were struggling with. What open positions they had on their teams. What they were planning on getting done in the next week. What they were planning on releasing, and when.

And then, Suzie (not her real name, either) got up to give her update. I forget the exact details, but it went something like this:
“My seven person team is down to three. I have two open positions that I’m working with our recruiting team to fill, but two other analysts from my team have gone to help another team since their work is really going to be impactful if we can get it into market this month. We don’t have access to the new database of customer data, so haven’t been able to generate the insights for the next campaign we’re looking to launch. And even if we could access the data, we don’t have a commitment from the vendor or from our engineering team to deliver it in the timeframe we’d need it delivered in order to be valuable for this season…”
There might have been more, but you get the idea, I hope.

And then, she announced, “So, our team is reporting Yellow.”

Silence in the room, waiting for me to call on the next Team Lead. But I didn’t. What felt like hours was likely mere seconds, I said: “Suzie, how many more things need to be wrong for you to report your status in red?”

Suzie paused, looked down at the floor, and reluctantly said, “yeah, I guess we really are red.”

It was what happened next that was amazing. Mark said, “Suzie, what do you need? What can I do to help?”

There ended up being some conversations, and two weeks later, Suzie came to me ahead of the status update meeting and told me how much she appreciated being called out. You see, in the previous two weeks, she’d received all of the help she needed. Projects were back on track thanks to additional support she’d been receiving. The vendor and engineering teams had stepped up to help. And she had a five really promising interviews lined up for later that week.

In addition, Suzie said to me “Jeff, I don’t want to go back to any other status. I’m getting all the help I need to be successful right now.”

But this was all because of Mark, and how he responded to Suzie acknowledging that she was in that forsaken Red status. She’d shown a huge amount of courage to admit that she needed help, in front of her peers, all A-Type personalities (seriously), and in front of her manager – someone who was responsible for her bonus and possible promotions.

Mark had responded the best way a leader could. It would be easy to blame Suzie – but Mark had made it safe to ask for help. He’d set an example that others could follow. He’d thanked her for letting him know how he could help. This could’ve gone the other way, so easily.

If you’re a leader, my challenge to you is this:

• How can you support your people?

• How can you foster an environment of trust and safety for your people to ask for help when they need it?

• How can you build them into stronger people, and stronger leaders themselves?

• Many leaders say the right things, but their actions don’t match their words. How can you be sure that yours do?

By the way, I’m not really a fan of the R/Y/G (or R/A/G) status reporting in most instances. The world is too complex to be represented by a single colour in my experience.

But the status that I’ve come across which is my favourite is “watermelon”…
It’s green to everyone on the outside, and bright red on the inside.

My First Management Role

It was 1998, and I’d just been promoted to my first manager role. I’d been an Assistant Manager for a couple of years, but was thrilled to be taking on my first Manager role. It was for Black’s Cameras, one of Canada’s largest photo retailers across the country. And I had been given an opportunity to manage a small store in Scarborough.

This store hadn’t been performing very well, with all of the metrics that were being used. Not that it was the worst, but it certainly wasn’t one of the best. It was also in a part of Toronto that wan’t known for being a very affluent part of the city. Quite the opposite.

But none of that is the point of this. The point is that I wanted to do a good job, and validate that I did deserve to be the manager of this camera shop.

I did a couple of things that, looking back, I’m really proud of. I also did a whole pile of things that I’m not really proud of. In time, those really helped me learn. But I’m going to talk about the two things that I’m really proud of for the moment. These came to mind as I’m helping create a leadership workshop for a large enterprise. And these two things came naturally to me for some reasons. No one told me to do them, I just did.

1…

The first was that I didn’t set goals for my staff. Weird, I know. Every other manager was setting goals for the employees. How many cameras, extended warranties, loyalty program cards, each was expected to sell. And it made sense – all of the Store Managers, including me, had a Regional Manager setting goals for us to achieve in our stores.

But I didn’t do that. I actually sat down with my staff, and individually talked to them about how many shifts they were going to work each week (we had a pretty consistent, but rotating, schedule). And I asked them how many of each of these thing they thought they could contribute to the store’s sales (in effect: my targets).

When they gave me a number for the month, I asked them to break that down by the week, and by the number of shifts they worked. For some of my part-time staff, did the really think they could sell one camera every shift, or would one every three shifts be more realistic? Did they really think that when working four shifts a week, including our busiest day each week, that they’d really only sell one camera for the entire month?

Once they’d landed on, what they felt was a realistic goal for themselves, I’d thank them for that, and ask what I could do to help make sure they achieved that goal. In some cases, it was learning about a new camera, or about when something might be in stock, or about a question they could ask to help them sell the loyalty card when someone was picking up their photofinishing order.

Month after month, they collectively arrived at a number that far exceeded the target that had been set for me by my Regional Manager. And month after month, we delivered, as a store, against that result. Usually, there’d be one person who didn’t make their target, but the others in the group more than offset that one (or sometimes two) who missed.

2…

The other thing I did was to set store goals rather than individual goals. When there was a promo or incentive available, I’d set a store goal.

I remember having one conversation with one staff member who said “This is stupid, Jeff. I could hit my goals, perform perfectly, go above and beyond, and if the others don’t do their part, I’ll get nothing.”

And I remember, even this early on in my career, thinking ‘it’s not about you; it’s about us, as a team’. I’m pretty sure I said something like that to him – that as a strong performer, one of the things he can do is to help others develop. Share his knowledge, skills, and expertise with them. He didn’t last long working at my store. The funny thing was that, in hindsight, he wasn’t nearly as good as he thought he was. Don’t get me wrong – he almost always delivered his results, or came pretty close. But never supported anyone else in the store. And even back then, I was more interested in building a team.

And now, today in 2020…

These values still hold true for me. I’m interested in what people think they can do, challenging them to push themselves, and then supporting them in achieving their own results. I’m interested in building a team, where the whole really is greater than the sum of its parts. I wish 20ish years ago that I’d been more aware of what I was doing. Nice to look back in hindsight and understand why I did some of the things I did.

And, it’s funny to see some of these things I did as a photography retail store manager are still applicable and valuable in the completely new corporate enterprises I find myself in these days.

It’s 2018

We’re almost a month into 2018 now… The first month of a new year... A year full of possibilities!

If you’re like many people, the year often starts with a New Year’s Resolution… A chance to think about something you’d like to improve, or change, in your personal or professional life. For those of you who know me well, you know I’m always about continually learning and improving myself. I don’t always succeed, but I’m always trying. I’m not trying to be perfect, but rather just better than I was yesterday.

A new year seems like a great time to set some new goals. But I don’t think it is.
In fact, I think the entire premise is flawed.

First of all, it forces me to wait until an arbitrary date on a calendar. Why should I wait? When I see something that I want to change about myself, the best time to do it would be a year ago. Or maybe two years ago. But the second best time is right now. There’s no reason to put it off when I know what I need to do.

Secondly, when I plan in years, I set goals with long time horizons. This means they tend to be large goals. I need to keep track of my progress. I need to ensure they’re realistic. In fact, the most common reason for participants failing their New Years’ Resolutions was setting themselves unrealistic goals (35%), while 33% didn’t keep track of their progress and a further 23% forgot about it. In a survey that came out at the end of 2014, about one in 10 respondents claimed they made too many resolutions.

Finally, neuroscience research suggests spreading resolutions out over time is the best approach. A 2007 study by Richard Wiseman from the University of Bristol involving 3,000 people showed that 88% of those who set New Year resolutions fail, despite the fact that 52% of the study’s participants were confident of success at the beginning.

Now, why do I mention this? Well, it’s because it’s the same thinking that an agile, or learning, organization exhibits.

Instead of waiting to make improvements, Scrum offers multiple times to reflect and make improvements. We call these the Daily Standup. Think that’s just for reporting on the status of your work? Nope. That’s a time to reflect on what you’re doing and identifying things that are slowing you down, so you can remove them so they don’t slow you down in the future. The Sprint Review is another opportunity to look at what you’re doing, and make sure you’re still on the right track. Hopefully, you’ve learnt something about your product and your customers as you’ve been working, so this is a perfect time to pivot, as the data becomes available. No need to just wait for the Retrospective.

How about setting long time horizons? The longer things take, the less pressure and importance they tend to have. What about setting small milestones, or breaking my improvements down, so I can see progress? And, more importantly, I can learn and pivot as shorter cycles provide me with better feedback, and better data. The same study I referenced above found that men achieved their goal 22% more often when they engaged in goal setting, (a system where small measurable goals are being set; such as, a pound a week, instead of saying “lose weight”).

And, consider focusing on, and setting the most important goal (or two) to right now, instead of trying to predict a year, or two, or five, into the future. Once I’ve achieved the most important goal, or arrived at a point of diminishing returns, or realized it’s not the most important priority, I can move on to the next highest priority. That way, I’m getting things done, as opposed to getting things started.

I’m certainly in favour improvements, and resolutions, and I’ll support anyone trying to make a positive change in their personal or professional life. Just as we’re trying to do with our work, I’d encourage you to thin-slice your resolutions, and be willing to pivot as you start on your journey in this wonderfully exciting new year, full of possibilities.