Set It and Don't Forget It

Wouldn't it be great if everyone in your office did things right?  I believe they can.  Leadership has a couple of key tasks to make that happen: set expectations and make sure they are followed.  I spent this past week in Nebraska working with a multitude of people and the most common denominator I found was a frustration of having no expectations or having them but no one follows them.  These two items go hand-in-hand.

Setting expectations is like letting everyone know the destination of the vacation.  Once they know where they are going, they will know what to pack, which activities to expect, and anticipate having a great time.  If you don't know where you are going, you might pack your ski equipment for a trip to Hawaii.  Instead of anticipation they experience anxiety.  Expectations give people something to strive for - a target.

Once expectations are in place they must then be watched.  Yes, I mean Big Brother is Watching.  Many people will do what they find is the easiest for them to do, take the path of least resistance, and will not stretch if they don't find the benefit for them.  When you are measuring results, giving feedback, and letting people know where they stand in meeting the expectations, they then find moving toward the expectations becomes the path of least resistance.  People will also find more satisfaction in their jobs when they know how they contribute and that their contributions are validated.

Set what you expect to get from your people. Let them know you are paying attention and appreciating their contribution to the success of those expectations.  Let them know you don't accept them not moving toward the expectations.  We need consequences for non-compliance to make the expectations matter to the person doing the job.  It adds credibility to the organization and the leadership.  It fosters personal and professional success.

Have you lost your senses?

Well, laryngitis has set in.  Not a good deal for a speaker.  However, I have no speaking engagements until next week and I am hoping with a lot of care and keeping quiet that my voice will return to its full glorious self.  It has been a challenge since I put off most of my phone calls this week until today.  Obviously, that is not happening - at least not in the normal way of doing things.  I have been able to be accommodating with the people I was supposed to call by faxing, emailing and doing online chats instead.

This got me thinking about disaster recovery planning.  I had a training session yesterday (immediately prior to my voice going out) and we touched on the subject of the importance of disaster planning.  There are many good resources out there to help with disaster planning.  I wonder if any of them talk about losing your voice?  They would if they were being set up for professional speakers.  What things are core to your business that you haven't thought about ways to compensate when something happens?

I have heard it said that when you lose a sense, that the other senses take over and compensate.  We have so many more options now with technology.  Give it some thought.  If something happened to your business and one service was shut down - how would you compensate?  What could you use to replace it?  Can you get things from somewhere else?  Is there another way of doing something that you might not have thought of because you have been doing it that way for years?  Who knows, with a little thought now about disaster planning, you might come up with better ways to do things now.