Leaders spend a lot of time in the driving seat.

Even when you’re in great shape — with maps studied, routes chosen and provisions packed — the demands of just making progress throw up an endless stream of forks in the road and decisions to take.

The best place to be? Behind the wheel, correcting the course and carrying on.

And what works for you works for project teams too.

Each project comes with its very own driving seat, and anyone big enough to sit there deserves your support. Most of the time that means keeping out of their way.

Get Out and Push

But what do you do if a key project comes to a juddering halt?

A bit of coaching can go a long way, but when a good team digs itself axle-deep in stuckness, you might have to get out and push!

That’s not a euphemism for taking over.

Putting your full weight behind a project doesn’t have to mean jumping in with size twelve boots. Far better to volunteer your strength, put your back into the job, and give them the boost of motivation that comes from attention.

When I say volunteer, I mean exactly that. Tell the team how important they are to the project and how important the project is to you, then simply offer your services as an additional resource to get things moving again, “What can I do to help?”

If they ask you to get on a plane. Pack your bag. If they need funding. Find some. Political shenanigans? Pour oil.

The Universal Adjuster is Baby Steps

The trick is to show your commitment and get the cogs turning without taking over, undermining anyone or knocking good people out of the way. Nobody wins if you do everything yourself.

The universal adjuster for stuck teams isn’t a hammer, nor is it deep analysis and grand schemes. The answer is baby steps. Little actions that make small but discernible progress. Almost anything you do will rock the wheels, and if you string a few actions together, things will start rolling.

Neatly filed under Innovating,Leading
Tags: doing, people, projects

There are times when every thing’s going well. Everyone’s doing their job, you’re doing your job, wheels are turning. Lovely.

And then a fire breaks out.

You jump into the fight to dowse flames and smash problems.

When Thing Go Wrong

Getting involved when things go wrong can be time consuming and draining, yet it’s a perversely thrilling part of leadership. (Don’t tell anyone I said this, but it’s kinda fun.)

Get sucked in too often though, let it become your standard operating procedure, and your team will see you as a professional fire fighter hanging on to a hose — more mess-cleaner-upper than makes-things-happener — and they’ll be right.

But leadership isn’t a fire truck and it’s not about hotspots.

It’s a bus on a journey to some place new.

Sure, every vehicle needs a fire extinguisher and someone who knows how to use it, but it’s only for emergencies. When you gotta use it, you gotta use it, but most of the time you should concentrate on the road ahead.

When you focus your attention on things that drive the bus along, not only do you put more time into making the most difference, you’re also showing everyone what should be at the top of their to-do list.

Get Involved When Things Go Right

A great way to shift emphasis is to get involved when things go right.

Look for anything that contributes forward motion and celebrate every success you see. I’m not saying overdose on awards or go party mad, just sprinkle a little fairy dust to make the good stuff sparkle.

• Go see a customer who’s just signed up for more business. Ask what your company is doing right. Spread the word.
• Sit in on a project meeting. Stay quiet. At the end of the meeting say you’re excited about the project and they should keep at it.
• Talk about progress whenever you can. “Let me take one minute to update you on …”

Leaders must always be prepared to haul on some breathing apparatus and step into the heat, but the most effect you can have (and the most fun to be had), is where things are going right.

Neatly filed under Leading,Skippiness
Tags: cohesion, culture, motivation

I bet you know a ton of stuff.

Stuff that none of your team knows you know.

And I bet your team knows stuff that you don’t know they know.

Useful stuff on both sides? You bet.

Wasted Assets

There’s a bunch of knowledge buried deep in your business. Things tried, learned and done before. Powerful, door opening stuff — if only you knew it was there.

What good is knowledge if no one can get to it? Knowledge not shared is redundant. A hidden strength. A wasted asset.

The gap between what’s known and what’s shared is filled with three kinds of problem.

• Not-invented-here — some people like to work things out on their own. They don’t ask for help or search for existing answers.
• Have-to-be-invited — some stand by the wall, waiting to be asked to the party. They might have more to offer than anyone but they need to be invited to help.
• I-didn’t-think-to-ask — some get so involved in a question that they never raise their head or look for help.

The trick of course is to unplug the dam, release the flow, and turn all that knowledge into a competitive wave.

Part of the answer is to play leader-as-connector. Putting Mary in touch with Paul, pushing project teams to put feelers out, and tapping histories for gold.

But you can only do so much from the top.

Set It Free

Ultimately, the only way to unfreeze knowledge and get it flowing to its most productive home is to to create an environment where it’s not only OK to ask for help, it’s expected.

Where it’s standard practice to ask, Does anyone know about …? How do you think I should ….? Where the Not-Inventeds have to share, where the To-Be-Inviteds are always invited, and the Didn’t-Thinkers have no choice but to think.

By revealing and maximising what you already know, your team becomes more productive, more innovative and more responsive to change. Spending their time adding to the sum of knowledge, not just reinventing it.

Knowledge may be power, but only when it’s free.

Neatly filed under Leading
Tags: knowledge

Ever suffered the long haul getting your team to change the way they do things?

Most leaders have.

It’s frustrating, but the idea that leadership means you can get your people to do what you want is a myth.

Let me qualify that. Changing simple things is pretty straight forward, but if you want something that involves a change in mindset, life becomes more difficult.

What do you want?

Whether you want something easy or hard, the first step is always to say what you want.

I know it sounds obvious. But the number one reason people don’t do what’s expected of them is … they don’t know what’s expected of them.

For simple changes, just letting the team in on the secret might get things off and running, lickety-split.

Shifting mindsets though – to improve customer service or to be more innovative, say – can feel like a wrestling match. But change isn’t an opponent, it’s something to bring in to your corner.

I don’t think you’ll find motivation is the hurdle. Most people want to do a good job. More often the barrier is a simple lack of understanding. Listen hard, and you might just hear your people saying, “I don’t know what [customer service/being innovative/any other conceptual change] means in my job. How. Do. I. Do. That?”

Show and Tell

In other words, a speech (or ten) that simply urges an abstract change might sound like it’s full of good ideas, but it’s probably just noise.

Put your message in context with home-grown stories that show what you mean. It’s the difference between showing and telling, between parables and commandments.

For example, for better customer service, tell tales about heroes. “Did you hear about Brian? He drove home on his lunch break to pick up a jacket to lend to a customer who’d lost his own in an airport snafu?”

Using parables gives change a human face. They show what you want in real life situations, and they break down complex concepts like “improve customer service” into simple and easy actions.

Neatly filed under Leading
Tags: motivation, people, story