"The best way for me to spend any given day is to essentially figure out how to make my team a tiny bit better. Because there's really only two kinds of days-ones when your team gets better and ones when your team gets worse. And if you just spend time getting better, then over a prolonged period of time you become essentially unbeatable."
-Adam Bryant and Kevin Sharer, The CEO Test
Missions hold a special place in my heart. They aren’t a few words on the pretty wall at headquarters. Missions are blisters. They are sunburns. They are two weeks of eating the same food or days without food. They are clothes that can stand on their own because you sweated so much that the salt holds them up. Missions mean rationing water because you aren’t sure when you’ll find more.
You meticulously plan missions. You have primary, alternate, contingency, and emergency (PACE) courses of action because you know no plan survives contact with reality. You analyze, prepare, rehearse, and execute. It means bleeding, sweating, and crying. You do whatever it takes because the mission matters. If the mission is big enough, you are on a team. Hopefully, with people who matter to you. People you never want to let down - your team. All teams need leadership. But what does that mean?
Leadership is about clarity. The leader’s job is to move information and emotion. Ultimately, the leader's success is defined by how effectively the team operates. Central to this is ensuring the right people are sitting in the right seats on the bus, focused on the right things at the right time.
Sometimes, leaders get it wrong—the wrong person, the wrong seat, or the wrong bus. When that happens, the team's effectiveness suffers. Leaders have to fix it. Quickly.
What do you do when you've got the wrong people in the wrong seats?
Two Options
Develop them
Replace them
I’ve been adding filters over the years to determine which of these is the right course of action when I evaluate team members. If I had read the book Beyond Entrepreneurship, I would have spent less time stumbling in the dark. Jim Collins has done an excellent job assembling a list you can use today. Although I’m not done reading the book yet, I bought a few stacks for the office. I walked around handing it out, saying, “Page 18. Just read page 18.” Here’s Collin’s list for evaluating people.
Are you beginning to lose people by keeping this person in the seat?
Do you have a values problem, a skills problem, or a will problem?
What’s the person’s relationship to the window or the mirror? This requires some explaining. Do they take responsibility when things go wrong? Do they shine a light on others' successes? Do they blame the circumstances? Mirror mature people always ask, “What could I have done better?”
Does this person view work as a job or a responsibility?
Has your confidence in them gone up or down in the last year?
Do you have a bus problem or a seat problem? Sometimes, you have the right person in the wrong seat.
How would you feel if the person quit?
I’ll add the one I’ve been using for a few years,
“Knowing what you know now, would you hire them again for this role?”
As leaders, our decisions often have options that are between bad and cataclysmic. The more senior you become, the more this is true. If you are a human-centric leader, your hardest decisions will be about people.
Almost no one shows up and wants to do a bad job. They’re usually doing the best they can with what they have. They’re juggling their strengths and struggles, trying to harmonize their priorities. We must be,
“Be Rigorous, Not Ruthless”
Rigor is about truth and honesty. Not being honest is unkind. Lead with compassion, care, and communication. It will be okay if they know you have their best interest at heart and genuinely want them to win. Collins says,
"To be rigorous, not ruthless, requires a blend of courage and compassion. The courage comes in being direct and straightforward, not hiding behind made-up reasons or delegating the hard task to someone else. If you don’t have the guts to take personal responsibility for making the decision and delivering the news, then you don’t have the right to lead. The compassion comes via tone and respect. Are you handling the change in such a manner that you’d feel comfortable calling this person on his or her birthday next year, and years down the road? And would the person warmly welcome the call?"1
Leaders don’t have to be the only ones to ask these questions. You can ask them about yourself, too. Just because you are on the bus doesn’t mean you need to stay or should stay.
You won't need to drive the bus if the team is effective. Only stay out of their way.
Take care, Kelly
Collins, Jim. BE 2.0 (Beyond Entrepreneurship 2.0) (p. 20). Penguin Publishing Group.
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