Ask Marcia Leadership Q and A's: Make better decisions, FASTER!
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Thank you for submitting your leadership questions to md@mdaszko.com.
Q. The attendees in team Zoom meetings in our company rarely turn on their video. There are new members we haven’t even met. How do we get people to add the video?
A. Occasionally people cannot turn on their video because they are working remote and do not want to share their background. However, most organizational cultures encourage the staff to open their videos and engage. Often, leaders will expect high interaction and engagement from all of their team members.
It’s up to leaders to create the culture, values, and expectations for communication, interaction, and zoom calls. Great leaders communicate those values from day one of the recruiting and hiring processes. Do the new applicants match your culture? Do they want to participate and engage, and be part of the team and family environment? What does it tell you if some want to engage and others don’t? What is the environment that the leaders/owners want to build? Are the values and behaviors consistent?
These are topics to discuss. Perhaps the leaders can have Town Hall meetings (on zoom or in person) and ideas will emerge. These are essential conversations. Without people feeling cared about and in an environment where they can contribute, engagement will decline and turnover will increase. What’s your next step?
Q. Is it possible to meet goals without having numbers attached to them? We spend endless hours in meetings forecasting, budgeting, and making numerical goals. Sometimes we hit them; sometimes we don’t. Is there a better way?
A. Having goals that are focused, clear, and articulated are essential. But how leaders measure them can be distinctly different. Organizations do waste hundreds of hours a year manipulating numbers. That’s called tampering and ends up creating more variation in the system. If you’re not achieving the results you want, examine your statistical thinking. Are you looking at data over time when you are running your business or projects?
Setting arbitrary numerical goals, especially for measuring new products, services, or markets is guessing. Setting arbitrary numerical goals is also limiting. For example, a CEO told me he wanted to grow his business from $30 to $40 million. I heard him. Then I asked that he not share that numerical goal with the staff. Instead, we took the business from $30 to $300 million. Why set limitations on your numbers? If you do, your team will psychologically set that limit at $40 million, hit it, and then slow down.
Statistical thinking is paramount for executive and team leaders. Why is it so important? Because if you don’t understand it, you’ll make the wrong decisions! It might not be as important if you make a bad decision making a toy, but if you’re in healthcare, bad decisions can take lives and cause unnecessary mistakes (we’ve heard about them: a patient can have the wrong leg amputated.) Unfortunately, few people have been taught what statistical thinking means and how essential it is to running a business or projects. Traditional statistics are not helpful. If you need resources (books and workshops) to learn about statistical thinking for better decision-making, contact me, and I’ll refer you.
Send your leadership questions to Marcia Daszko at md@mdaszko.com. She works with Boards, C-suite leaders and teams to pivot, innovate, accelerate and achieve bold results never before imagined. A provocative keynote & virtual speaker, strategic Deming advisor/consultant for 25+ years, and executive retreat facilitator, she is the bestselling author of the book “Pivot Disrupt Transform.” www.mdaszko.com Call for her help today!
