In the heat of the pandemic many businesses came together to adapt. Some pivoted their entire business models to survive. Necessity was the mother of invention. The urgency through that chaotic period created a burning platform in which teams truly came together. Some of those ways of working were admittedly unhealthy and unsustainable. However, in more normal times, how can leaders yield what we learned through that time to inform their direction going forwards? For 2023, how can you create a burning ambition that is equally as compelling, clear and gets the best out of your teams?
While some normality may have returned since the start of the pandemic in 2020, there are still very uncertain waters ahead:
In our client work we are consistently seeing a trend of teams struggling with low engagement.
The effects of Quiet Quitting, Quiet Firing, The Talent War, The Great Resignation, seemingly ripple on.
The economic recession, UK political leadership, inflation, energy prices rising and cost of living crisis.
50% of all ill health in UK workplaces is due to work-related stress, depression and anxiety.
Teams are struggling to prioritise effectively, team dynamics are strained and siloed ways of working are prevalent.
Against this backdrop, the odds are stacked against business leaders. But what is in our control that we can change? What can we as leaders do to align and engage our teams?
Will It Make The Boat Go Faster?’s Senior Performance Consultant, Jamie MacPherson and I co-hosted our most recent webinar held on the Nov 10th, entitled ‘Getting your People Ready and Fired Up for 2023‘. We really enjoyed sharing our 3 key practical strategies and our recent client stories with everyone who made it on the day. I thought I’d share my top takeaway recommendations from the session as well as some video snippets of each. I hope our guidance below helps you diagnose and focus on that which will give you the most boatspeed entering 2023!
STRATEGY ONE: Get clarity on your Crazy Goal – Develop your burning ambition
Key Questions:
1). What is your organisation’s or team’s goal for 2023?
2). If we were to ask everyone in your business what the goal / burning ambition is for 2023, what percentage would give the same answer as you?
As leaders it’s easy to spend time carefully crafting a goal and presume that everyone knows our strategic goals as well as we do. Just because we’ve shared it at a launch conference, told everyone about it once or that it’s stuck up on a wall somewhere doesn’t necessarily mean people will know exactly what our goal is. That’s why in the video below we break down why the nature and clarity of the goal can actively help shape focus and prioritisation. Beyond that, it’s imperative that leaders lean towards the side of overcommunicating the goal to ensure the messaging is reiterated and a clear communication is sent to everyone.
STRATEGY TWO: Make time so that everyone understands the part they play
Key Questions:
1). Am I creating space so that my teams are clear on what they need to achieve and how they need to do it?
2). What are the everyday behaviours, actions and attitudes that will give us more boat speed?
Once you have that clarity on your direction, you need to start forming it into a collective plan the whole team can work towards. This is where we add our Layered Goals framework to allow others to understand how the goal is broken down. Creating the space and time to allow others to digest this is how you can give someone a clear line of sight from their role directly to your Crazy Goal. When every person in every department has this clarity, they can start to see for themselves – what they need to do in their everyday actions to influence and drive forward the overarching success of the organisation. By you making the time, they can ask themselves “How can I contribute? What can I do?”. In doing so you can allow them to prioritise and focus, which will drive performance to the organisation’s goal.
STRATEGY THREE: Develop clear ways of working that enable people to be successful
Key Question:
1). What are some of the unwritten rules that exist in your team?
2). What rules would make it easier for you to succeed?
If you improve the quality of interactions across an organisation, you can improve the organisational output. Developing a clear set of Team Rules is a good way of articulating with your teams how you want to operate together. By collaboratively defining what you as a group are signing up to, as a result of working in this team, you can start to form a culture that can act as oil on the wheels in making it happen. As a starting point, have a think about some of the rules whether written or unwritten that exist in your team? How could you tweak or improve them that will help you have better quality conversations and drive better decisions that will help your performance output and drive your teams success?
STRATEGY FOUR: Recognise the success along the way
Key Question:
1). What three steps forward have you made so far this week?
2). What allowed you to make them?
Our last recommendation, once you have a clear direction, have made time for others to understand the part they play and developed those clear ways of working, it is then very important to keep recognising success along the way. What we’ve found works well is to carve out time (at a logical cadence in your working rhythms as a business) to build an evidence wall. This activity involves getting your team together and listing to all their evidence ‘bricks’ of progress. We do this every week as we find it helpful in building a sense of momentum and confidence to take a step back and recognise the progress and success we’ve made. By taking it a step further, we also encourage people to think about what are the ingredients of their performance. To ask themselves ‘what are the tasks that I’m doing that are contributing to the organisational success and how can I replicate them?’ By helping others get curious about the recipe we can help them build a sense of confidence and focus on the key areas of performance driving our goal.
Jamie and I were struck in our conversation around how leaders can get their teams ready and fired up for 2023. Despite the uncertain waters ahead, if leaders focus on what they can control and and provide clarity, direction and communication to their teams around what it is they want to achieve and how they are going to do it, they will be on track for success in 2023. Therefore don’t forget to celebrate the big and small will in your evidence wall sessions with your whole team.
If you’d like to chat to us to learn more about how we help businesses do all of the above exercises and more, please feel free to book a no-strings attached call with us via our contact us page. We’d love to hear more about your key challenges and to share our expertise. All the best for leading through uncertainty and giving clarity and confidence to your teams for 2023.
