You’ve Got To See This!

Made you look didn’t I? Turns out, 65% of Americans are visual learners. That means you are missing at least 65% of your audience with your “memos”. This is the solution.

By the way, this is part 3 of our “How to Execute Strategy” series.

Eye

We’ve already discussed that we set way too many goals, so you’ve pared your list down to 1 wildly important goal by now, 2 goals at the most. Then we discussed how to track lead measures. Now that we are focused on our #1 wildly important goal and we are measuring the right things, we’ve got to make our measurement so visible that it cannot possibly be missed.

I’m talking about very visible. I mean everyone who walks into your office has to ask about that huge thing (missile, thermometer, whatever…) that you have in your lobby and pasted all over your office that is displaying the tracking of your #1 wildly important goal. Every employee who logs into your internal server should see an update on the goal. It has to be everywhere!

If I can walk through your office or manufacturing plant and find a single employee who does not know what your #1 goal is for this period (quarter, year, etc.) and what his or her role is in accomplishing that goal, you (the leader) have failed this test.

I heard a great story about a reporter who was interviewing employees at NASA when we were working to put a man on the moon. The reporter had been randomly asking employees about their jobs. When he asked the janitor what he did for NASA, the janitor replied “I’m putting a man on the moon.” That janitor had a perfect “line of sight” from his job to NASA’s #1 goal. Everyone who worked at NASA had the job of putting a man on the moon and we did it (the “moon shot” story is a worthy of and will receive its own blog post). Do all of your employees have a clear “line of sight” from their job to your organization’s #1 goal?

Here are 4 questions from “The 4 Disciplines of Execution” that you need to ask to know if you have a compelling scorecard for your #1 goal.

  1. Is it simple? Can everyone on your team understand at a glance if they are winning or losing? This is why you see simple “red/green” scorecards in great workplaces. Everyone knows at a glance how they are doing.
  2. Can I see it easily? As I mentioned earlier, it has to be everywhere and over the top visible.
  3. Does it show lead and lag measures? We covered this in last week’s post. You’ve got to be tracking the measures that drive the outcome, the lead measures.
  4. Can I tell at a glance if I’m winning? Once you’ve broken your larger goal into steps, your entire team should know what winning looks like today. They cannot wait until 15 days after the close of the month to know if they are winning. The information must be ridiculously clear and timely.

Congratulations! If you’ve answered these questions in the affirmative, you have a compelling scorecard for your organization. If you don’t, why not?

Next week, we’ll finish up with the topic everyone loves – Accountability!

What are some great examples of compelling scorecards that you have seen? Please leave a comment in the blog.

Thank you for being a part of our values driven community!

Photo courtesy of http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/41/Iris_close-up.jpg

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