Last time I wrote about the first 2 of the strategies as listed in the Disney Great Leader Strategies (you can read that post here). I have been trying different ways to foster an inclusive environment and working on the structure of my team. I'll start with just a couple updates from that post and we will move on to the next couple strategies.
My team is already rather flat as an organization. We have designated "leads" but the way we organized is based on a "circle" structure. This structure allows for a lot of cross functional support for each other, while giving a clear direction to each circle (we call them pillars).
The general idea of this structure is that each layer of the organization has a strategic focus that aligns to the Organization's vision and overall strategy. In practice since each circle overlaps, we help each other out when needed. Even though we have Team Leads, these leads are given the opportunity to develop their leadership skills within their teams. The Manager then is not just a "authority" type role, it is a leader role focused on the leadership development of the Team Leads. In practice this keeps all people in the organization involved with each other, while still giving some clarity of responsibility, authority, and accountability. We have a set cadence of meetings to do strategic checks and alignment, which provides a flattening of the structure in itself. We give each other feedback of the work being done, and we bring up team issues that may affect the entire team. There are few barriers built in this system, as each person is given clarity of what they have full ownership to do. Each team meets regularly, and each team member has one-on-one developmental and "skip" level meetings to ensure quick resolution of issues. Overall, we have created a structure for ourselves that attempts to remove all the typical silo type mentalities that exist in many teams. Each person has authority to make decisions, and we have many modes of communication to allow for clear cut dissemination of those decisions.
I've been fostering an inclusive environment and addressing the issues that have come up as I described last time. I am working on something new, but I will talk about that further down in this post as it directly applies to one of the next strategies. I can always do more in this area, and have been focusing a lot more recently on the individuals within my team. Having direct one-on-one meetings with each individual with a caring attitude toward their growth and interests has allowed me to better align their participation with their growth, which in the long run will create a much higher engaged and productive team.
With that short update, let's go ahead and move on to the next couple strategies. I am finding that reading the document in full helps to see how all of these together build great teams, but it takes effort to make each strategy work. While working on a particular strategy, we can start building up the next strategy. So in this post I am going to cover the strategies of "Make Sure You Have the Right People in the Right Roles" and "Ensure that Cast Members [team members] are Knowledgeable about their Roles."
Make Sure You Have the Right People in the Right Roles
In this strategy, Lee discusses 18 different tactics. Generally speaking, it takes a lot more effort and careful consideration when either bringing new people on your team or promoting someone into a role with more responsibilities. I won't cover all these tactics, but I do want to reflect on some that I've focused on more recently.
You have the opportunity to create a challenging job.
I've been thinking about this part greatly. I've recently had one of our team members address this with me. Since that conversation I've been trying to look at each person and creating a challenge for each of them. Having a challenge keeps people engaged in learning and development. You don't have to just fill a job for what a previous person was doing, this is the time to really look at the position and ask some more difficult questions. What are the capabilities you are going to look for when hiring (or promoting, or even re-thinking) the challenging job?
Lee talks through 4 major areas you are going to want to ensure a person has competency in:
1. Technical
2. Management
3. Technology
4. Leadership
When thinking about these 4 things, I have realized that a lot of the time we focus a lot of our efforts on finding the right technical fit. This may be fine for a job that is straight forward, but it still may not be fulfilling to the person in that position. So we must look to the rest of those competencies to find the most well-rounded candidate. Management doesn't just mean managing others, it also gets into good time management, attention management, self development, etc. Competency with technology ensures the person is staying current with the trends of the industry and will better help them in their jobs as they push themselves to meet the challenge of the job. Leadership is not to be put behind everything else, in fact it's a quality that is essential in nearly any job. This can be the ability to work well in teams, to communicate well with others, and a load of other things. Leadership skills can be developed, but when hiring, we must be able to see what those things are that will help the person succeed in this role.
That leads to another interesting concept that I have yet to implement. It is the idea that the resume and the interview aren't everything. One of the best ways to know someone is to see them in their element. Lee says for instance that when hiring someone who you expect to be there for a long time, why not spend the extra $400 or so and fly or travel to where that person is currently working. What better way than direct observation and discussions? If you are going to call their current manager anyway, what about scheduling a face to face? It's in these moments that you begin to really see how the person is in their current work environment - it gives so much more context than simply reading an application or listening to their answers in an interview. I think this also goes along with creating an experiential hiring process where people interact in similar scenarios that they will be exposed to in the job itself. Either way, I think I still have a lot to do on this strategy.
Ensure that Employees are Knowledgeable about their Roles
This part is something that I am spending a lot of my time on doing. It is focused on the development of your people. Lee brings up coaching and teaching in this strategy. Teaching is about ensuring the individual has the full knowledge, understanding, and behaviors necessary to do the role they have been assigned to do. Coaching on the other hand is about the individual development of the person. Lee uses an acronym of COACH to describe this.
Care / Observe / Act / Communicate / Help
As leaders we must show our employees we care about them and their personal development. We must observe their behaviors and focus on them as people. If we observe a behavior that is not correct, we must act upon it and correct it because we care about modeling the right behaviors. We communicate like storytellers, and we must be great at communication. Great communication grabs attention and creates clarity for others. Finally we must help others. To help others we must take on the role of teacher and developer of people. To be great this is an absolute necessity.
There is no worse feeling than being in a role and not knowing what you are doing. There is no better feeling than being confident and knowing how to perform your role well.
This quote stood out to me as part of what Lee describes. Why must I do each of those things in the COACH acronym? Because it sucks not knowing what to do. This has for me been an interesting concept. I've been going around my organization asking the question "in your current role, how were you developed to do a good job?" Nearly all the answers I have received so far has been little to none. Often we are learning through the burns of the fires we have been thrown into. As an organization this is not a great model to build greatness. It leaves people confused and frustrated, and often times unsafe. Picture yourself entering a leadership role in a large organization. One of your employees gets seriously injured on the job. What do you do?
You were thrown into the job with little to no training or transition plan, and so you do what you think is right. You call 911, you get the person help. You do what you thought was right for yourself. A week or two goes by and you are brought into your manager's office. Sitting on the other side of the table is your manager and your manager's manager. "This is an investigative interview on a serious incident that occurred two weeks ago. You are fully accountable for all the processes, policies, and procedures in your area. Why did you not perform your duties as required?" In that moment how do you feel?
As I think about it, I would feel betrayed by the organization. Promoting me into a position is a great honor, but demoralizing me for the failings of a system of "learn by burning" is absolutely absurd. To be great we must be great together and help each other. There is no other way. The fires will burn, and you will find a lot of victims in that system.
As I have been thinking about this more and more, I am realizing that I have not done well to do these things yet. I am taking examples of Training Within Industry's Job Instruction to form the "how to" part, but the "what" to train part is going to take some effort. Imagine not having a clear set of responsibilities or authorities for a position. In order to hold accountability, we must have clarity of those two things. Then we can develop what skills or knowledge is needed in order to do those things well. Only then can we do well to train others. So here's where I am with that. I am creating a map of roles with their clear responsibilities and authorities. Then will assign an "accountability" system to each role based on those clear responsibilities and authorities. This clarity of things allows one to truly own their work. As a manager, my role must be defined in this way as well. Accountability is not punishment, nor should it be regarded in the negative light. It is simply a way of following up with a person and treating them as a person. If there are skills that need to be developed, then develop them!
This might take a bit of time, but it is necessary to do. Lee goes on to talk about ways to make this work. First and foremost is to have "pre-shift meetings" or huddles or morning meetings (depending on what you want to call it). 10 minutes a day translates into 40 hours a year per employee of training opportunity. This structure allows for leaders to do skill checks and skills development. I remember all the way back to my lifeguarding days. Each morning we would all come in and clean up the park and prepare it for the day. Then we would meet as a team for our morning inservice for 15 minutes. We talked about expectations for the day for a few minutes and any issues we were having, then we would go into training mode. Each morning we would review CPR methods, first aid scenarios, lifeguard 101 type stuff, or just anything that seemed in need (how to provide great guest services for instance). I found that in my first year of employment there I felt confident to do my job and do it well. Imagine if you went to a water park where the lifeguards did not feel confident - would you want to swim there or let your kids swim there?
As a leader we are also tasked to make deep connections between what we do and how the customer experiences what we do. This requires spanning out of just what is in front of us and looking up and downstream in the organization. We must be able to aptly communicate this with our people, it is important that we all feel the impact of what we do for our customers' sake. This can simply be reviewing customer feedback with each other, positive and negative. Often we glance over the positive in order to "fix" the negative, but we forget that we can also leverage all the positive we do. Sharing positive feedback also allows us to make ourselves feel like we are doing some good in our work, builds up our pride of work which creates intrinsic motivation. Want people to come to work? Find ways to build up that intrinsic motivation! It is much longer lasting than punishment.
Lee brings up the 4 Expectations of the Employee in this section - which I have referenced before in other posts. Make me feel special, Treat me as an individual, Respect me, and Make me knowledgeable, develop me, and know my job. Having these 4 things in mind is critical to what I do as a leader. I refer back to these constantly. If someone is not doing their job well I look to myself and how I have made them knowledgeable or developed them to do a good job. It's up to me to build clarity and build the person up - that is my responsibility. In TWI they say "if the learner has not learned, the teacher has not taught." Before we go into the "blame game" on the individual, we must constantly look at ourselves and ask how well we have led. I recently had this discussion with one of the plants we have been working with. There seems to be a common theme of supervisor capabilities not being where we want them to be. We are not doing the things we are supposed to be doing and each supervisor seems to do things in their own way. This has created frustrations between supervisors and employees - having inconsistent methods decreases clarity. Instead of blaming the supervisors, we looked at our systems. How do we build up their abilities? How do we create clarity of their responsibilities and authorities? How are we creating accountability? As it turns out we seemed to be really weak on the accountability side. There really was no consistent accountability system in place, and since there was weak clarity, even the way we were trying to do the accountability piece was frustrating. One of the supervisors said "it's not like any of this matters anyway when I just get shot down by someone else!" Clarity of authority was lacking. It's just amazing to me how these three things (responsibility, authority, accountability) are inextricably linked and must all three be strong in order for people to feel confident in their work. It takes each of us as leaders to go back to the 4 Expectations first and reflect on how we have done as leaders for our people.
Wrapping things up here, I realize I still have a lot to do with these two strategies. It's more than gaining a basic understanding of what these are to actually putting these things in practice. It takes a lot more effort and energy than it sounds, but to build greatness it is absolutely unavoidable. I have a lot more to do and will have more to reflect on as I go. This section has been quite involved for me, and I'm feeling how much energy it takes to make it work.