How to “Get Stuff Done” A Guide for Leaders-of-Leaders

by Vic Downing – Global Advantage, Inc

© Victor Downing October 2010

Businesses that survive –and especially businesses that thrive—get stuff done.

The “stuff” that needs to “get done” is making deadlines, winning customers, eliminating errors, achieving EBIT, winning market share, et cetera. It is, also, showing up to meetings on time, making sure everyone knows when there is a customer or a regulator “in the house,” making an extra effort to build bridges with “enemies” internal to the company, et cetera.

Sure, it is more complicated than that: “What needs to get done?” “How do you plan for surprises?” “How do you manage the politics?” The list of “yeah-buts” is endless. Nevertheless, every leader-of-leaders eats “yeah-buts” for breakfast and then presents the leadership team with “stuff we need to get done this year.”

There are three causes of “stuff just not getting done”:

1. It is in fact impossible to get the stuff done that you require be done.

2. You are incompetent or have lost personal credibility and, therefore, the other leaders don’t deliver because they lack confidence in the strategy and/or are unwilling to give their best to you.

3. The members of the team have changed or you are new to the team and, therefore, the team doesn’t believe they are accountable for getting stuff done in the way you intend.

This article recommends three sets of solutions:

1. Make Sure It Is Possible

2. Make Sure You Deserve The Discretionary Effort

3. Burn Off The Ambiguity

Make Sure It Is Possible

“Possible” doesn’t mean: “It is not more difficult than what we have done in the past.” “It doesn’t require new skills or new work alliances.” “I will stay in my comfort zone and use a “style” which is “me”.” To the contrary, “possible” means achievable with the application of courage, discipline, creative thinking, humility, teamwork, and just plain hard work… “discretionary effort.”

If you can put a metaphorical gun to their heads, and they still can’t do it, then the goals are not possible and the problem is yours and not theirs.

If you can put a metaphorical gun to their heads, and they still can’t do it, then the goals are not possible and the problem is yours and not theirs. In that case, you need to add resources or re-set the goals. Although it is true that adding resources and re-setting goals are serious business (because it means re-setting budgets and expectations with your boss or with stockholders), it is also true that setting goals and not achieving them is more than serious business.

Make Sure You Deserve Their Discretionary Effort

As a leader-of-leaders it is not necessary for you to be able to do each of your subordinates’ jobs as well or better than they can do those jobs. Likewise, it is not necessary for you to know the details of how they are doing their jobs. It is necessary for you to know the business and your subordinates’ contributions to the success of your customers and your team sufficiently well that you instantly spot “fluff,” “snow jobs,” exaggerated numbers, “smoke screens,” and excuses. You must be able to instantly drill-into the details (e.g., the numbers, the SWOT of customers, upstream and downstream processes, et cetera). If you can’t do that, then “stuff is just not getting done” is your problem and not theirs.

As a leader-of-leaders it is essential that you personify every value you hold as essential to the success of your team. If courage and humility are essential to the culture of your team, then you must be the first example of courage and humility that comes to their minds. If customer-focus is essential to the success of your team, then every plan, presentation, report, argument, and decision must start and finish with the impact on the customer. If teamwork across the organization is a priority for your team, then your team must be able to cite your many relationships with your peers who were, in the past, viewed as enemies or competitors. If these traits are not characteristic of you, then you deserve no more discretionary effort than the long list of Senators, Representatives, and Presidents we have sent to Washington, D.C.

Burn Off the Ambiguity

If the stuff you need to get done is do-able and if you deserve their discretionary effort and if stuff is not getting done, then your job is to eliminate any misunderstanding regarding what is required, who is accountable, and the nature of the consequences for success and failure… burn off the ambiguity.

If the work is do-able and stuff is not getting done, burn-off all ambiguity regarding accountability and consequences.

As ambiguity goes down, discretionary effort goes up.

Burning off the ambiguity doesn’t mean making your demands in a louder voice, pounding the table, or idly threatening to fire someone. Burning off the ambiguity involves six steps:

1. Focus on Objective, Team Outcomes
2. Focus on Subjective, Team Values
3. Link Every Person’s Variable Compensation to The Achievement of Objective, Team Outcomes
4. Establish Regular, Frequent, Public Accountability
5. Weed the Garden
6. Invest in the Best

1. Focus on Objective, Team Outcomes

You are running a business and you have a team of leaders who are responsible for the success or failure of that business. At the end of the quarter or the end of the year, how do you measure the success or failure of that business –the business as a whole and not the success or failure of components of the business?

• Market share?
• EBIT?
• Customer satisfaction?
• Cycle time?
• DPMO?
• Staff turnover?
• Safety ratings?
• Et cetera

Hold the whole team accountable for the whole business, not just their pieces of the business.

Your team of leaders must be held accountable for the success of “the business” and not simply the “success” of their piece of the business. Why? If the whole business doesn’t perform at a successful level, then it is irrelevant that a few parts perform well. The only way for the whole business to perform well is if all the parts are thoroughly committed to the success of the whole as much or more than they are committed to the success of their piece of the action.

2. Focus on Subjective Team Values

Success must be objectively measured (see above), and it must not be only objectively measured. If the team “makes its numbers” and, in the process offends a supplier or ignites dissention in the ranks, then success will be –at most— very short lived.

How do you want your leadership team to look and feel? What reputation do you want associated with your team of leaders?

• Impeccable ethics
• Always has the other’s back
• On-Time. Prepared. Without Exception
• No silos
• The customer’s “personal trainer”
• Et Cetera

3. Link Every Person’s Variable Compensation to the Achievement of Subjective, Team Values and Objective, Team Outcomes

“Skin in the game” means money. Commitment means action.

The way to win commitment and have a whole team with skin in the game is to link the variable compensation of each of the members of your leadership team –or at least the lion’s share of the variable compensation—to the achievement of the objective and subjective team outcomes.

Plan on objections:

• “I’m an IT guy, not a sales guy. I don’t control Susan’s interaction with customers.”

• “I know nothing about IT systems… and unreliable IT systems are the number one cause of my customers bailing on me.”

• “The accounts that are in trouble are not in my territory. I shouldn’t be penalized for their failure.”

• “I’m not responsible for Frank being a jerk when it comes unreasonable demands from customers.”

Teamwork is not a natural inclination… you’ve got to assign very compelling consequences to teamwork (or the lack of it).

We are selfish. Teamwork doesn’t “come naturally” to us. We perform well in teams when we must perform well in teams.
Make teamwork a must and not a nice-to-have. Use variable compensation tied to team metrics to change the paradigm of your leadership team from being a collection of franchise owners to being a single board of directors.

4. Establish Regular, Frequent, Public Accountability

Once your leadership team is tied to the same set of objective an subjective business outcomes (see above), those who are performing well are eager for progress reports… and those who are not performing well are looking for places to hide. Peer pressure is a wonderful thing!

It is not enough to say, “I hold you accountable.” What works is this:

Team leaders meet in-person or by video conference… never by tele-conference.

Schedule Leadership Team Progress Meetings on a regular basis. Every one to two weeks works best.

Make attendance mandatory. If members are traveling, have them join by Internet-based video conference…don’t use a telephone conference. (See my article, Video Conference Guide.) Start every meeting exactly on time. Finish every meeting on time or early. Follow the same agenda every time.

Here Is an Agenda:

1. Review Action Items by Exception: Action items identified in the previous meeting(s) that were not achieved are reported and action to close those gaps is a required report. Time is not taken to “explain” why the item has not been achieved… that is handled off-line. Action items that were achieved are not reported… those actions are assumed.

2. Report Progress Toward Goal by Exception: If the team is not making a particular metric, report that and require the production of specific actions to close the gap. Don’t use the meeting to figure out the root cause of the problem. The root cause and the recommended solutions should be developed before the meeting… which means all team members are constantly staying current with performance.

3. Report Truly Exceptional Performance: This is not reporting the achievement of accountabilities… that is assumed. This report concerns individual or team performance that sets a new high-water mark.

5. Weed the Garden

Individual leaders who don’t deliver and/or who don’t exemplify values central to success must have an unambiguous, meaningful, private conversation with the leader-of-leaders… the first time the gap is seen. That conversation must include specific, objectively verifiable examples of the gaps, specific requirements for closing the gaps, dates by which time the gaps must be closed, and notation of consequences for not closing the gaps. All of that must be committed to writing. If there is no progress toward closing the gap, then that failure must be discussed and recorded in writing. If the gaps persist, every effort must be made to replace the leader who is not performing.

6. Invest in the Best

Individuals and teams that exemplify the team’s core values and who exceed –not just meet—expectations must receive more of an investment immediately:

• Private time with the leader-of-leaders to discuss the direction of the team in the new fiscal year
• The first to receive highly sought after training
• Invited to meetings with senior leaders who are visiting
• The first to get the new lap top or the new phone
• Invited to serve on high-visibility, cross-functional team
• Advocated most strongly as a “rising start”
• Et cetera

Getting Stuff Done in the Real World

The real world is messy. People get sick at just the wrong time. Your boss suddenly caves into expediency and abandons courage. Your HR rep is promoted and the new guy is a pure “black and white and no gray” kind of guy. Consequently, getting stuff done in the real world can be as tricky as nailing Jell-O to a tree.

The solution is to have a handful of constants, non-negotiables, in your world of variables. What are the behaviors that you absolutely will not tolerate? What are the metrics against which you will be measured? What are the risks you are unwilling to take? Whose opinion of your leadership is your compass?

What are your “constants,” your “non-negotiables”? Does every member of your leadership team believe you?

(Those are only a few. What are yours?). So long as these constants, those non-negotiables, are safe, everything else is negotiable.

Make sure everyone on your leadership team knows your non-negotiables, your constants. It is not enough to declare them once or twice… it’s not enough even if your communication is perfectly delivered. These need to be reiterated frequently throughout the fiscal year. Your leadership team must be thoroughly convinced that you will not settle for anything less… nothing.

Build and maintain unambiguous relationships with your boss and with HR. You have got to know your boss’ non-negotiables, and those need to be compatible with yours… if they aren’t, you’ve got to get a new boss. Likewise, it is essential that you know in advance where your HR person is going to come down when performance management and termination issues rear their gnarly heads. If your HR person is not reliable, then you’ve got to build alliance up the HR chain of command so that you know for certain that you have an ally when things heat up.

Finally, you must be able to make a clear and compelling case for how your non-negotiables positively impact the business success of your customers. In the end, the success of your customer is the ultimate trump card. Every debate comes to a screeching halt when you clearly, briefly, and with specifics show how threats to your constants will upset your customers.

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