Conversations for Change by Shawn Kent Hayashi

Author:Shawn Kent Hayashi
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: McGraw-Hill Education
Published: 2011-05-22T04:00:00+00:00

Mistakes in Conversation

A common mistake is not asking people if they are committed because you assume they have the same passion for the project that you do. Leaders should not delegate the responsibility for ensuring commitment from the team to others. Look your employees in the eye and ask, “Have you agreed to do this? Are you committed to completing the XYZ project?”

If we do not show how actions taken today are based on seeds planted by past initiatives, we do not reinforce the importance of our commitments. I watched an organization make a significant commitment to teaching its workforce goal-setting and measurement techniques to track progress against the organization’s strategic initiatives. Every manager went through training, and then the managers led workshops for their own teams, embedding the goal-setting and measurement-tracking processes into their work. This was both expensive and time consuming for this large organization, but it paid off with results in alignment in goals and increased profit. Nine months later I randomly heard comments from employees, saying things like “That goal-setting and measurement stuff we did was just another flavor-of-the-day thing management made us do.” When I heard that, I was stunned, because the organization was still using the process and techniques. In the very department where these words were being spoken, there were measurement boards with the goals listed at the top and the current data hanging on the wall for everyone in the department to see. In addition, the results were also posted on the company’s intranet. Connect the dots for people verbally and in writing so they see that actions that are being taken today are based on commitments that were made months and years ago.

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