For many organizations and leaders, finding the right set of 5 to 15 leading indicators that provide an absolute pulse on the business (or the department) is a difficult challenge. Often it takes several months or longer to truly fall in love with your scorecard.
One of my clients was chomping at the bit to document their core processes – especially their HR process. They were a family-owned business and their turnover was holding back their profitability. They believed a robust HR process would reduce turnover and help increase profits.
So I taught them the three-step EOS® method to document their process. They created a rock for it, and got to work. But there were problems.
In Why Millennials Will Love EOS® – Part 1 we said that millennials, who were raised in a different time than we Boomers and Gen-Xers, think differently. They have very specific expectations for information and for their work environments. TheVision/Traction Organizer™ and the Accountability Chart provide the vision, big picture, and culture that millennials need to understand and to be engaged.
You have probably heard the saying: “fly by the seat of your pants.” You can actually fly a plane by “feel,” but not when visual references are gone (i.e., flying through clouds).
Prior to entering the clouds, every pilot is taught to reference their instruments and ignore what’s going on outside the window. Simply put, our body indicators are not capable of providing accurate feedback with the absence of visual references. Trusting your instinct at this point could be deadly.
Seth Godin wrote a post recently called “The Illusion of Control.” As with all Seth’s posts, it prompts great thoughts.
The gist of the post is that we delude ourselves when we tell each other, tell our children, tell our employees, tell our management team that we have control over the future. We don’t. Plain and simple.
All we can control are our actions. The things we choose to do. If we choose wisely, we can greatly influence the future. But that is all. Just like with your cholesterol. What you eat will influence whether your bad cholesterol goes up or down. Not what the exact number is. And exercise, of course.
Pressure is often seen by employees and managers as negative. But what if it isn’t? What if people thrive on pressure?
High performance demands a certain amount of pressure. Imagine you’re training for a 10K race. If you put no pressure on yourself, you don’t train, you don’t hire a coach or plan your calendar to prepare for the race, you will undoubtedly perform poorly. Conversely, if you put too much pressure on yourself, over-train and stress out, perhaps injuring yourself, you may not show up at the starting line.
