If a team member performing poorly relative to expectation, the team’s leader should first make sure basic tenets for success have been established using best contracting and governance practices.
- As the team’s leader, ensure that you:
- Know what the team counts on the team member to do
- Believe s/he has the ability do it.
- Want him/her to do it.
- Validate that s/he:
- Knows what the team is counting on him/her to do
- Believes s/he has the ability do it.
- Wants to do it.
- Verify s/he has what is needed for success; including resources (e.g., time, money, space), knowledge, experience, systems, and access to experienced advisors.
- Ensure there is sufficient incentive to perform up to expectation.
- Provide governance; i.e., every month or so, ask him/her to tell you:
- What s/he is trying to accomplish
- What has been done towards that end
- What has been the result of those efforts
- What has been learned
- What s/he plans to do next.
Continue reading How to get on track to success with a team member performing poorly. →
The main reason things go wrong is lack of management attention. Hence the importance of Executive Review Meetings! However, management reviews can also go wrong. Here are eight common reasons why they often do:
# 8. The leaders did not prepare, so the meeting becomes the preparation and the review never materializes.
# 7. Too much time spent on history, story telling, and showboating. It is up to the leaders to be sure that whatever is really important gets covered.
# 6. The leaders talk right up to the end of the meeting and never created a space for the reviewers to ask questions, clarify, challenge, and then offer their best thinking.
# 5. Top management fails to create a safe environment thus turning the review into a sham (a.k.a. dog-and-pony show).
# 4. Management fails to really pay attention to see what needs to be seen and to deal with what needs to be dealt with rather than seeing what they want or hope to see.
# 3. Management fails to generalize what is learned to incorporate and reuse elsewhere
# 2. Management discovers during the review that things are in much worse shape than expected and, without intention, makes the management team feel inept by piling on and trying to help too much in the moment.
# 1. The number one reason why these meetings don’t go well is that the most important reviewers fail to show up due to last minute crises or they show up physically but not mentally.
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