Reports don’t generate results; *actions* generate results.
Reports Are Powerful
I’m sure you’ve heard quotes like these:
- “Measure what matters”
- “You get what you inspect; not what you expect”
- “When performance is measured, performance improves”
- “If you can’t measure it, you can’t fix it”
- “In God we trust; all others bring data”
They’re right! A fundamental principle of modern management theory is – If you want something to improve, start measuring it and ask people to report on it.
It’s not enough just to have a number or a report. You need to *use* that information!
Throw Down a Challenge
I love this classic story from Dale Carnegie’s How To Win Friends and Influence People:
Charles Schwab had a mill manager whose people weren’t producing their quota of work.
“How is it,” Schwab asked him, “that a manager as capable as you can’t make this mill turn out what it should?”
“I don’t know,” the manager replied. “I’ve coaxed the men, I’ve pushed them, I’ve sworn and cussed, I’ve threatened them with damnation and being fired. But nothing works. They just won’t produce.”
“This conversation took place at the end of the day, just before the night shift came on. Schwab asked the manager for a piece of chalk, then, turning to the nearest man, asked: “How many heats did your shift make today?”
“Six.”
Without another word, Schwab chalked a big figure six on the floor, and walked away.
When the night shift came in, they saw the “6” and asked what it meant.
“The big boss was in here today,” the day people said. “He asked us how many heats we made, and we told him six. He chalked it down on the floor.”
The next morning Schwab walked through the mill again. The night shift had rubbed out “6” and replaced it with a big “7.”
When the day shift reported for work the next morning, they saw a big “7” chalked on the floor. So the night shift thought they were better than the day shift, did they? Well, they would show the night shift a thing or two. The crew pitched in with enthusiasm, and when they quit that night, they left behind them an enormous, swaggering “10.” Things were stepping up.
Shortly this mill, which had been lagging way behind in production, was turning out more work than any other mill in the plant.
More Than Numbers
As an ambitious young leader, I remember wanting to make a good impression on my boss by producing the best results in the company. I worked hard, and my team worked hard, to get the results we wanted. We produced results and received rewards.
Over time, however, I learned an important lesson. It’s easy to get so focused on the numbers that all you care about is a number on a piece of paper. You forget those numbers are a crude attempt to represent something in the real world. If you’re not careful, “improving the numbers” won’t improve the business.
Goals are stars to guide you by and not sticks to beat you with
Stars, Not Sticks
Always remember that metrics and goals are stars to guide you by and not sticks to beat you with.
The real world is messy. There’s a lot of moving pieces – some you can control, and some you can’t. Sometimes you have bad processes and get good results; and other times you have good processes with bad results. Beware of letting an “outcome bias” undermine your efforts to identify and implement the best processes.
In the past 25 years, I’ve learned that the best people don’t always produce the best numbers. And the best numbers don’t always lead you to the best leaders. In fact, sometimes the best numbers lead you to the most dangerous leaders.
Start Now!
Once you have a decent set of reports, put them to work! Reports don’t generate value sitting in your inbox or on your desk.
- Start Small: Identify a handful of metrics/reports that seem to be the most important.
- Set Goals: “Throw down a challenge” and set goals for each metric.
- Public Scoreboard: The results shouldn’t be a secret for a privileged few. Everyone on the team should be able to see the results.
- Meet Often: Most teams should be meeting on a weekly basis to discuss results.
Advice for Leaders
Here’s what I tell new leaders when I’m coaching them on how to use reports to lead and manage their teams:
- Feedback: Reports are simply feedback. They are not the final judge of success or failure.
- Being Good: It’s not about looking good; it’s about being good.
- Humble Accountability: Yes, you need to be the leader and hold people accountable, but doing it in a humble way is much more helpful. “I need your help. I can’t do this without you. My job is to coach and lead this team and hold people accountable. Let’s work together to produce results we’ve never seen before!”
- Support: Leaders need to coach and support their people. It’s not your job to solve everyone’s problems and tell them what to do. When meeting with under-performers, don’t ask, “What’s wrong?” Instead ask, “What are you doing to improve? How can we help?”
Game On!
Many leaders believe scorecarding and accountability will hurt morale. Not true! Nine times out of ten it helps morale! It flips the “Game on!” switch and tells people what they are doing is important and it matters. It shows people we want to win!
Most people don’t come to work to suck! They want to do a great job, but it’s hard to know if you’re winning or losing when the only feedback you get is trying to interpret your boss’s facial expressions and random comments. What looks like a “performance problem” is often just a “feedback problem.”
Scorecarding and accountability helps your team the way scoreboards help athletic teams. People love working hard and seeing the results on the scoreboard!
