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A leader without a plan is managing, not leading.
With Boss’s Day this past Sunday, there is a good bit of focus on the boss. If you are that person or if you lead those persons, how do you ensure that their best laid plans lead to stellar performance? Well, first you have to have a plan.
Yep, we go with the obvious here as so often we focus on the more advanced techniques or skills and forget that it’s the simple steps or the obvious maneuvers that can make the biggest difference. For example, do you have a plan that will lead that team you lead to greatness? If not, please know that winging it, is not a plan. 😀
How do you create a plan? Here are the initial steps:
- Determine what you want as your overall goal. What are the numbers you want? What kind of customer feedback do you want? What relationship do you want with the team?
- Involve them in the creation of these goals as information they provide will create more ownership in the formation of the plan. Team members may argue with your information, but they will not argue with their own data.
- Look at the Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats of the team as a whole. Again, have them contribute to what these might be.
- Come up with the solutions to the Threats and put timelines on when they will be resolved or at least when the solutions will be implemented.
- Keep in touch with the progress. Monitor it, but don’t micromanage it.
This is a cyclical process and one that can be done each month or each quarter, or if the team is in real disarray, each week. The key is to have a plan and follow it until it’s resolved or until things change that change the needs of the team or the customer. Often times just having a plan that is followed will spark more creative solutions and train those you lead to come to the table with solutions to a problem right when the problem arises, versus after it’s already train wrecked your results.
Are you ready to make your plan?
Stay Contagious!
Monica
