Having established why you need staff despite their downside, how to keep them on-message and stop them screwing up, and how to select particularly valuable ones, the next step is to consider how to get them to do what you want as well as just avoid doing what you don’t want.
First things first: what do you want them to do? You want them to do two things: one, generate the basic necessary level of output from your team or department; two, assist you in getting ahead of the game. The latter is obviously the more important, but the former needs some attention as well.
You need to begin by establishing what the basic necessary level of output from your unit really is. The key motif here is “just enough”. The rest of their energy is much better devoted to getting you ahead. So how do you find out what is just enough? Happily the current fad for appraisals, objectives (preferably acronym based such as SMART), measurable targets and the like provides a starting place. They are useful because they define a minimum acceptable level of output.
To digress, it is worth remembering that as a way of motivating people to extraordinary performance (if this is really desirable anyway) they are useless; they define a minimum level. If you want to get more from your people whilst working within this system, keep their objectives vague and unmeasurable so that they can never actually tell whether or not they have achieved them or not. They will tend to operate nearer maximum if they are any good (if they are no good, set objectives which are apparently precise and reasonable but in practice unachievable e.g. “actively seek to ensure a 0% level of customer refunds this year”, thereby giving yourself the option of disciplining them for underperformance later – “actively seek” can mean whatever you want it to). A particularly beneficial side-effect of this approach is that you have complete flexibility in any periodic grading or assessment process with your staff, since they can never actually argue with your scoring on the basis of anything factual.
Begin by getting your own Boss to define the minimum acceptable level. As this will be officially recorded, and possibly scrutinised in turn by their Superior, it will reflect the official norm. On its own this is useless to you, as the official norm will bear only a distant relation to the real required minimum. The real requirement will be related to the official one by corporate culture or tradition. Some companies have over-achieving cultures e.g. “we always beat our targets by at least 25%”, while others “set ambitious goals for ambitious people” which are not meant to be met. You need to know what the rule is here, and you can easily establish this by finding out how targets and reality were related in the previous year. Then apply that relationship to your own. Corporate culture is very difficult, and therefore slow, to change, so you can be pretty confident the relationship is still valid.
The point here is that not only do you want to free your personal time up for the more important task of getting ahead, but you also want to free your team up as far as possible for the two more important tasks of a) doing your personal work for you and b) promoting you. Every team does, however, need to deliver a minimum or hygiene-level of output without which it will be perceived as failing. Since you absolutely do not want to be responsible for failure of any kind, your team has to generate this minimum level. If you don’t know what the minimum level is, you can’t ensure the balance is right between necessary but unproductive (from your perspective) activities and productive activity focussed on you individually. So you have to find out.
The next post looks to how to get your team to actually produce the necessary goods. The options: management or leadership?
The next post looks to how to get your team to actually produce the necessary goods. The options: management or leadership?
