Humans First - growth and scale depend on meeting human needs
We all know that the ability to grow and scale a business is dependent on the ability to systematize and operationalize. Where I see business owners and leaders fail is when they put systems and operations ahead of the humans who make them work.
Obviously, it serves no purpose to create and document systems for work to be done effectively and efficiently if the only people who can do that work are those who initiated it or who designed the system for their own needs. So at the core of operationalization is the successful assignment and delegation of work. And a consistent theme that I encounter with clients is that business leaders know that they need to delegate and prioritize the management and coaching of their people and teams, but they also feel that it’s their weakest area of leadership. In a nutshell, what I hear is this; “I respect that they're human, and they have emotions. But I don't want to spend my days managing people and their feelings. I just need them to get the work done.”
Understandable, but also unnecessary and perhaps even unreasonable. In my experience, you can maximize the impact of well-designed systems and effectively delegate using focused and intentional time spent coaching, and training, and managing people when you tap into the power of human nature.
It’s human nature to want to do meaningful work well and be rewarded for it. If you want to spend your days being a visionary and a strategist and have your human team spend their days performing at their highest capacity, emotionally engaged and committed to their work, you can neither abdicate your role as coach and leader nor be a micromanager or therapist.
I believe it’s your job as a leader or manager to ask, “What do you need to get the job done?” Then get the resources your people need and remove the obstacles in their path. There’s no need to step in and in all likelihood screw things up by trying to help or take over, insert your last-minute opinions, or dictate how something should be done through what I call “random acts of management.”
If that sounds like a dream come true, then there are three requirements you need to take into consideration:
One, you must create an environment where people can grow into the work that needs to be done. No one gets it right the first time, or every time. So you must have a culture that embraces failure, rewards progressive improvement, and supports continual learning.
Two, you must attend to all 6 of what we call the “Cs” – The Six Facets of Human Needs™ – as part of your company culture.
Three, you must offer a path to higher levels of ownership and reward.
Granted, we can’t always make promotions available in terms of title or status. But if we’re growing and scaling the business, we can find opportunities to hire and promote people into higher levels of challenge, ownership, and compensation, which is one of the keys to being able to grow and scale.
As an example, I recently took on a new client who had a history of losing new account managers before they had time to really learn the role. She wanted someone who was highly aspirational, but she was hiring them at the lowest entry level, assigning them the easiest and lowest risk clients, and telling them that when they mastered those clients they could move up. I suggested that her next hire be assigned to a high value client. We made sure the new hire had the adequate level of clarity about both the importance of the account and the requirements of the role. We also ensured that the appropriate level of training and support were in place. Ultimately, we got an account manager who was performance driven, and rather than bringing them on the lowest rung where they would naturally lose interest due to the lack of challenge or meaningful contribution, we gave them the chance to contribute in a meaningful way from the outset. Now my client has a very successful employee who has told her, “If you had done what you'd always done before, I wouldn't have stayed.”
Another way to both protect your time and energy as a leader and to promote your team into higher levels of ownership is to learn to delegate coaching, mentoring, and training. Leaders, as they say, create more leaders. And when you focus on creating leaders within your teams, you’ll not only be able to scale faster, you’ll also be able to offer more opportunities for your team to be connected to each other, to have greater opportunities to contribute and meet new challenges, and you’ll be sending a strong message that you have confidence in each and every one of them.
The question I’d like for you to ask yourself is this: Are you looking at systems and operations as something your people need to support, or are you looking at your systems and operations for how they can support the people in your organization? Successful delegation that leads to increased business growth will always be best served by the latter.
