Redefining Success
Typically one assumes that nearly any business desires to grow and become big. Growth is often the focus of most businesses whether deliberate and documented or informal and unspoken. And growth is good, sometimes.

If we look around us, it is not hard to see that size does not seem to be a particular advantage in this economy. Some have observed, for instance, that it is the larger banks who currently have the most difficulties.

What is an advantage is the ability and willingness to adapt, to actually capitalize on the changes around us. To do this, organizations must be nimble.

We define organizational nimbleness as the ability and willingness to make smart and timely decisions about core organizational strategies, resources and actions based on real-world dynamics.

Consider what mind scientist John Medina says about human history and our ability to adapt:

“How, then, did [humans] go from such a wobbly, fragile minority population to a staggering tide of humanity 7 billion strong and growing?..There is only one way… You give up on stability. You don’t try to beat back the changes. You begin not to care about consistency within a given habitat, because such consistency isn’t an option. You adapt to variation itself.”

Rather than fight change, as humans we survived as a race because we embraced change. There is a lesson here for business leaders as well. If we build our businesses around the strategy of enduring the change around us, of surviving until the change reverts to the status quo, eventual we will fail. This failure is caused by two realities:

1. We at best will endure the change but will not benefit from the change
2. The status quo, as we once knew it, will never return, and in fact, the status quo is constantly changing.

But if we instead build our businesses around the strategy of adapting to the change, of expecting change and then benefiting from it, we can prevail.

Remember that there are larger animals than humans and faster animals than humans, but we ended up at the top of the food chain. The same can be true of your business.

Major Phases in the Evolution of Modern Business

Society, and specifically business, is not static. It has been in constant change and always will. When viewed over a short period it may not seem this way. But when viewed over any extended period of time it is obvious. The lesson here is that we make a mistake if we think the way of doing business that has worked for the last ten, twenty or even thirty years will be the way of doing business for any foreseeable period of time in the future.

To exemplify this, let’s look at some of the phases that society has gone through, with a particular eye for its impact on the world of business.

Hunter-gatherers. This is the phase of our existence wherein we survived by wandering around and gathering plants and hunting animals we encountered.

Pastoralists. This is the phase where we figured out that we didn’t need to rely on chance encounter with animals, but instead we could capture the animals, domesticate them, and take them with us as we wandered around finding the best grazing ground for our animals. We ate the animals and their byproducts such as milk.

Horticulturalists. Similarly, a horticulturalist figured out that we can actually plant crops, tend them, and harvest them, all with a bit more control and predictability than just wandering around hoping to encounter edible plants. We did all the work by hand, with the aid of tools.

Agrarians. Here we had a breakthrough: we realized we could get help in doing our farming, and we employed the help of animals. It becomes a blend of the pastoralist and horticulturalist.

Industrial revolutionists. We had another breakthrough: we don’t all have to do the same thing. In fact, it may not be a good idea for all of us to do the same thing. Focusing on a specialty can be more efficient. This is called the division of labor. The ramifications are huge and wide-reaching.

Information Age/Post-Industrial Ageists. The focus here is not on products but on services and information. We are at this time teetering between the industrial age, the information/post-industrial age, and the next age. What is that next age?

The Nimble Age…….

Why Nimble is More Important Now

The degree to which nimbleness becomes desirable is determined by the degree to which you can predict the future. If you have confidence in your ability to predict the future, your organization does not need to be nimble.
But let’s compare our ability to forecast now versus a few years ago:

• A few years ago most of your competitors, suppliers and customers would be around year after year
• In looking to the future now, even seemingly stable competitors, supplier and customers are going out of business
• A few years ago, many companies knew sales would increase 3%, 5%, maybe 10% each year
• Today, it is hard to know if sales will increase by 25% or decrease by 25%
• And the percentage change in gasoline prices over the last year or so is unprecedented.

In other words, we live in very volatile times which require us to be nimble for survival.

Will this volatility continue? There will be periods of relative stability, relative predictability, but an assumption that things will stabilize could be very risky. An assumption of volatility, combined with a strategy of nimbleness, is a safer bet in the long haul.

Redirecting our Motivations

For most of recent history, the focus of almost all businesses has been to grow. The desire to grow is motivated by many things. Some seek growth to achieve a greater level of strength, control over their destiny, to achieve safety and security. Others seek growth out of a desire to find challenge and adventure. Both of these motivations can also be directed at being nimble.

• Recognize that growth can take many forms and growth need not only be in top line sales revenues or headcount. It can be growth in flexibility, nimbleness, quality, efficiency, sustainability, innovation and perhaps as a result, a growth in profits
• Accept that a large company does not necessarily equate to strength and stability. Our own history as humans has shown that to be the case. Recent history in the business world has shown this to be a dubious assumption
• Respond when there is great challenge and adventure to evolving a company. This flexibility to grow, contract or shift is to be more responsive and adaptable to our changing economic environment–perhaps more so than increasing the size of a company.

Advantages of a Nimble Organization

There are many advantages of a nimble strategy:

• Being nimble facilitates the ability to respond to changes in economic climate, capitalizing on the upswings and the downswings
• Being nimble means faster reaction to changes in the market; being first to market
• A nimble company is more able to capitalize on new technologies, new suppliers

Creating a Nimble Organization

In many ways, building a nimble organization is counterintuitive. Much of what we have seen and have been taught is focused on how to become big, how to achieve momentum, how to develop economies of scale. Being nimble requires a significantly different mind set. Decisions that once made sense because they promoted a larger organization may not make sense if you are instead focusing on developing a nimble organization.

What is needed for an organization to shift its focus from mass to adaptability? Here are the key elements to creating a nimble organization:

Wise – Good business decisions are still good business decisions. Any that strategy is executed with a series of bad decisions will fail. Become a skilled decision-maker. Then become a decision-maker that makes good decisions quickly.

Willing – The shift to a strategy of nimbleness is a huge change for most organizations and there needs to be complete buy-in at all levels of the organization in order for it to work. Most importantly, the leadership of the organization needs to embrace being nimble, not huge. Keep in mind that the larger an organization, the more difficult it is for everyone to not only embrace change but respond to it. There are compromises to a nimble strategy and the organization needs to be willing to accept those compromises. It needs to be more than lip service. The willingness to be nimble must manifest itself in actions.

Observant – In order to be nimble, we need to be very informed in a timely manner as to what is going on in the world within and beyond the walls of our organization. We need to understand the key factors which could drive us to change and adaptation, and we need to have a means established to monitor and report on these factors regularly. If we have the ability to change but not the information to know when and how to change, it is of little benefit.

Responsive – When we do observe a change which would warrant a shift in how we do business we must be able to react affirmatively, quickly and appropriately. Systems, policies and procedures should be established with an eye to both the quality and speed of decision-making. If we observe a change to which we want to respond and it takes a year to do so, we are not nimble. If we respond in 24 hours but our response is hasty or ill-conceived, we are not nimble.

Scalable – One of the fatal characteristics of so many recent business failures is that the companies were unable to scale the company downward as revenues headed in that direction. Costs and infrastructure assumed a certain scale (namely, maintaining expensive overhead and other operating factors) and the organization could not survive when those assumptions proved false. A nimble organization can scale up and down rapidly and effectively.

Robust – A single point failure is defined as when the failure of only one component of a system causes the failure of the whole system. Avoid single point failures in your business. If you lose one key customer, does your business fail? If one of your main products becomes obsolete, will that sink your whole business? If revenues drop by 10%, does that drive you to bankruptcy? If so, make plans and take action to make your business more robust. Have a buffer. Review the level of diversity in your organization so that not too many things depend on one or too few components for success. Are you financially and operationally sustainable?

Lean – Be frugal when you don’t have to be so that when you do need to be frugal you don’t have to take drastic measures. Frugality is both a skill and a habit. Gain the skill and learn the habit early. Make frugality a mainstay of your corporate culture. Remember, frugal is different than cheap and is related to wise decision-making in a nimble organization.

Lead – Shift focus from managing to leading. Leading tells the team where we are going, why we are going there, and rough parameters about how we will get there. Managing tells people what to do when. By leading, people are equipped to adapt rapidly with minimal intervention from the top.

Culture – A company’s culture is both invisible and highly apparent; it is either positive or negative, but in either case, it is highly influential. Use the culture of your business to constantly ask the question, “Does this make us more nimble?” Encourage a culture that seeks to create greater flexibility.

Nimble Tactics

In becoming a nimble organization, and in capitalizing on that nimble strategy, the actions you can take need to be tailored to your company and your circumstances. You options are truly limitless.

Here are some ideas to get your creative juices flowing:

• Outsource functions where you have no strategic or operational advantage to have them in-house.
• Identify core competencies and leverage them; play to your strengths, not your weaknesses
• Employ contracts, where practical and desirable, which determine payment based on per unit or per transaction rather than a fixed rate. For instance, if you use an outside logistics firm, pay per unit in inventory and number of shipments rather than a fixed amount per month. During high volume times, you can afford it; during low volume times, you save money
• Monitor developments by using tools such as Google Alerts to notify you of activities and developments to quickly update you so you can respond to a change or competitive situation. List competitors, materials, locations, industry terms…and track them
• Engage in deliberate listening; Being in touch with the world around us is more important than ever. But don’t wait for someone to tell you that something has changed. Deliberately develop habits and systems to listen for developments that can or might impact your operating environment. Listen to your customers, your competitors, government leaders, economists, prognosticators, and anyone else you can think of. Think creatively as to how these changes could have a negative or positive impact on your business, and how making changes to how you do business could minimize the negative and maximize the positive
• Create a culture of watching and telling. Train and motivate your staff to be on the lookout for developments that might have an impact on your business. Reward employees that do a particularly good job of doing so, even if their observation turned out to be a false alarm
• Anticipate with scenario planning. Look for the most likely outcomes and plan accordingly, but plan for several possible outcomes, not just one. Look for single point failures and take steps to eliminate them
• Identify action triggers. These are metrics that warrant action when they reach a certain threshold. What happens when a single product represents more than X% of your sales? What happens when your market share slips below a certain percentage? What happens when your labor costs rise to a predetermined percentage of sales? What happens when gasoline goes over $X? What happens if a competitor goes out of business? What if a key supplier goes out of business? What if the bank calls your loan?
• Develop compensation systems such as profit sharing which promote a win/win outcome. These systems relate back to scalability wherein the employee makes more as the company makes more, and (although we don’t like to talk about it as much) wherein the employee makes less when the company makes less. This not only motivates the employee to act in the best interest of the company, but it provides built-in flexibility
• Strive for staffing structures that facilitate adjusting staffing levels according to needs and affordability.

Richard R. Grant

Some time ago a local radio station announced that they were changing their format to news-only. I was delighted. For months I enjoyed being able to turn on that station knowing I would get just what I wanted: news. They had a slogan that they often repeated that promoted this focus.

But then they added football. Being far more of a news junkie than a sports junkie, I was disappointed. Now, when I needed my daily hit of news, I would sometimes get a football game instead. Making matters worse, they did not change their slogan, and would in fact tout that they were an all-news station right in the middle of a game! Evidently, this came to their attention, and they modified their slogan with an “except” statement. While at least now truthful, it greatly weakened their once clear and focused position in the market.

They have now gone too far: They now have talk radio for three hours each day! Their slogan has disappeared as has their clear position in the marketplace.

While in business school I remember learning about the “wheel of marketing”. The theory was that, wherever a retailer was on this wheel, they wanted to be someplace else, and they drifted in that direction. If they were a high-priced, up-scale retailer featuring brand names, they were concerned that they were missing the mid-price and low-price segment of the market, and drifted in that direction. If they offered bargain prices, they sought to create a more up-market image by carrying higher priced brand-name products.

No matter where we are, human tendency is to want to be someplace else. But the grass isn’t greener on the other side of the fence.

• What does your business stand for?
• Do your customers know this? Do your employees?
• What is the highly focused image that you want to consistently portray to your customer?
• Is it vague and ill defined?
• Does it change depending on the whim of the day?
• Do you chase the market or lead it?
• Do you find yourself chasing market segments only because you do not target them, or because your competitor does?

In planning the repairs, we will first crawl under the cabin and insure a solid foundation. It makes little sense to repair the roof if the foundation has issues.

Any business is the same way. There is never any shortage of things calling for our attention, but time and resources are limited so almost by definition, most of those things are low on our priority list.

Recent economic developments have an impact on our business much like the impact on our cabin during developments last winter. It always makes sense to be insuring the integrity of the foundations of our businesses, but in recent months, doing so has become a much higher priority.

Here are some questions to ask and things to do to insure you have sound foundations for your business:

• Why are we in business? In tangible, concrete terms, what is our purpose? Are we attaining that purpose?
• What is our unique definition of success? Are we achieving it? Are we doing all of the things necessary to lead to this success?
• What is it that we can do better than anyone else? Are we constantly working to make sure we retain or even improve that advantage? Are we fully capitalizing on that advantage?
• Do we truly understand the sources of our revenue streams? Do we understand the nuances of the ebbs and flows of those revenues? Do we understand and control to the degree reasonable the forces that drive revenues?
• Do we have a solid relationship with our key customers? Are we, on a daily basis, making it more or less difficult for our customers to do without us? Are we giving them an excuse to stop doing business with us, or are we giving them new and compelling reasons to make our relationship even more solid?
• Do we understand the cost components of our business? Do we understand the costs that are mandatory to just make it by, and the costs that are wise when they are affordable? Are we investing in the mandatory items first and the elective costs in order of financial priority?
• Are we meeting our mandatory needs in the most cost effective manner? Are there “out-of-the-box” alternatives for meeting those needs that I should consider?
• Have we designed in flexibility and responsiveness to our business model so that we can respond to both problems and opportunities when they arise?
• Do we have strategic relationships with our suppliers? Do they understand our business and the needs we need them to fill? Are we treating them in the manner we want our customers to treat us?
• Have we charted out the inflows and outflows of cash in our business? Have we determined our times of surplus and our times of shortages? Have we made proper arrangements to accommodate any times of shortages? Have we updated these since the credit crisis? Do we have contingencies? Have we looked long and hard at ways to improve cash flow?
• Do I have resources, internally or externally, that I can go to for help and advice when the changes and challenges necessitate additional expertise?
• Is our team on board on all of this? Do they understand our direction, our aspirations, our challenges? Do they know what is expected of them to contribute to our success, especially if those expectations are different as a result of economic changes?
• On a more grand scale, are we part of the problem or part of the solution?

One day a copier salesperson came by to demonstrate the merits of his product, and used a sample document titled, “It’s What You Do – Not When You Do It”. I found what it said to be appropriate given my circumstances. Now, 30 years later, it is once again appropriate. I hope you enjoy it as I have.

Ted Williams, at age 42, slammed a home run in his last official time at bat.

Mickey Mantle, at age 20, hit 23 home runs his first full year in the major leagues.

Golda Meir was 71 when she became Prime Minister of Israel.

William Pitt II was 24 when he became Prime Minister of Great Britain.

George Bernard Shaw was 94 when one of his plays was first produced.

Mozart was just seven when his first composition was published.

Now, how about this?

Benjamin Franklin was a newspaper columnist at 16, and a framer of The United States Constitution when he was 81.

You’re never too young or too old if you’ve got talent.

Let’s recognize that age has little to do with ability.

–Gretta Brooker Palmer

A seasoned manager once took over the leadership of an organization knowing that it had some internal challenges, notably, poor morale. He decided to spend the first year of his new position focusing on those internal issues and then shift focus to the external issues, specifically the customer.

One year led on to two, and morale had not improved, maybe even deteriorated. Two years led to three and the trend continued. He decided he had no choice but to shift the focus off of themselves and onto their customers.

They began to make progress with their customers. The customers had sensed the neglect of the past few years and responded favorably to the renewed interest in them and their needs.

But something else happened as well. The internal issues began to fade. Morale gradually improved, and eventually became quite strong. They learned from this and re-emphasized the focus on the customer. Customers loved it, and internal morale grew still stronger.

Yes, they still had some internal issues to deal with, but the difference in the two strategies was staggering. While it was a surprise at the time, in retrospect, it makes sense. The more attention we pay to ourselves, the more discontent we become. Questions like, “am I happy?”, or “what else do I want?” tend to emphasize those things that are not going as well as we would like and those things we don’t have. As we repeatedly ask ourselves those sorts of things we become less content, not more.

But when we direct those same questions to others, our own needs come into perspective. The goal is no longer to make ourselves more and more blissful, but to do that for others.

If we continually ask ourselves what is wrong with our circumstance, we will come up with an answer, even if it isn’t real.

Consider this for your organization:

* How much time do you spend focusing on internal morale, taking employee surveys, or improving working conditions compared to improving your customers’ experiences, learning more about what your customers need, and finding out how you are doing in the eyes of your customers?

* If you or a member of your team struggles with perpetual discontent, schedule a time to meet with customers to get to know them, their needs, and how your organization can meet them more fully.

* Do you find yourself engaged in conversations about internal discontent more than about customer discontent?

“One of the things I keep learning is that the secret to being happy is doing things for other people.”

– Dick Gregory

– Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

I recently was talking to a small business owner about a tool that he developed for dealing with his staff and others. He calls this tool the 3 E’s: Empathy, Encouragement, and Empowerment. He makes a point at least once each day to cover each of the 3 E’s with each of the staff he encounters.

Empathy is shown when we demonstrate that we understand what the other person is dealing with; their challenges, concerns and dreams. Showing empathy shows you care about them as a person, not just in what they can produce for your benefit.

Encouragement is something we all need, and in regular doses. We show it by expressing our confidence in them and their abilities. It inspires and gives hope. Encouragement can make the unpleasant more pleasant, and the challenging more viable.

Empowerment leverages empathy and encouragement and enables people to grow, to apply new skills, to be more involved, to feel more worthwhile. It makes people feel more a part of the team, and at the same time strengthens the team.

Applying the 3 E’s has a direct and positive impact on this business owner’s staff, but he has found the 3 E’s to be contagious as well; the people that receive their daily dose of empathy, encouragement and empowerment are more apt to offer the same to others with whom they come in contact.

Some application tips:

• Be authentic. Don’t feign empathy. Don’t mislead in your encouragement. Don’t give false hope in your empowerment. Don’t run around the office hurriedly passing out 3 E’s as if you have a long check list to finish.
• Listen. Don’t just dump your E’s and run. Capitalize on the inevitable conversations that ensue. You will learn something, and they will be validated.
• No favorites. Make sure you offer the 3 E’s to those that you may not feel as good about. Giving those people empathy, encouragement and empowerment may be just what they need to become a favorite as well.
• Be creative. Try to offer new input each time, for each individual. If you are sincere, this will come naturally.
• Prepare. As information becomes available that would indicate an opportunity to be empathetic, a need for encouragement, or a time for empowerment, make a note of it and be sure use those opportunities in a timely manner.
• It’s for everyone. Don’t forget to offer the 3 E’s to people up the corporate ladder, as well as your peers and those that report to you. Friends and family too!

In the last issue of Adages from Ascent we discussed the value of not following the herd. We suggested that just as there are risks associated with venturing into uncharted territories, there are risks associated in blindly following the competition.

If blindly following the competition is a mistake in one extreme, not paying attention to the competition is a mistake in the opposite extreme.

A picture is worth a thousand words, so we will let this video illustrate this point.

With a strong background in marketing, I firmly believe that giving customers what they want is a powerful strategy. But too often this is interpreted to mean that we should do what everyone else in the market is doing. Nothing could be further from the truth.

“If both of us are the same, one of us is unnecessary”

In an earlier newsletter, I used this same quote to point out the importance of having a diverse “recipe” of people on your team. This quote also points out that in any given market, if two organizations provide the same offering, one is unnecessary.

Overcoming this temptation used to be almost a part of new employee orientation for me. Often someone would come to me and say, “Dave, we need to do this!” I would ask why, only to be told, “Because everyone is doing it”. My response would often result in incredulity: “Then that is exactly why we will not do it”.

Some follow the herd because of fear to try something truly new. Some do it due to lack of imagination. Some do so because watching what your competitors do is an inexpensive form of market research. But in many cases, it just makes no sense.

Yes, sometimes competitors have good ideas, and they may identify market trends that we need to respond to. But it rarely makes sense for our response to be the same as theirs. Our response needs to be tailored to our strengths, not the strengths of our competitors. Our response needs to be tailored to our plans, our systems, and our strategies. We need to address the trends in the market in ways that only we can do so. As well, keep in mind that, by the time you notice someone else’s reaction to a trend in the marketplace, there is a good chance that it is too late to respond; the time is not ripe, and in fact may be rotten.

Some would say that if we don’t follow a trend in the market then we are not being responsive to market needs. That might be true, but not always. For one thing, when a competitor engages in a new activity or presents a new product, that is a market trend but it may not indicate a legitimate market need. To follow their actions may only be a replication of their mistake. Secondly, it is important to address emerging needs in the market, but it is not necessary to do so in precisely the same way as the competition.

Being unique is hard work. Doing what has never been done requires creativity and risk. Knowing that everyone else is doing it one way then going the other can be scary.

But in reality, conforming, doing what others are doing, can be just has risky, just as scary, when it is discovered that imitation is not necessarily a sound business strategy. Besides, breaking new ground is a whole lot more interesting.

• Do you determine market trends by watching your competitors or by talking to your customers?
• Do you look for unmet market needs or do you look to see what others are doing that you are not?
• When you see that you are doing something that others are not doing, is your reaction one of pride or concern? And how do you react when your competitors are doing something that you are not?
• Do you contemplate how to imitate your competitors, or how to differentiate yourself from them?
• Think of companies in your industry that have made a practice of following the herd. How are they doing?
• Conversely, think of companies that are always charting a new course for the market, always trying new things. What is their position in the market? How are they doing?
• As a consumer, are you drawn to companies that are quick to follow the pattern set by other companies, or to companies that introduce new ideas?
• If you are a retailer, why would anyone go in your store versus a store down the street or across town?
• If you are a manufacturer, what makes your company and your product so unusual? What about it can they find nowhere else?
• If you are a service provider, what is different about the service you provide? What sets you apart from others that are in the same field?
• Regardless of what kind of work you are in, are the unusual aspects of your organization deliberate, well thought out, intentional? Do you capitalize on them, or do you let them cripple you?

In this issue, we show how this can be a helpful tool to use as leaders in our organizations.

It may be helpful to review a previous series that appeared in Adages from Ascent on leadership. That series can be found starting by clicking here. Follow these links to see the first and second issues in this series on creating understanding.

The Role of Context in Leadership

The previous two issues of Adages from Ascent used a standard outline form as a way to describe how we communicate and how we can fill in that outline to create context and understanding. The higher up the outline, the more foundational the concept; the lower on the outline, the greater the level of detail. The more the outline hierarchy is filled out for people, the more they share your level of understanding.

A couple of years ago Adages from Ascent featured a series on the topic of leadership. We offered this definition of leadership:

“Leadership is having a vision, effectively communicating that vision to others, and equipping and inspiring them to help attain that vision”

Given this definition of leadership, one can see the importance of clear communications and shared understanding in being an effective leader.

In those issues on the topic of leadership, we presented the following chart to explain how the role of leadership evolves as an individual climbs the corporate ladder and as the organization grows in size and complexity:

The ratio of doing, managing and leading shifts as our careers and companies evolve. At first we do mostly doing, shifting to mostly managing, and then to mostly leading.

These two concepts, the outline form and the evolution from doing to managing then leading, are very much inter-related. Consider this:

• When the main focus of our position is in “doing”, we necessarily focus on the items lower in the outline hierarchy – the lower case letters and numbers in parentheses
• When we are primarily a manager, we find ourselves working on the mid-levels of the outline hierarchy
• When we are at the most senior levels of the organization, and when we focus on leading over managing or doing, we are working at the most foundational levels of the outline form, the Roman numerals and such.

What are the ramifications of this?

• If you are indeed at the highest levels of your organization, make sure you are indeed working on the Roman numeral levels of your organization’s outline
• Make sure you have a firm understanding of what the whole outline looks like for your organization
• Consider the level of tasks that you delegate to your direct reports; are they at the appropriate level, not too high and not too detailed?
• Monitor the activities of your staff to make sure they align with the appropriate level for their role in the company
• Make sure the entire organization has a working understanding of the ideas and concepts found in the Roman numerals and capital letters
• Take every opportunity to remind people of those Roman numerals and capital letters
• When communicating to your organization, constantly create context by reminding them of the foundational concepts of your organization. Explain to them how this relates to the topic and tasks at hand.

In this, the second of three issues on this topic, we discuss how this can be applied as we delegate to others.

To see the first issue in this series, click here.

The Role of Context in Delegation

Most of us use delegation as an integral tool in doing our job, and most of us are delegated to, as well. One would think that if we have experienced the frustration of being delegated to in a less than ideal manner that we would place a high priority on effective delegation ourselves, but this is not always the case.

We need something done and done right now, so we bark off an order to someone and run in the other direction. Later we rush back only to find that they have done what we asked, but it was not at all what we expected or needed. When we are honest with ourselves about the source of problem, we can admit it was due to our own incomplete instructions. Put another way, they failed in their task because we failed to give them adequate context.

Step One: Know the Context Yourself

Sometimes, when our delegated tasks do not live up to our expectations it is because our expectations were unnecessarily specific; we wanted the task done the way we would do it even if it could have been performed equally well a dozen different ways. The goal of delegation should not be to insure that tasks are done as you would have done them, but instead, that tasks are done in a manner that supports the reason they are assigned, or the desired outcome.

Sometimes we delegate specifics, and have detailed expectations of those that we delegate to, due to a lack of true understanding ourselves on the context of the delegated task. Therefore, it is imperative that we understand the context ourselves so we can communicate that context when the task is delegated.

Spend some time thinking this through before delegating the task. You may think that you don’t have time for this step, but it is much more time-efficient than having the project done incorrectly, or having to do the project over again. [insert link to previous issue on enough time]

Ask yourself, “Why?” a few times so you can understand the root motivations, the context of task. Ask yourself “How?” a few times, but do so with the “why” in mind so you don’t create unnecessarily specific demands.

Then, when you go to communicate the task, give some background, explain the motivations, describe the desired outcomes, then, delegate the task. Don’t stop there; have them rephrase the delegated task in their own words, have them describe what they see as the results of performing the task, and very importantly, ask if they have any questions, comments or concerns.

When You are Delegated a Task

But what do you do when you are the one being assigned a task, and you are not convinced you understand the context and believe that the results might be compromised as a result?

First, communicate the need for more information. Ask questions. Restate what your understanding is of the task and the desired outcomes.

Secondly, seek context (move up the outline). Ask why the task is important, what goal it will support, what strategy it is a part of. Make sure it is understood that you are not challenging the need for the task to be performed, but rather you just want to make sure you understand that task fully.

Third, test details (move down the outline). Once you have a rough idea or snapshot of how you will perform the task, briefly explain your approach to make sure it is consistent with expectations. This might be a good opportunity to once again restate your understanding of the assignment and why it is being assigned.

In the next issue of Adages from Ascent, we will discuss how creating context in our communications is an important tool as an effective leader in our organizations.