Bowling Through a Curtain

At the company picnic the VP of Operations watched the softball game between two groups of employees and she was amazed at how intense the competition was. People were playing hard with a clear determination to be a contributing player on the winning team and actively encouraging their teammates to play well. If only she could get that kind of energy from them on the job, she thought, we would be ahead of our plan instead of behind.

Many leaders have had similar thoughts. Why are people highly engaged in what they do when they are off work yet disengaged at work? A simple answer is most people work at jobs where they are essentially bowling through a curtain. They know what they are supposed do and may even do it quite well, however because of the curtain they have no idea how they are doing let alone how the whole team is doing. They simply do what is asked and once a year or so they get told the score along with some suggestions on how they can improve.

As Stephen Covey explained in The 4 Disciplines of Execution performance falls behind plan because people don’t understand the goal; if they know the goal they don’t understand what they can do to help achieve it; they are not sure how well they are doing; and there is no timely feedback and accountability. The secret to getting things done on time with excellence is to have no more than two to three major goals; focus on lead measures that people know they can control and directly influence the goal; have a compelling scoreboard in a place everyone can see that tracks the lead measures; and have regular accountability and feedback meetings to celebrate progress and adjust to overcome problems. Those disciplines along with people who fit the job and a leader who helps them feel and fare better create an outstanding team. Like a lottery number if you don’t hit all of them you don’t get much.