Inspired performance comes from inspired people. PERT charts, statistical process controls, and other technical solutions are important in laying the groundwork for high performance. But technical solutions alone are not enough to create or sustain top performance.
As a project manager, your success is directly linked to one other critical factor: People. People make or break your project's success. People turn ordinary performance into extraordinary performance. People give technical solutions like TQM and SPC the oomph that will produce a sustained outstanding result.
With the pressure every project manager faces today, success rests on creating an environment that inspires people and performance. That environment includes four main factors:
Direction
Leadership
Teamwork
Communication
All four factors are highly interrelated. Each topic, however, will be covered separately in this tutorial series, starting with the fist factor: Direction.
Let's assume that you live in an area that tends to have severe weather and floods. You have just been named project leader to join police, fire, and other private and public rescue units. The purpose of your project team is to provide more effective cross-functional rescue services in weather catastrophes.
How would you engineer your success? How would you break down the divided interests, loyalties, and turf of each of the separate units? How would you create cross-functional partnerships that explode with synergy? How would you keep attention focused on the future, instead of mired in ineffective ways of the present or past?
The answer begins with an explicit and important first step: Bonding the team with a compelling, crystal-clear shared direction. People will not embrace change, teamwork, or high performance unless they have a clear picture of where they're headed (direction). They won't sustain high performance unless they care about the direction and feel they are making progress toward it.
Team synergy is created and sustained through three key factors: vision, goals, and milestones. Take a championship pro football team. Team synergy is created and sustained through:
- Vision – One clear, elevating picture every team member shares of the future they are trying to create together. The vision could be a Super Bowl championship.
- Goals – A few essential goals critical to the vision's success. Goals include long-term (such as winning a conference championship) and short-term (such as critical “must have” wins, or specific training or practice goals).
- Milestones -A way to give feedback to the team on its progress. Milestones might include statistics that help the team track its successes and determine how to improve.
On all teams, these same three factors—vision, goals, and milestones—are a critical foundation for success with peeple and performance through direction. Let's look at these in more detail.
Vision
One project manager recently said, “We're too busy around here doing real work to take the time to do that vision stuff!” Another then said, “Besides that, we had a vision on another team I was on, and it didn't make any difference at all. No one used it-ever!”
Have you ever said these doubting words? If so, then you are discounting one of the most powerful motivators you can use to inspire people and performance. A clear and compelling vision focuses team energy on a shared, well-defined ideal future. The vision charnels team resources, decisions, and effort in a singular direction. It helps the team work smarter, not just harder.
Take professional football. Assuming parallel competence, which of the following two teams is more likely to win? Team A is highly motivated by their vision to win the Super Bowl. They see themselves as winners and will not let any challenge stop them. Team B has no clear direction defined for itself. It just wants to play football and is willing to just “see what happens.” You'll probably agree, Team A is more likely to win. Teams that aspire higher, achieve higher.
If you want people to let goof ineffective work norms of the past, you must give people a brighter future to hold on to. Direction is future-focused. It paints a very clear picture of the future the team is trying to build together. It creates a bond of ownership for the future. It opens the door to welcoming change. It allows people to let go of ineffective processes that don't help accomplish the desired result.
The importance of a clear, compelling direction is not just conjecture. One recent study that benchmarked extraordinary business teams (Larson & LaFasto, 1989) gives compelling evidence on the importance of direction. What was the most important factor high performance team members said helped them be so successful? A clear and elevating vision.
Clear means that all people on the team focus their energy toward a crystal-clew picture of the reality they seek. Elevating has two parts. First it means that the thought, words, and value represented in the vision must go beyond the reality of the present. Second, it must be elevating to the human spirit. People must feel the vision is worthwhile.
There are three steps in creating an effective shared vision. The first step is to create a detailed picture about your product or service. Inspiring visions tap into an underlying, deeply-held value system shared by all on the team. Therefore, encourage heartfelt, personal descriptions that vividly detail the difference this team will make. Talk about how your product or service impacts your customer, the organization, and even the world!
HOW TO SET DIRECTION
- Create a specific, detailed, positive picture of a perfect future you want to create, with no restrictions from the present.
- Then develop a vision statement of seven or fewer words to summarize the vision.
- Give life to the vision. Talk about it. Show it. Use it as a decision-making tool.
Goals
- Develop critical long-term and short-term goals set to help the team achieve the vision.
- Identify no more than three to five each of long and short-term goals.
- Write the goals down, display them, use them, and ceremoniously mark them off when complete.
Milestones
- Link specific milestones to the goals, so the team can see progress.
- Make milestones easy to measure, and measure them frequently.
- Display and celebrate progress at milestones.
The second step is to create a vision statement that captures the essence of the detailed vision. Ford transformed their culture with four key words: “Quality is Job l.” That single phrase focused energy companywide toward one common point. It was a battle that set everyone's effort at every level companywide in a singular direction. And it worked!
An effective vision statement has several key elements. The statement is short, crisp, and memorable (seven or fewer words). It reflects a repeated underlying theme or shared value from the detailed discussion of the vision. And the words are meaningful and important to each team member.
The third step is to breathe life into the vision. This is the step where most visions fail. Life comes from use, not disuse. An effectively used vision focuses team energy, resources and progress in a singular direction. Therefore, center teamwork, meetings, and action around the vision. Use it as a decision-making tool for the thousands of tasks the team completes during the project. And keep it visible such as on T-shirts, posters, and team communication.
If the team creates and owns an effective vision, the team will keep it alive. If the leader or leadership team creates a vision, they own it. To give it life, the leadership must take the time and energy to create ownership with each team member. They give life by talking about the vision, rewarding the vision, living the vision, and enabling everyone else to make the vision reality.
Goals
Once the vision is clear, the next step is to set specific goals to help you attain the vision. Research consistently shows the positive link between goals and improved performance, profits, teamwork, climate, communication, attitudes, participation, and personal effectiveness. One study graphically illustrates the importance of goals. The 3 percent of graduates who set specific written goals at graduation, ten years later earned more money than the rest of the class combined!
For greatest impact, goals must be
- Clear and specific.
- Set for the long-and short-term.
- Written down and referred to often.
- Few in number.
Goals can be technical, such as Six Sigma standard quality. Or goals can be nontechnical, such as reward and recognition programs to keep project momentum going.
Goals must be visible to be effective. Make sure everyone knows the goals, is held responsible for achieving them, and celebrates success when goals are reached.
Milestones
The third essential part of direction is milestones. Milestones function as a feedback tool to help the team gauge how well it is doing. This critical feedback gives team members a sense of accomplishment that keeps momentum and performance high. It also gives timely feedback that shows where to improve. Therefore, milestones also help the team identify problems early. That timely information helps the team make split-second changes to improve performance.
Milestones must be visible and frequent to be effective. Find an easy way to measure and publish them so everyone on the team can be motivated by this powerful feedback tool.
SUMMARY
People are inspired by a clear, elevating direction, targeted by clear, specific goals, and motivated by clear, regular feedback from milestones. If you want to inspire people and performance, begin by giving your team a clear and compelling direction.
Reading List
Jan Carlzon. 1987. Moments of Truth. Cambridge, MA: Ballinger.
Timothy W. Firnstahl. 1989. “My Employees Are My Service Guarantee.” Harvard Business Review, July-August.
Eliyahu M. Goldratt and Jeff Cox. 1986. The Goal: A Process of Ongoing Improvement. Croton-on-Hudson, NY: North River Press.
Carl Larson and Frank LaFasto. 1989. What Must Go Right/What Can Go Wrong. Newbury Park, CA: Sage.
Christy Strbiak is a senior partner with Telesis (Denver), a training and consulting firm that specializes in the human aspect of quality management. Her training and consulting experience includes managing change as well as integrating leadership and team skills with Total Quality Management (TQM) tools and techniques. She has conducted numerous projects in both the public and private sectors, train-the-trainers, and various workshops. Christy is currently working on a Ph.D. in management at New Mexico State University where her research and application focus is on TQM techniques and processes and high performance work systems.
Dr. Jaclyn Kostner is a commnication consultnt, trainer, and author, specializing in single- and multi-site project management teams. Her expertise focuses on improving quality, productivity and profits through high performance teamwork, leadership, and communication. She is president of Bridge the Distance (Denver), an international firm that specializes in globally-distributed work groups, including multi-site project and service teams, internationally-distributed teams, and strategic partnerships. Her firm's client list includes Fortune 100 as well as smaller companies that are trying to improve results through improved communication. Dr. Kostner received her Ph.D. in organizational communication from the University of Denver in 1990.
FEBRUARY 1993