Leadership Quote of the Week – Mark Pincus
“Not having a clear goal leads to death by a thousand compromises.”
-Mark Pincus, Internet entrepreneur best known as the co-founder of Zynga
Photo Source: Wikipedia
Mark Miller on High Performace Leadership Teams
I had the pleasure to hear Mark Miller speak a few weeks ago about High Performance Leadership Teams (HPLTs) at a regional Chick-fil-A training event. If you have not heard of Mark, he has published several great books on servant leadership and leadership in teams (Check out my book recommendations). He also has a great blog at www.GreatLeadersServe.org.
Lecture Notes:
We need a game-changer to increase performance and effectiveness of our organizations. That game-changer is High Performance Leadership Teams. A HPLT is more than just a “team.” They are the difference between teams that have true accomplishment verses ones that get nowhere. HPLTs give organizations a competitive edge and are a performance multiplier… all while honor and developing the team.
Ultimately we all know what makes a “great leader” … you can read about it anywhere you look. However, reading is just a description… we need a prescription.
For example, if you want to be an Olympic Athlete you do not simply compete in your sport. You train, you diet, you mentally prepare, you do anything and everything possible to enhance your sport. HPLTs are designed to help move an organization into action.
Mark’s Top 10 Traits of HPLTs:
- Embrace a Common Purpose
- Get your team pulling a rope in the same direction.
- Ask your team to write down your purpose on a card. Does it line up with your goals?
- Help your team understand why we exist.
- Pursue Common Goals
- Smarter together vs individually working.
- Use SMART Goals (see my blog post on this).
- Create a Team Score Card
- People love to keep score.
- More fun with a score.
- Use a small set of KEY metrics
- What’s the most important data to use? Major League Baseball uses only three main metrics to track pitchers – W/L, ERA, Innings Pitched
- Recruit Talent
- Not all about talent… but talent is VERY important.
- Turnover hurts… You have to have a deep bench.
- Work to develop your bench.
- Clarify Roles
- Crystal Clarity of Goals (team vs CEO)
- Allows Accountability
- Improved execution increases efficiency per $1
- Cross functional in nature
- Develop Individual & Team Skills
- How to _(insert desired goal)_ as a team.
- Skills have to be there or it’s not a HPLT.
- Question to ask yourself: What do we need to do to be better?
- Effective Meetings
- How good are your meetings?
- Tips for meetings: See Mark’s Blog post – “10 Tip for Great Meetings“
- See #9
- Solve Problems Together
- 75% of time in meetings should be about Performance Management.
- See Mark’s Blog post – “10 Tip for Great Meetings“
- Develop Deep & Genuine Community
What to do now:
- Evaluate your Team
- Share the results with your Team
- Create an Action Plan
Goals that Work
photo credit: angietorres via photo pin cc
Goal setting is an art that takes time and practice. Here are some good guidelines I found while reading Entreleadership by Dave Ramsey last year.
Goals should be simple enough to be:
Specific & Measurable – The first part of SMART goals, right? How do you know you accomplished your goal if you can’t measure it?
Time Limit – If you don’t set a time limit, it’s much harder to focus & accomplish it.
Make it YOUR goal – You have to “own” your goals. If they are someone else’s goals, then you will not be motivated.
Put it in writing – This keeps it in your visible and makes it easy to track. It also allows some personal accountability by having it in writing.
“Write the vision; make it plain…”
- Habakkuk 2:2
