5 Reasons Your Team Isn’t Moving Faster?
Past success only means that you used to be relevant. You have to move quicker if you want to stay up with your customers’ demands and your competitors’ innovation.
So why do organizations struggle to master the need for speed? What keeps us slow when we desperately want to move faster?
The Limiters on Speed
Trucking companies install electronic speed limiters to increase fuel economy, safety, and compliance with the law for their fleet.
Organizations have speed limiters, too. They may be unintentional or even unavoidable. If you want to go faster, you have to remove or at least minimize them.
1. The human factor: If you have been in the workforce for at least 10 years, you grew up in a world where change was more predictable and stable. We now ask people to thrive in environments that operate at a speed with which they are not familiar. You won’t be able to completely overcome this limiter until the workforce transitions, and that is only a temporary solution. Constant education, encouragement to pursue change, and tools to succeed are crucial. In addition, make sure that you don’t make things worse by creating any of the barriers that follow.
2. Lack of clarity: Clarity creates focus. Focus minimizes that uncertainty that makes people timid. Any of the following are warning signs that a lack of clarity is slowing you down:
· People working hard but pulling in opposite directions
· Chasing the latest BSO (Bright Shiny Object)
· Over analysis and excessive planning that stalls action
· Over complicating your vision, purpose, goals, and work plans
You increase clarity by answering the following questions:
· What are we trying to accomplish? What are the priorities and time expectations?
· Why are these important?
· How will success be measured?
· Who is responsible and accountable to do what? If everyone is responsible for everything then no one is responsible for anything.
3. Mistrust: Trust is the lubricant that makes organizations run smoother. Its absence causes friction that affects decision making and avoid ownership. If you want to go faster, develop and sustain an organization where every person at every level can be trusted to do what they are supposed to do when they are supposed to do it the way it is supposed to be done. That means hiring great people, helping them continually improve their skills, creating clarity, optimizing processes, and getting out of the way.
4. Fear: People who are afraid protect their own immediate interests often to the detriment of the team and organization. They believe that being right — or at least never being wrong — is the key to survival. Paying attention to details is healthy. Fear becomes unhealthy when endless analysis, procrastination, and avoidance of decision making become the norm. Creating a culture that doesn’t punish honest mistakes, along with increasing clarity and trust, will help drive out fear.
5. Inclusion that does not add value: People support what they help create, and involving a wide-range of stakeholders in plans and decisions is generally a good thing. Incorporating multiple perspectives often results in better decisions and may prevent the group from running off a cliff at full speed. Nevertheless, some leaders and organizations take 3 hours to decide when to take a 10-minute break. Ultimately, the leader must create a culture that balances the opportunity for people to provide input with the confidence in and support of decisions made in their absence.
Everyone wants their organization to be faster. Achieving that goal means identifying and removing the speed limiters that are holding you back.
Randy Pennington is an award-winning author, speaker, and leading authority on helping organizations achieve positive results in a world of accelerating change. To bring Randy to your organization or event, visit www.penningtongroup.com , email info@penningtongroup.com, or call 972.980.9857.
