Dear Team Lead, Why show weekly result is important for your team?
When your team member, repeatedly doing the same thing everyday, yet they don’t know whether their work are actually contribute towards team goal, this is a bad news to your team and company.
People need to relate their work to the outcome. No one like to work like machine, just do, do, do and don’t know what are the result at the end of the day.
If you want your team to achieve good result, you need to build a engaging environment within your team. An environment where your team member know
- Why they do it?
- What is the impact if they do not do it well?
- What will be the impact if they do it well?
Try ask above to all your team member. Most likely you will get different answer from your team member. Their answer will tell you whether your team member is ENGAGED, or DIS-ENGAGE.
Let’s see 2 sample answer from 2 different video team employee for questions above:
Employee 1: Asraf
Q: Why you do it? Asraf: Because my boss ask me to do it. Why? Anything I did wrongly?
Q: What will be the the impact if you did not do your job well? Asraf: My boss will angry, and I wont get good salary and bonus.
Q: What will be the impact if you done a great job? Asraf: My boss will be very happy and I can be promoted soon I think.
Employee 2: Hakim
Q: Why you do it? Hakim: Because i want to create video that can help our jobseekers to find job. Personally, I feel great if I able to help our users, using video, which is what I doing best at. It is also align to our company direction #Mau100 — helping everyone in our platform to get our job.
Q: What will be the the impact if you did not do your job well? Hakim: There are many people out there have problem finding job. I talk to customer care team, most of our job-seekers dunno how to answer question during interview. They study until secondary school and no one teach them how to answer in interview. That is why i want to create video that educate them and guide them how to overcome this problem. If I do not do well in this, i am not doing a good job helping our users.
Q: What will be the impact if you done a great job? Hakim: Recently I spent a lot of time doing video, share with our users what is the correct ways to apply job. Because last month when I speak to our technical team, we notice most of our job-seekers simply write “I am hardworking” in their job applications. I feel so sad when I see it, because I know they wont able to get the jobs if apply this way. In past 1 month, I focus all my video in teaching them “the correct way to apply job”. Last week I meet the technical team again, I can see good improvement in term of job application quality compare to 1 month ago. I feel so proud that our video team able to educate and help our job-seekers. It make our hard work feel so worthwhile. Next I going to focus on next problem: How to answer difficult interview question.
Which employee are more engage? Which employee can help your team, your company to achieve the goal?
Hakim able to answer well because he know very clear what is the company mission, team goal and personal target. This won’t happen automatically. It start from your CEO, Team Lead, then the Individual.
Your CEO have the responsibility to share the big picture; and channels it down to every team lead, the company mission, team goals. Then, you as team lead, need to channels down this message, to every individual team member. => Then, only you can have Hakim. ELSE, you will have Asraf.
As team lead, you need to make sure you share 2 things below to your team
- The Big Picture
- Weekly Progress
The Big Picture
Big picture is very important. It show everyone in the company, what we trying to achieve. The big picture can be go to the Moon, be Number One in the world, takeover Google or #Mau100. The message need to be very CLEAR.
Big picture is like compass, it tell the people the direction, and where everyone in the company is heading towards. There are 3 level of big picture need to define:
- Company level = The company mission (In our case #Mau100)
Company mission tell everyone in the company, what we want to achieve in long term. This is the responsibility of CEO
- Team level = The team mission.
Team mission tell everyone in the team, what the team want to achieve in long term. This is the responsibility of team leader and CEO. Collectively when we combine ALL team mission together, it will help the company to achieve the Company mission.
- Individual level = The individual mission.
Individual mission tell you, what you need to achieve in long term. This will be define by you and your team leader. Collectively when we combine ALL individual mission together, it will help the team to achieve the Team mission.
Everyone is accountable for the success or failure of a company, and we need to let everyone know how they accountable for.
If everyone able to achieve their individual target, the team will be doing well. If every team isdoing well, the company will be doing very well. The same apply when individual are doing bad, it will impact their team performance. If most of the team are doing bad, the company will definitely doing BAD.
Therefore, please make sure you communicate clearly to your team member, what is the Team Mission, and the Individual Mission. If done correctly, you will have a lot of Hakim in your team.
Weekly Progress
Once the big picture is define and communicate clearly, you need to repeat it to your team in weekly meeting, it can be in the format of.
- What have done last week
- What is the result last week
- What we plan to focus this week
For those that did not do weekly meeting, please do it immediately! No team can be call as team, if no communication within the team. It is just different individual sit together doing own thing. Is BAD! So, those who have not practice weekly meeting, please do right away!
One of the key item, you must discuss in the weekly team meeting is the team progress or result.
The result must be measurable. It must be recorded over the timeline, and publish it in a place where your team member can see it everyday (e.g. whiteboard).
If the result is not measurable, and not recorded over the time, you wont be able to know whether the team is doing better or worse, compare to previous.
Just imagine, after exam your teacher tell you, you are doing good. The same feedback you receive every month for 1 year -“you are doing good”.
But how good is good? Are you doing better this year, compare last year? Little bit better? or a lot better?
Let’s imagine again, you study so hard everyday to prepare for exam. Finally the exam is over. Do you want to know the exam result?
Of course you want!
Exam result, can show you your capability. For example
- If your result for Mathematics is bad, it means you either you use wrong method in learning Mathematics, or you hate Mathematics. So some action is needed to improve your Mathematics learning.
- If your result for Science is good, then it means you use the right method in learning Science. So you just need to maintain or double effort, then your result will be even better
If we apply the same logic to work, you need to show the team the outcome of their work. It can either be:
- The result of their content produced, how many viewer, how many people like the articles, how many feedback the article is useful?
- The result of the website built, how many people visit, how many signup as member, how many apply jobs and successfully landed a job?
- The result of the sales made, how many sales generated from each products, how our customer feel about our product, what customer like about us, which part we not doing good enough?
- The result of their video made, how many people watched, how many people share, how many people feedback is useful, how many people say is crap?
- and etc
Result, will make your team member know whether they doing the right thing, or wrong thing. That is why, measurable, and recorded over time, is a must if you want productive feedback to the team. And it must be visible to your team DAILY, as it will serve as reminder to them, what they are chasing after everyday.
In startup, time is everything. If your result is weekly basis, then your team can learn faster, and improve every week.
It could be positive result, it could be negative result. But is fine, important is it show the team whether they are moving to the right direction or wrong direction.
On the other hand, if you discuss the result once a year, then your team can only learn once a year. The learning curve is slow, or could be none. This is lose lose situation for company and the individual growth.
Therefore we enforce every team do weekly meeting, show the result weekly, so the team know how they can improve, and eventually they can see them-self how their hard work contribute to the company goal.
TIPS: If the result is hear direct from your end user, the impact will be x 3 compare to hear from you
Imagine, someone that successfully find a job from MauKerja walk to Hakim and say face to face:
“Hakim, thank you for sharing me the tips of how to handle interview questions. Now i finally get a job and able to feed my family. Without your video, I think I still stuck in applying job without knowing what I did wrong”.
This kind of feedback directly from user will make Hakim (your employee) see how important is their work. Therefore, if you can get direct feedback from your customer, either job-seekers or employer to share their feedback directly to your team member; it will help to make your team understand why their job is important, and how it impact other people life.
