5 top tips for HiPPOs

I empower my teams but… Are you a HiPPO?

Don’t worry, I’m not talking about waistlines! In business terms a HiPPO is:

Highest Paid Person’s Opinion in the room

Sometimes, you will be a HiPPo and manage this incredibly effectively; However, quite often, a less enlightened HiPPO is under at least one of the following impressions:

‘Things only seem to get done when I am in the driving seat.’
‘I need to go over everything to make sure it’s up to standard’
‘I know best what this business and its customers needs’
‘What meetings do you have? Invite me to that one, that one, oh yes and that one’

There is nothing wrong with being a strong, ambitious and driven entrepreneur. There is also nothing wrong with being dedicated to your business and wanting it to thrive. What can be dangerous is how you go about achieving it. However, applying any of these top tips can help pave the way for success for all.

1. Open your mind

What is more important? Success or ego? Don’t get me wrong, everybody’s ego needs some maintenance so that we feel satisfied with what we are doing. That being said, when the ego takes over at the expense of the success of the team, we hit problems.

Keeping our minds open to any and all challenges from our teams is critical to driving the product rather than the ego forward.

2. Find out who your knowledge workers are

If you have hired effectively, you have a team of people around you who are always are experts at your business and continue to learn as they develop with it. The people building your product will know best what it can do, give them the tools and environment they need and they’ll give you world-class products.

Knowledge is key to building effective products and knowledge comes from working with it day in and day out as your teams do.

3. Build fabulous products around motivated teams

Belief in things is a powerful and motivating emotion. When you believe in what your teams can do, they are more likely to feel motivated to do what is best. When your teams believe in the products they are building, they are more likely to drive that product to excel. When your teams believe that the company and its leaders believe in them and it is shown through things that matter most to them, they are more likely to be motivated to stay with you.

Belief in what you can do for your teams to drive success rather than what they can do for you will drive motivation.

4. Data, data and more data is great, but what is it telling you?

There is always a buzz around data and I’ve had many conversations around ‘Big Data’ in the past that were nonsensical! However, the story data can tell you is a valuable commodity in any product development. As an agile coach, I make it mandatory that any retrospective type activity is driven by data. This can be anything from user behaviour stories to happiness metrics of the team throughout that iteration. By analysing this data and the story it tells, we can make informed decisions on what our next goals can be to drive our product and/or teams forward.

Stories told by data inform us what is most important and what needs to change for the better.

5. Follow an empowered and culture first happy path

Putting culture first means you are putting your people and product first. Culture is always developing and includes so much more than loose company values. People led business will always cultivate great products because belief is at the core. The first four points can help you establish exactly that.