When do you stop trying to achieve an objective?

It's important to know when you should stop trying to achieve a goal. Many people love to refer to this quote from Albert Einstein "Doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results is stupid".
As an example of this quote let's look at a Software Development project that is trying to achieve it's objectives by following the traditional/waterfall Project Management Methodology. If you tried this 5 times before and you always struggled to deliver what you set out to deliver then it's time to realize that something needs to change. You might have changed your approach to an agile Project Management Methodology and realized it wasn't quite the smooth ride you expected. That means even though you changed the approach it was not really successful, maybe it even was a disaster. Does that mean you can't do any projects anymore because neither approach worked? It doesn't mean that you give up (!) but instead of following a certain approach you have to adjust it to your needs. For me there is a difference between being persistent and being delusional. If a certain approach doesn't work then you have to be innovative and try something new. You have to stop wasting precious energy on something that doesn't work. You don't want to do that without really trying but you also don't want to wait until it's too late. Always check your approach as often as possible to see if something needs to change and determine what needs to change. The timing for these checkpoints depends on your cicumstances, but don't be afraid to stop one approach and switch to something more promising. Just don't give up to find a solution!

How important are meetings?

If 80% of your calendar is booked with meetings then you might want to review how you schedule your days. I understand that the more senior a manager is in an organization he or she will have to be more aligned with other teams and hence will need to meet more often. Nevertheless if the alignment takes around 80% of your time something might need to be adjusted. How do you decide in which cases you need to have a meeting? Do you have more "FYI" or "decision focused" meetings? Is the planned meeting time a good use of time for all participants? Does your company culture measure your importance based on how many meetings you are invited to? Are you delegating enough tasks to your team? It makes sense to thoroughly check why you go to that many meetings in order to free up more time. In order to do more great work you need to have some time to do this great work. One of the major risks I see with an excessive amount of meetings is that it gets very hard to innovate and be creative. Many leadership tasks are based on creative problem solving. My question to you is how do you do that on an ongoing basis if you don't find enough time? Many meetings just drain energy out of you. You can and probably have to do that for certain periods of time but you should not give in to that on a permanent basis. Review your schedule and only keep the meetings that you really need to achieve your desired outcomes.

Listen effectively

In order to learn anything we have to listen. Naturally we seem to have the ability to do that since we listen to our parents and others from early childhood on. We do it unconsciously but we do it and that is how we learn to speak. As we get older it seems to get harder to listen. We are more focused on our own interests and less on what others want. The interesting and sad thing is that the more we focus on ourselves the less we will achieve with others.
Let's look at a simple example: Wayne the Project Manager has a meeting with Mary the Controller about a potential budget cut for one of Wayne's Projects. Wayne has learned about the potential budget cut through the company grapevine and he is getting suspicious when Mary sets up a meeting with him. Wayne is preparing his defense and getting in his full battle mood even before he meets with Mary.
In order to have a meaningful and constructive meeting it would make sense for Wayne to first listen to Mary to understand her point of view better. He doesn't have to agree with her (!) but he needs to understand why she considers a budget cut. Once he has this information he can much more effectively address Mary's point of view. If Wayne prefers to just voice his frustration then he doesn't need to listen(!) and he will not achieve his objective to reverse or at least minimize the impact of the budget cuts. So listen really means that you have to stop thinking about yourself, put all your thoughts and interests aside for a moment and focus on the other person 100%. That is hard to do if you don't have a real interest for others.
You might be able to fake this for a little bit but the truth will come out quickly. Therefore stop faking interest because real interest has to come from the heart. Listen, learn and evolve!

Are you Micro managing your team?

Are you sometimes tempted to give too much detailed advice or instructions to your team on how they have to approach certain tasks? If you do, how is that working for you? Is your team thankful for the detailed advice that you give them? In most cases that I know of it is hurting team morale considerably if you micro manage your team. 10-20 years back it was expected that a good manager knows everything a little better than their team. That was the reason why you were the manager. With the dawn of the knowledge age and the data explosion that has changed. I think it is no longer reasonable to expext that a manager knows every task better than the team that is working for him/her. That means the tasks of a manager have changed considerably.
As a manager of a team you spend probably a considerable amount of time in negotations with customers, other teams and management while your team is working full time on their tasks. Why would you believe that you know the detailed tasks better than your team? They spend 100% of their time on these tasks and are better at these task than you are. In any case that is fine since the leadership tasks are different.
Instead of trying to shine more than your team it is your task as a leader or manager to make your team successful and let them shine. Think about what you can and should do to make your team more successful.

Don't just execute - ask questions!

If you are interested in how things work you ask questions right? For me that is a clear Yes! Therefore I consider interesting and intelligent questions a good thing. For example if  you are interested and excited in the work that you do you ask questions because you want to learn more things, faster. When you are interested in your child's education you ask how the school is doing, how good the teacher is, if that teacher is the best fit for your child, how the school is rated compared to other schools etc. You ask all these questions and many more because you are interested and because you honestly care about the answer. If you want to achieve anything you have to have enough passion and interest to ask questions.
Are you paying attention to these questions in your team? Does the majority of people in your team just execute without asking questions? If yes, that is an alarming sign. Many teams talk about innovation, employee participation and exploring interesting new options but fall short concerning taking action to really engage their teams. Sure there are teams that work smoothly and everyone knows what they need to do and there is not much need for asking questions. Nevertheless most teams don't stay together for a long time and therefore you should pay close attention to how engaged your team is.

Leadership is about leading yourself first and foremost

Every day we learn about Leadership discussions in the News. Sometimes it's about Corporate Leaders, sometimes about political leaders, sometimes about Military Leaders or any other leaders. All these leaders represent a group of people and have some kind of decision authority. Our focus is very often on what these leaders decide on behalf of their group. What seems to get forgotten is that leadership is not only about leading others. It starts with leading yourself.  We have to manage ourselves first before we should start thinking about managing others. You have to work on your personal leadership skills before you can become a leader of others. Here are some examples of what I mean by that.

• What are your personal goals? --> Where are you now? Where do you want to go? What do you value most?  (Organization)
• How do you manage your own time?  --> Are you executing around priorities? (Time Management)
• How well do you communiate with others? Do others understand you and buy into what you are saying? --> Are you interested in others? Do you listen? Do you inspire openness and trust? (Communication)
• Do you care about others?  (Emphaty)

Do you have answers for the questions above? Instead of focusing on others focus on yourself first. Work on improving yourself and you will become a better leader. Check the website of former Starbucks CEO Howard Behar's book "It's not about the coffee" to get some interesting perspectives on this topic.

What is unique about you?

It's important to have an answer to that question because you need to know what special skills you have in order to show that to someone else. It doesn't matter if you own your own company, if you're an employee or if you are a Manager and it doesn't matter if you're unemployed and looking for work. I consider it a basic form of Self-knowledge and Self-Marketing. If you want others to buy into what you have to "sell" you need to be able to make a compelling point. What are your special skills? What have you achieved with your special skills? Why should I care that you have special skills? Are your skills really unique? How could these skills be a benefit to what you're trying to do? I think everyone has something unique to offer and in order to show that to others you have to put some work into it. If you haven't done it yet, sit down and make a list of your strengths and weaknesses, your likes and dislikes, your experiences and desires. Take your time and be very specific about the results you have achieved so far and what you want to achieve going forward. Focus on your unique skills and experiences and don't copy someone else becaue if you do what everybody else does why do you expect a different result?
Put some effort in yourself to be able to show others that you can contribute and how you plan to do that.

Are you busy or effective?

There is a fine difference between busy and effective. You can be busy with many different things and they don't have to be important or urgent or effective. It is fairly common to talk to our colleagues and friends as if a lot of work would equal a lot of important work but that is not necessarily the case. In order to be effective you have to know what you need to achieve and agree that the goal is important. This requires considerable time management skills since you have to say NO to many requests in order to achieve your critical goals.
Do you practice this on a day to day basis? For example at the beginning of a Project you might want to focus on the different stakeholders and their requests in order to understand what you team needs to achieve to be successful.  Once you know that and the key stakeholders agree on a goal it is about execution. Note that this applies to traditional Project Management Methodologies as well as Agile Methodologies.
In any case once you have agreement on the Project objectives it is not the time to discuss rejected requirements over and over. It is important to know how the teams success is measured and then focus on these goals. It is your responsibility as a (Project) Manager to ensure the agreed upon goals are something your team bought into. Stop the busy work and focus on the important work.

Empower your team

To empower your team is a critical skill for any leader and it is more than just delegating or assigning tasks to people. The background for empowerment is that you can't do all the tasks in your organization or project by yourself. You need help! It also assumes that you are not afraid to empower people who are stronger than you are. Now this assumes obviously that you are self-confident and that you are not afraid to make the team stronger by giving up some control. Are you this type of Leader?
If you are, you will have to hand off some responsiblities to others in your team. Before you do that you have to check who is ready for which responsibilities. Do the people you have in mind have the knowledge, skills and desire to accept the responsiblities? Once you found the right people you have to show them what you expect. Take enough time to communicate the objectives well to prevent any unpleasant surprises later. At that point they should understand that you genuinely want them to succeed.  To make sure that everyone in your organization or project team understands that you are empowering someone to take on certain responsiblitlies you should publicly transfer these responsibilites to them. This way the whole team including the person that gets empowered understand that you are confident in the empowered person and that they have the authority to make decisions and initiate actions.
I consider empowerment the hallmark of a true leader. You, as the leader, get more time for other important things in your organization/life. In addition to knowing that you help others and your organization or project to succeed it will also help you to increase your influence.

Dream big!

Whatever kind of project or changes you are working on you should dream big because the world gets changed through dreams. The bigger the dreams, the bigger the changes. Most changes are based on unproven ideas/dreams. There is no clear "Return on Investment" that you can perform before you do the change. At that stage it is mostly enthusiasm and a deep conviction that something will work. If you always want to be on the safe side this is a risky stage. Let's look at an example: Apple came out with the iPad even though the idea with the table was not new. According to many "realists" there was NO big market for these products.  Nevertheless instead of being discouraged Apple went full steam ahead. Now this, very desirable, market seems to be clearly dominated by Apple. Everyone is rushing to get a comparable product out and to get a piece of that market. Who wouldn't want to change with Apple now? If they had listened to the sceptics they wouldn't have been successful.
There are many more examples for this Hypothesis like Facebook, Microsoft, Google, Yahoo, Amazon, VMWare and many others. For every one of these companies someone had a big dream to succeed. There were no other people who told them what to do and how to do it. Based on some standards the founders of these great companies might not even have been hired by other desirable companies at the time. Still they believed in what they did. Shouldn't that be a lesson for all of us? I think yes, dream big!
As a word of caution, just dreaming big is not enough but it is the most important first step. Many people don't follow up on their dreams, they are not ready to pay the price to make their dream(s) a reality. Are you ready to dream big?

Listen more - talk less

In order to achieve anything in an organization or in life in general it is important to listen. Note that I'm not just talking about your Management chain. Listening to people shows Respect and that you care. Care enough to listen because you can build relationships, increase your knowledge and refine or generate ideas.
This should be pretty common knowledge to everyone who has ever worked in a project because you first have to listen to understand what the requirements are. Only after you understand the requirements you can start working on solutions. Now this doesn't always seem to be the case in our day to day communications. Do you remember a situation where you just waited to respond. You basically stopped listening and prepared your response. When you stopped listening you missed a chance to learn more about the other person. If you want to relate well to others you have to be willing to focus on what they have to offer.  That also means to stop focusing on yourself. Stop being preoccupied with your thoughts. Focus on the other person, listen to what they have to say. Really listening is not easy and you will need quite some practice to get really good at it but the good news is you can practice every day.

Some thoughts on Business Goals

A common business practice is to distinguish between short-term and long term business goals. Short-term goals are less than 12 months, therefore they are more tactical in nature. Everything above 12 months is a long-term goal and is more strategic. Short-term goals should be detailed, specific and measurable. The timelines should be realistic but challenging so that you have a reasonable chance to achieve them. A project plan with specific actions by specific people would be an example for a short-term goal. The tricky and most important part is to tie the short-term goals to the more lofty long-term goals. Have you had a situation where you implemented a “quick fix” just to see it becoming a permanent fix? Keep track of your “quick fixes” and ensure they don’t contradict your long-term goals. Also don’t set too many long-term goals because you

• want your team and you to remember all the goals
• want to decrease the chance that some of the goals are contradicting
• want to keep your team motivated by making progress towards these goals

Do you care about about your team?

Look at this quote: "Nobody cares how much you know unless they know how much you care." Author unknown.
What are you doing for your team concerning the "caring" part? This sounds like a simple question but in truth it is a very challenging question, isn't it? You want your team to perform well and in order to do that you need to provide encouragement, recognition, security and hope. For many teams it is too easy to pass by these important steps. There are timelines to be met, impatient colleagues and Management Teams that require our attention, simply tons of work that prevent us from stopping and thinking about what we can do for our Team.  For a good team to emerge and thrive we need to have a genuine concern for others. We need to have positive feelings, respect and a honest concern for the team. If you secretly think that the team is not good or is less important than other tasks or people this will not work. Here some notes to clarify what I'm refering to
Encouragement: Even though we're all adults everyone likes encouragement. So help others and say "Thank you" more often.
Recognition: Give credit to your team! Do it regularly and while others are around.
Security: People don't trust you if they don't feel safe with you. Walk your talk!
Hope: Does your team believe in the growth opportunities you can offer? Are you actively working to grow your team?

Three Top Priorities

What are you're 3 Top Priorities at work? I mean what 3 things are most important to you and your organization? If you don't have a good and fast answer for this question you probably should do some work in that area. From a business point of view it is dangerous to not have an answer because if you don't know what your top 3 priorities are then how do you and your team spend your day at work? If you want to increase your teams and/or your own efficiency, engagement and focus you have to know what your 3 most critical business challenges are. Write it down and review it with your Key Stakeholders and the Team. Get agreement that these are the most important tasks to work on. Without agreement it will be challenging to get the necessary commitment from the Team to really own the tasks. These Key Tasks should be communicated regularly to everyone. Be transparent, show what you and your team are working on, review it regularly in your Project or Staff meetings.
Why 3 priorities? In general 3 priorities is a good guidance based on my experience because most people can remember up to 3 objectives. If you use more you're running the risk of diluting your objectives. Don't try to be everything to everyone.

Not everyone needs to agree!

I know that this might sound provocative to some of you but it is still true. If you want to get anything done you can't try to please everyone. Let me explain why I say that. First of all I'm not suggesting any kind of top-down decision structure at all (after all I'm with HP) but instead I ask you to stop hiding behind others as an excuse to not making a decision.
For example I'm in many meetings where we have stakeholders from multiple teams and not everyone can agree to a common approach to an issue. Every Team has their own valid and sometimes invalid reasons why they want or don't want to do something. If we wait until every Person, Team or Region (e.g. Americas, Europe, Asia) had a chance to follow up with everyone that might have some interest in the outcome of this decision we will drag down enthusiasm, accountability and the general agility of our organization. This price is too high from my point of view. If you've done your homework and you're clear about your priorities then you can make a faster decision even if you encounter opposition. In some cases it will be the wrong decision and that is OK because it is a learning experience that will ensure that the next decision is better. Inaction as a consequence of Indecisiveness is not an option. Gather all the information and input you can get in a "fixed amount of time" and decide with the Key Stakeholders what to do next. Don't look for everyone's approval.