If we want to have a shot at capturing the profitability that’s killed by confusion in our organizations by providing our teams with the kind of clear expectations they desperately need in order to produce excellent results, it will require a very focused effort! We must become experts in providing our team and each individual team member with extreme clarity as to the results we need from them and the behaviors we expect from them to achieve those results. In attempting to do that, some leaders shy away from setting the bar too high. Their concern in those cases seems to be that if expectations are too high, people will become overwhelmed and avoid the work altogether…
As we’ve worked through these profitability killers, I’ve referenced multiple lessons I learned in the approximately fifteen years I was directly involved in a successful behavior-based safety process. I’ll share another here at the risk of beating that horse to death. This time, though, the lesson came from two of my mentors in that process rather than from the science the process was based on.
The first piece of this particular lesson came in May 1999 during my initial training to perform behavior-based observations on my coworkers throughout the facility. Most of that two-day training was given by the gentleman responsible for overseeing the initiative at our location, but one segment was done by the then-maintenance supervisor, Terry Ward. Terry’s piece was geared at detailing how our behaviors are determined by the consequences that come from them, but learning to recognize certain things that trigger those behaviors serve as an effective way to predict them in advance. I certainly can’t go into all that he shared in the ninety-minute lesson here, but one thing he emphasized was a core tenet he had learned in his time at the United States Military Academy (West Point): the importance of choosing the harder right over the easier wrong, and how that always produced better results over the long haul.
So, how does that tie in to eliminating confusion by setting clear expectations? By itself, Terry‘s story made a solid case for how choosing an easier yet riskier behavior at the moment would inevitably result in an injury when it was repeated over time. He went on to explain how taking the extra step to reduce the risk may require some additional effort right away but would pay huge dividends long term by eliminating the potential for injury.
The second part of this lesson ties back to something I learned from an old chap from across the pond. Dave Stanley was one of the folks charged with implementing the behavior-based safety initiative throughout the company in 1998. He was the last remaining from that initial group when I got to know him in 2003. At that point, Dave held global responsibility for the process within our company. While his home was in South Wales (UK), he traveled worldwide, providing training at each of the 75+ facilities the organization had at the time. During his first visit to Harrisonburg, he explained that the difficulty of a task and the compensation involved RARELY served as the primary reasons someone would choose not to perform it. Dave shared that the biggest reason for avoiding any task was not seeing value in performing it. He challenged us to consider all those who risked their lives in the military or as first responders for very little or even no pay in some cases. Regarding safety, his message was that clarifying how specific behaviors would eliminate injuries and why that mattered would be critical if we wanted to build and maintain a successful process.
Tying that with Terry’s “harder right over the easier wrong” is where we, as leaders, come into the picture to help our teams produce great results by providing them with extremely clear—and high—expectations. As I shared from Tony Jeary before, “It’s hard to sell mediocrity,” so why even bother? We absolutely should be challenging our teams to exceed expectations daily. Still, we also have to make sure we’re giving them the clarity they need to understand exactly what that looks like, how they can achieve it, and why it matters—to them individually and to the organization. Doing this can be difficult, so let’s look at a few steps to simplify it.
For more on this, you're welcome to reach out to us directly at admin@dove-development.net to get a 45 Day Trial Access to our COMPLETE Leading At The Next Level program or you can check out Wes's recently released book, What's KILLING Your Profitability? (It ALL Boils Down to Leadership!) that was a #1 Best Seller on Amazon!
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