What are the outcomes your team needs to achieve, that will drive the highest value for your business or your customer, this quarter?
Aligning your team around an outcome mindset invites us to shift from busy output/to-do lists to thinking strategically. Outcome thinking forces us to define what is most important, what will bring the most value, and what is critical to alignment. Clarity and alignment are major contributors to high-performing teams.
When you’re establishing your new priorities, objectives, and outcomes, consider a few of the following questions:
- What are our highest priorities?
- What outcomes will drive the biggest punch for our organization?
- What does DONE look like?
- What does good look like, what does great look like?
- What might get in the way of our success?
Not only do reflection, collaboration, and planning achieve clarity and alignment, they can act as a super booster toward key results. Senge, Scharmer, Jaworski, and Flowers state in their book ‘Presence’ that “…when people begin to see from within the forces that shape their reality and to see their part in how those forces might evolve does vision become powerful.”
Taking the time to define and align your team is time well spent. When teams slow down to reflect and collaborate strategically they are much more effective at prioritizing the important work over the urgent work.
When outcomes aren’t clearly defined, this creates busy work that contributes to burnout and to poor results. The plan-do-review cycle breaks down and everything becomes important, everything becomes an “opportunity we can’t miss out on.” We move into constant doing and reacting.
Do yourself and your teams a favour: time block your next review/reset meeting today. Schedule ample time to have important collaborative conversations that drive clarity around the outcomes of your biggest value drivers. Remember my favourite saying…” go slow to go fast.” We know this concept is especially hard for some of you fast-moving leaders. You won’t regret it when you see a supercharged workforce working creatively and winning month after month!