If you have observed a referee in any sport, you can relate to the subtle similarities between successful officiating and organizational leadership.

The referee experience is a high speed microcosm of the leadership experience in the workplace.  As an official, the price of entry is similar to that of successful leadership.

Basics of officiating include the following:

• Thorough knowledge and consistent application of the laws of the game and rules of competition.
• Being in position to best see the play and make the call.
• Mastering the art of influencing the behavior of others by demonstrating your understanding that the game is for the players, coaches, and spectators.

As a former player, and as both an official and an administrator of a large corps of officials, I have seen many different styles of officiating work well.  The same is true in the workplace.    However there are core competencies that make up great officials and great leaders in the workplace.

• Strength in conviction grounded in the goals and expectations of the organization.
• Your presence and contribution are felt, but are not perceived, as overbearing.
• You are able to offer direction, guidance, and a balanced perspective.
• You have the courage to make the right call, even if it is unpopular.
• You gain the respect of others by your actions.
• You hold people accountable for their actions and “call out” undesirable behaviors when necessary

Being “In Position To Make The Call”

When the official is not close enough to see the play and therefore make the right call, his/her perceived position of authority can be damaged.

At the same time, the official must “stay out of the passing lanes” and not overly interfere.  You have to be “close to play” but not take the game from the players.   As Peter Drucker said “productivity depends on an acknowledgement that the person doing the job knows the job better than the person overseeing it.”  What is important about Drucker’s observation is that when you show respect for and include the person closest to the job (or to the customer), you not only get their buy in and ownership, but increased productivity as well.  Increased productivity, whether it’s quantity, quality, or engagement, is the engine of growth, customer satisfaction, and profitability.

Thorough Knowledge and Consistent Application of the Laws of the Game

You must be proficient in your skills.  We’ve all been to a sporting event where the official was not consistent in applying in the laws of the game or misinterpreted the rules.   Very quickly, the experience is no longer about the joy of the game for the players, coaches and spectators, and the outcome is compromised.  Knowledge of the skills you require your employees to have is necessary to building rapport as a leader.

Mastering the Art of Influencing Others.

As an official, you have been empowered with both real and perceived authority to manage the efforts of others to a successful outcome.   You are given a “whistle” to control the behavior, enforce the rules and boundaries and, more subtly, preserve the objectives and spirit of the game.  As an organizational leader, your position and authority have very much the same basis.  The result of wielding the ‘whistle’ you are given as your primary means of influence will yield the same results as an official that is overly officious.

Great leaders consider the goals and objectives of the players in concert with those of the organization.  Their efforts take into account the flow of the game and the needs of all stakeholders.  There are times when leaders must stand tall and “make the call,” but the real basis of their authority and credibility is grounded in their leadership behavior, over time.

Data however can be useful in helping to identify and create measurements by taking a look at the past so to better understand where to go in the future.  Bottom line measurement is about looking at our effectiveness in real time.  How are we doing today (measurement) as compared to yesterday (data), the past week (data), or past month (data).  They key is to identify a measurement of effectiveness that adds value and contributes to the overall bottom line performance of the organization.  Measurement is about keeping track of the things that are helping us win at work.

Caveat:

People tend to associate measurement as a negative process; measurement of defects, number of safety violations, etc.    However, effective measurement helps us grow and become more effective.  As results based leaders, it is critical to make measurement positive.  If measurement is negative, it becomes one of the quickest paths to demotivating your people.   Measurement needs to encourage more of the same positive, results based behaviors.

In order to see the benefits of this same level of dedication at work, leaders and managers need to help their employees find a workplace version of Annapurna. Leaders need to provide their employees with opportunities to be challenged, situations that require them to reach well beyond what is expected of them and truly excel. People love to achieve difficult goals, and they love to up the ante. Once they have reached one summit, they will be ready to move on to the next. Achieving easy goals is boring, no matter what the environment. And inside the workplace, requiring employees to reach higher levels of performance makes the work they do more rewarding, resulting in greater job satisfaction, deeper dedication to the organization, and a heftier, healthier bottom line results. So give your employees the chance to sink their teeth into bigger, better challenges. Search for that next summit, find that next challenge, reward your people for striving to reach the top. They can make it, and you’ll find the proof in your bottom line.

In a recent conversation with a colleague we discussed the ideas of the Psychoanalytical theory and whether it is relevant in today’s society, specifically with regard to the ideas of positive reinforcement. As I thought a little more deeply about this concept, I realized that these ideas are clearly applicable and prevalent in the workplace today.
Do you see the effects of positive reinforcement in your organization? Are your employees being recognized for their hard work? Or are they starving for a little appreciation? If the theory of Positive Reinforcement is applicable in the workplace, and we recognize our employees for their hard work, employees will become more motivated and easier to coach, and will help the business grow over the long term. By taking the time to recognize the effort your employees put forth, they will naturally become more dedicated and will want to achieve your organization’s goals. With the right goals, scorecards, and metrics, you truly can make a difference to your bottom line performance.

So what are some ways that you can acknowledge your employees? I have witnessed a number of ways in which you can recognize employees in order to motivate them and make them more coachable. Here is a list of five very quick, very simple ways to show your employees that you notice and appreciate what they do for you:

1. Simply say “thank you”
2. Take the time, even if it’s in passing, to learn of their successes
3. Reward effort as well as success
4. Publicly announce their success
5. Offer the right incentives to succeed

There are many other ways to show appreciation to and acknowledge your employees for their hard work, efforts, and success. Just remember that by recognizing their labor, you can help your business grow and ultimately achieve the result you want and a boost to your bottom line.

As we walk the halls of the companies with which we work, we often see the “metrics wall”.  This wall is usually in a high-traffic area.  Many employees walk by the “metrics wall” on a regular basis, but how many employees actually stop to look at it?  Our observation has been that not many bother to take the time.

Why is that?  For many employees, the “metrics wall” is just another wall.  More often than not, those employees who walk by without stopping have no idea what it is that the metrics are tracking.  They don’t know how to read the charts and graphs; they don’t understand what the numbers indicate.  Those few who do understand what the charts, graphs, and numbers mean often don’t feel like the information has any real correlation to the impact that they have on the organization.

Making Them More Effective

How can we make the “metrics wall” more effective and motivating?  A good place to start is making sure each employee understands what it is that they contribute to the organization.  Each employee must recognize what they are paid to accomplish.  Once employees understand how they contribute to the organization’s bottom line, understanding how metrics reflect their accomplishment becomes much easier.

Another idea is to create individual scorecards or metrics that reflect each employee’s unique jobs and responsibilities.  Making the scorecards personal and specific increases accountability and responsibility for results.  Once Employees create their scorecards, they can place the scorecards on their cubicle walls or office doors, giving leaders a way to quickly see how the employee is doing and an opportunity to give the employee feedback on his/her work.

Is Is About Employee Engagement

Metrics, when done the right way, can be very motivating to employees.  The key is to ensure that employees understand what the numbers indicate and why the specific action is being tracked.  Using metrics or scorecards in combination with effective and frequent coaching, feedback, and goal-setting can result in rapid improvements to overall productivity and profitability, meaning that your business will become and remain more competitive over the long term.

The most important discovery we have made over the course of many years is that the data alone won’t drive your business to the next level of bottom line performance. We have learned that the way the data is used by leaders has a direct impact on whether the results they see are ordinary or extraordinary. The way leaders interact with the individuals with whom they work either has a negative or positive impact on the results that leaders so desperately seek. The key to leveraging the metrics and boosting employee performance is making the data meaningful to people. It doesn’t matter if you are a scientist or an assembly worker: if you know how your efforts contribute to key results, what those results mean, and how to make the scoreboard move in your favor, you tend to become more engaged and motivated by your work. The magic of metrics is all about how leaders coach, communicate, and solve problems with other members of the organization. They have to help people interpret the data and create metrics that feed business results, and they need to make it personal. If leaders can connect individuals to the metrics driving the business’ success at the very core, if they can help employees see how they fit and why they matter, then every person will suddenly become personally invested in helping the organization improve its bottom line.

The trick is having the ability to position, explain, and use the data in a way that motivates and inspires people. This power resides in the leader’s ability to support, coach, and assist employees, as well as work through the barriers and interference that they will inevitably encounter. There is no inherent value in data. Motivation doesn’t come from analyzing the numbers. Business performance takes a sudden leap when trusted coaches help the people around them figure out ways to be challenged and stretched beyond their perceived abilities. If people gather relevant data about themselves, about the factors that are critical to their own success, analyze those factors with a coach, and then set realistic, meaningful goals grounded in the information they have gathered, they are more likely to want to perform in a superior way.

If you already have a system to measure performance, help your leaders learn how to use that information to its maximum effect, motivating members of your organization at all levels to perform to the very best of their abilities. We can help you enhance you bottom line leadership using the resources you already have at your disposal—your people.

After some back and forth discussion and analysis using business acumen, we wound up agreeing on the following:  Most retail outlets price their steaks by the cost per pound.  This is their way of representing the true value of a steak.  However, after discussing this information and challenging each others perspectives a bit, we came to the conclusion that the best valuation is not the cost per pound, but the cost per edible portion.  Steak contains water, fat, and bones that may be cooked off or not consumable.  Ultimately, you are paying a price for a piece of meat and should want to consume as much of it as possible.  Now, I realize that this is not the only way to value a steak, but is the best overall representation of its true cost and value.

I share this simple analysis with you, because if organizations can get managers and employees to think and speak the language of business, it will pay dividends to the bottom line.  The way information in business is represented can be tricky and confusing when talking about finance, economics, and strategy.  By developing business acumen skills, more people will begin to understand and identify the true costs and understand how these decisions can greatly impact the bottom line.

Next time you’re involved in a purchase or assessing how viable an initiative is for your company, take a step back, process the information and ask the question “what is the true cost”?   It might surprise you.

To keep score they painted a miniature oval on the floor in the back office.    Each person got to choose a miniature car with the number of their favorite NASCAR driver.  Once the dust settled over who was going to get #3, Dale Earnhardt’s old number, the race was on.

Each time an associate sold their item of the week they got to advance their car one length.  The first ‘car’  to the checkered flag won.
It was a raucous week.  Lot’s of fun, lots of incremental sales, and the store increased its sales for the week by over 6.5% which was an unqualified success.

In addition to making the scorecard fun by picking a game board that the team related to and had an interest in, this team captured the essence of effective scorecards as motivators.  To be effective, a scorecard:

• Has to be about what I do

• Has to “talk” to me

• I Have to touch it and own it to believe it

• At some point is has to make me feel successful, whether it is hitting a target, showing improvement, or reinforncing my contribution

Simple, daily profit focused scorekeeping can be and should be fun.

Leave a comment telling us what was the most unique or innovative score keeping method you have seen in your company or another?

Or read this example of a poorly done scorecard: Scorekeeping and Leaderboards to Drive Performance

The word “Produce” is derived from the Latin word pro (forward) + ducere (to lead – more at tow [or to draw, to pull]).  If you look at the dictionary, produce is defined as:

1. To bring forth
2. To yield
3. To bear
4. To draw out
5. To cause to happen

Producers vs. Non-Producers
Whether you work in a mine, department, or a small team, there is a critical need to yield, to bring forth, to bear results.  In other words, to produce results.

In business today, there is a need to differentiate the producers from the non-producers.  It is not about digging up a bunch of HR disciplinary and performance issues and staff changes, but like a mine measuring the volume of ore per truck load, people also need a measurement of effectiveness to determine if they are being effective producers.  If they’re not producing, they need identify what efforts they need to shift or determine what measurements will assist them in identifying what “producing” is for them.

Organizations everywhere spend significant amounts of time and effort on the wrong things, such as tactical meetings.  That’s not to say these items shouldn’t be done, but this significant amount of time and effort doesn’t produce value added results.

The mine is a successful operation because the people understand they must produce results.  If individuals don’t understand how to maximize the value they bring, it is imperative for management to sit down and help them discover and identify how to measure what they are producing. You must have a results based leadership mindset.

Why We Need to Make Non-Producers Produce:
We all know what happens to non-producers.  At an organization level, you are killed by the competition, stock price drops, companies go bankrupt and are sold off,  or become a target for corporate raiders.  Regardless of the outcome, it’s not good.  However, if a culture of “producing” can be established in an organization, it will have a direct and quantifiable impact on the bottom line.

Start improving your bottom line and overall success today by asking yourself and your employee, “are we producing results?”

While working in the publishing industry Thomas S. Monson discovered that when workers were kept in the dark about their job performance they frequently became average performers, and for some workers less than average. But when workers were provided timely, relevant, and easy to understand information about their performance, many became superior performers.

As Marshall Sashkin explained in his book Performance Appraisal, annual performance appraisals can actually be a disincentive or de-motivator, rather than the panacea they are often held up to be. Sashkin observed that when workers’ performance is only “reported back” annually, they often become suspicious and distrustful of the entire measurement and reporting system. In a private conversation Sashkin once observed, “A manager would be better off with no appraisal than only an annual appraisal, because from a performance perspective being in the dark might be preferable than being surprised, shocked, disappointed, or even angry.”

Monson’s quote has been used for decades to explain why workers become more motivated when they are told how well they are performing. The trick in management is finding appropriate methods to not only measure, but also “report back” employee performance. Regrettably, left to their own devices, far too many managers give either vague or critical feedback on workers’ performance. And when the majority of feedback workers receive is unsupportive, untimely, unspecific, and uncalled for, the result can be poor performance at the best, or trouble performance at the worst.

Formal evaluations, such as performance appraisals, often measure job positions in subjective terms, such as, “Meets Job Requirements.” In today’s business climate do you really want an employee who merely meets expectations, or do you want an employee who smashes beyond “Meets” and consistently hits homeruns?

One of the reasons why annual performance appraisals can create more angst among employees than motivation is the subjective nature of the categories in which employees are measured. Workers’ performance must be thought of as scorekeeping, not as a measurement. We measure something to see what is wrong; we keep a scorecard to track what is correct. When employee performance is tracked with a scorecard that visually displays what went correct, the employee can connect his or her behavior with what is needed to win. By contrast, when employee performance is measured to find what went wrong, the employee may or may not be able to connect behavior with results.

Creating a scorecard system to “report back” performance must include ten essential characteristics.

1. The employee must have psychological ownership of his or her scorecards. People believe and trust what they own, not necessarily what is imposed upon them.

2. Scorecards must be based on specific measurable results for which that employee is paid. Traditional job descriptions are constructed with generalities that don’t include specific measurable results.

3. Scorecards must be posted near the employee’s work area. Scorecards place bottom line performance at front of mind awareness, not something that is discussed infrequently, or even annually.

4. Scorecards must be updated by the employee every day, or at the least every week. Scoreboards in stadiums are updated each time the score changes; likewise, scorecards must be updated as frequently as is practical.

5. Scorecards must include an agreed upon performance line. The performance line tells the employee how he or she is doing against an agreed upon standard.

6. Scorecards must include an agreed upon goal line. The goal line tells the employee when superior performance has been achieved and celebration is deserved.

7. Scorecards must include a way for the employee to compare his or her performance against past performance. An employee must be able to see in a glance how he or she is doing now verses yesterday, last week, or last month.

8. When a scorecard shows performance below a performance line, an action plan must be connected to the scorecard. An action plan is necessary for performance below the performance line, and it is optional when performance is above the line.

9. The employee’s coach must pay attention to scorecards and give daily, or at the least weekly, feedback and coaching. Scorecards must become the reason for coaching: supportive coaching for good performance, and corrective coaching for substandard performance.

10. The employee must feel a sense of celebration when his or her scorecard performance exceeds the goal. A goal achieved is worthy of celebration by the employee, coach, and possibly the entire team.

“When performance is measured [with effective individual scorecards], performance improves [because they become an incredibly strong motivational force]; when performance is reported back [through scorecards that adhere to the ten principles described above], performance accelerates. [Employees tap into discretionary performance when they believe their performance is being scored fairly and will make a difference].”