Do you want to be a leader who steers and guides from a position of awareness and knowledge about the state of play of the work you are responsible for?
Learning how to take stock of the status of your work independently will set you apart from other leaders who are on ‘auto-pilot’ waiting for other people to tell them their status.
What is taking stock?
The term ‘taking stock’ is used here to describe the process you will undertake to assess your progress against what you are expected to deliver as part of your role as a leader. This isn’t just about assessing if you are on track to achieve what you have set out to achieve. It is also about understanding why and how you and your team have arrived at where you are.
When you don’t regularly take stock, you leave yourself open to surprises and also criticism and questions on your performance if others can see problems but you can’t or worse, won’t.
Regularly, and independently taking stock of your progress, before anyone else points out problems to you is a smart thing to do for a number of very good reasons. These are:
- You will always be on the ‘front foot’ if you know at any given point in time the current status of your work in a more detailed sense then just what you report in more of a high-level sense to your boss.
- A regular stock take can give information to work with to make adjustments in either direction or your personal approach, lobby for your team for more resources or efficiency gaining tools, promote the good work that is being done and demonstrate you are in control as the leader.
- You can defend any criticisms or address unfounded perceptions of you or your team if you are all over your work, every which way and how! Having said that there is a big difference between being aware of and understanding how and why things are done and any issues with process and procedures your team works with getting in the trenches and micro-managing. The former is being an informed leader and later isn’t leading.
- You can be ready to sell yourself with factual and defensible status information when opportunities arise.
- You can be ready to complete a thorough hand over at a moment’s notice.
It can be tough at first to shift your mindset, but you won’t regret being on the ‘front foot’ armed with solid and information to create and execute actionable improvement plans.
Setting your mindset
It is easy to assume everything is going along OK and that any slow down or blockage to progress is just temporary and will sort itself out. No news is good news, and if I don’t know I can’t be held accountable right? Well, actually, no. If this is you, now is a good time to consider why you don’t like to self-assess progress and lift above fearing the bad news you might have to deal with.
Your mindset should be that you will demonstrate or at least try to be and seek from others:
- Honest and seek honesty
- Pragmatic, Impartial or unbiased
- Open, fair and non-judgemental
- Non-blaming when things aren’t as they should be
- Complimentary and encouraging when things are as they should be
- Willing to take corrective actions, even if it means going back on previous decisions
What should you assess?
Role Statement
Effective communication channels allow you to set expectations, track progress and keep everyone informed.
The place to start any independent assessment of your progress is your role statement – what you are accountable for.
Look at where you spend most of your time. This assessment is primarily for you to be aware of where you have gaps in coverage and where you need to adjust before raising any issues of coverage with your boss. Your boss will expect you to have the right amount of personal coverage across all elements of your role so be clear on where you put your energy and whether you need to make adjustments to your time management or focus.
Some job descriptions will have a catch-all point called ‘any other duties as directed’. This can become ‘job creep’ and potentially distract from your primary role so be clear about any add-ons and if you are having any time or focus challenges managing the load.
Looking at your role statement will also arm you with a benchmark against which you can continue monitor where your effort is directed and to stretch yourself.
Ask yourself:
- Am I challenged time wise? If so, how?
- Am I getting to everything I need to and still working reasonable hours? If not, why?
- Do I only focus on the things about my job that I enjoy? If so, what is the consequence of not focusing on those things I don’t?
This will give you an insight in to where you could put your focus for better time management or career development. It will also give you clues where you may be creating future problems for yourself by not putting your energies in to things you don’t enjoy but are a requirement of the job.
Actual progress vs perception
Next, have a look at the actual work and your progress. There are different ‘lenses’ through which you can assess your work.
1. Scope
Assessing your understanding of your coverage against your role statement isn’t the only Step to take in looking at the scope of your work. This next step is about assessing your level of comfort that you are clear about whether you understand exactly what you are to be doing.
Ask yourself:
- Am I comfortable my boss and I are in alignment with ‘what’ I am actually doing and ‘how’ I am doing it? Is there any tension between what your boss thinks you are doing vs what you are actually doing and how you are doing it?
- What is your ‘gut’ telling you?
- Do you worry about whether your boss thinks you are doing the right things as a leader?
Your answers may reveal a need for further discussion with your boss. It is natural for there to be differing opinions on how to arrive at the same outcome, but you need to be clear that you have a ‘how’ issue rather than a ‘what’ issue.
The reason this is important is that if you don’t deliver what your boss wants, or they perceive you aren’t delivering what they want, then you are vulnerable to replacement.
2. Current state performance against expected
To assess your performance against expectation, look at actual against measurable metrics and feedback from stakeholders.
For measurable metrics ask yourself:
- Am I actually performing as expected?
- Is the team meeting the standards expected? If yes what is contributing to the success and if no what is stopping performance hitting the level expected?
- Do I have a people problem if I am not performing as expected? Is the issue individuals underperforming and, if so, what can I do to assist them to lift to expected levels? If it about not having enough people what can I do to either get more resources or negotiate relief on the metrics?
- Are we over-performing against some metrics and under-performing against others? If so, why?
- If project based, are you on meeting the schedule according to the critical path? If no, what are you dependent on and what corrective action needs to be taken?
- Am I on budget? If overspent, why and what is my plan to come in on budget? If underspent, will I spend my allocation and what will the consequences be if I am unable to do so?
In time, you might want to do a deeper dive here, and ask yourself if you are being measured against the ‘right’ metrics, but for the purposes of developing the habit of taking stock yourself assume you are.
Seek feedback from stakeholders to gauge if your perception matches the reality of the measurable metrics and also if your perception and understanding of any issues and problems matches those of your stakeholders.
Ask yourself:
- Does everyone who matters agree my/our work is progressing or do I have a real or perceived problem to deal with?
- Can I improve the story I tell through regular reports?
- Have I glossed over previously raised problems or issues hoping they will go away? If so, what are they and what will I do about it?
3. Communications
Next assess your communications with your team, boss and stakeholders.
- Is it useful for them and timely?
- Are they getting what they need from you from an information sharing perspective?
- Are you getting what you need?
The best way to assess whether the other party is getting what they need out of any communications with you is to ask.
More information on communicating effectively with your team to assist you in assessing whether you need to improve your communications can be found here.
4. Your team
It is really important that you are across everything to do with your team, in particular your direct reports. You can take a holistic approach and assess the team more broadly by looking at what the HR/Personnel metrics tell you?
- Have I got a hidden problem with unplanned leave as the indicator?
- Have I got people in long term acting positions that need to be filled permanently?
- How many vacancies do I actually have?
- What is my turnover?
- Why are people leaving my team? Are people leaving for example for promotions, sideways opportunities, maternity leave or are they leaving because they don’t like the work?
- More pointedly, ask is I my turn-over because of me? Is it my style? This is tough and requires a high degree of self-awareness. Seek honest feedback from trusted colleagues and adjust accordingly because sooner or later your management team will notice. Recruitment costs money and you may become a costly overhead if you don’t adjust your style.
- Have my team got everything they need to do their jobs? Are there any known process or procedural issues that can be readily fixed? If so, what needs to be done?
- Have I got any members underperforming and is it being addressed? This needs to be backed up by actual evidence and not perception.
Corrective action?
Don’t sit back and feel deflated or beat yourself up if you find things aren’t as you would like them or expect them to be – it is now time to act!
Work out what you need to do to get things on track or keep things on track and execute your plan.
You are in the driver’s seat and you can make a difference with a plan of attack to address the issues you identified.
I encourage you to take stock of how you are doing as a leader before the end of the year and then schedule time into your calendar to do this on a quarterly basis.
I am confident that you will find this a rewarding activity to do and look forward to hearing how this works for you.
