Play the Same Game

The key to being a better leader is to get better results

By Andrea Hill

Leadership is a lot of things, but it’s mostly results. Good leaders get results. Not just one-time results, not just the occasional slam dunk or home run, but consistent, always-progressing-in-the-right-direction results. So when executives ask me how to do a better job motivating people, I start talking about results.

And then it starts.

“Oh, no,” they say, “you must have misunderstood. We weren’t asking you to look at our balance sheet. We were asking how to get people to listen to us and follow our lead.”

“Oh, ok,” I say. “To do that, we need to look at your methods. Let’s talk about your strategic objectives for last year and your strategic plans for this year.”

“Oh, no,” they say. “We think you’re still misunderstanding. We don’t need you to look at our strategy. We’re all good there. We just need you to show us how to get people to be more motivated, more excited.”

But when you’re asking, “How do I get people to be more motivated and more excited?” what you’re really asking is “How can I be a better leader?” And since leadership is about getting results, the key to being a better leader is to get better results.

Of course, if you work for yourself and by yourself, getting results can be as simple as internal motivation. But as soon as you’re trying to get two or more people lined up and running in the same direction, your internal motivation + the annual strategy PowerPoint + copious e-mails + the occasional heart-to-heart is just not enough to = results.

What is? You may be thinking that the answer is metrics, and you are partially correct. Metrics are important, but by themselves are not enough. Individual metrics can be right for one area, but wrong for the overall goal. Metrics for one individual can suboptimize—or even sabotage—someone else working for the same goal. Individual metrics are good for a workout plan or a diet, but they are not useful for getting group results.

You may also be thinking an incentive program or at-risk pay is the key to results, and again, you are partially correct. But metrics and rewards are just two dials on the larger dashboard of leadership—metrics toward the left and rewards all the way on the right. Let’s fill in the rest of the leadership dashboard to show you how to produce the results your company needs.

Specificity

The most effective leaders are specific to a fault. They are specific about their goals and objectives, and specific about what it will take to achieve those plans. Specificity requires deep thought and scenario building. Specificity also requires courage. A projection such as “We’re going to grow in double digits this year” can be true at 10 percent or 99 percent. On the other hand, saying “We’re going to in-crease revenue by 13.5 percent and profits by 3.8 percent this year” puts a leader on the spot, which is right where a leader belongs.

Specificity is about leadership accountability, but it’s also about leadership clarity. When you set specific goals for your company, it’s much easier for departments, managers, and teams to imagine what they must do to achieve those goals.

Alignment

After specificity comes alignment. I’m a big proponent of giving teams responsibility for setting measurable goals, but all goals must float back up to leadership for review. This is fun because you get to play the Goals Game. The best way to play this game is to write each proposed departmental goal on a large index card. Now line up the cards and see how each goal supports or suboptimizes other goals and try to use the goals to demonstrate how they play together to achieve the strategy. Don’t stop until you have a series of meaningful goals that lead all teams, in lockstep, toward the business results you have specified.

Tracking

If all those goals land in a drawer, never to be looked at until the end of the year, you’ve just wasted a bunch of time. It is essential to track all goals on a monthly or quarterly basis, and tactical teams should track progress weekly or even daily. Waiting until the end of the year is too late! You should be able to track and monitor the progress of every goal.

I often hear the objection, “But that takes a lot of time!” It’s true; goal management does take time. But goal tracking and tacking is one of the most im-portant responsibilities of management, so figure out some other thing you or your managers are doing that is less valuable and devote that time to goal tracking instead.

Cadence

There’s a reason that drums play an im-portant role in any marching band. They set the cadence, and as long as the band can hear and feel the cadence, they can stay in step. This is true of leadership as well. If your leadership is choppy and erratic—sometimes asking for goal updates daily, other times turning your attention away from them for weeks at a time—then the organization will fall out of step.

Every team should have a set schedule for goal review and updates. Each department, manager, and executive should also follow a set schedule. Leadership must set the cadence of and be the role model for goal tracking for the organization. Leadership isn’t about being in every single goal-setting meeting or review, but it is about beating the drum and keeping the drum going at all times.

Resolution

Note that I use the word resolution here and not reward. Rewards are exciting and important, but interestingly, they aren’t nearly as powerful as resolution for getting results. Organizations that follow through with a discussion and final metrics for every goal—whether or not the goals were achieved—are consistently more successful than organizations that set lofty goals but never assess the results.

People are motivated by games—by experiences with a game plan, points, and an end. Game developers know this, and they use this tendency to make games addictive. Sure, everyone likes to win, but they don’t expect to win every time. On the other hand, nobody wants to play a game with no rules, no methodology, no clear points accumulation, and no end. When leaders use tried and true gamification strategies, they get their teams playing passionately to win every time.

Whether you lead a team of 1,000 or a team of 1 (sometimes the hardest person to lead is oneself), this approach will make you more successful. Be specific about your intentions, align all your resources to serve those intentions, start tracking, set a cadence, and take time at the end of each year to draw conclusions. A good leader can be extroverted or introverted, outspoken or quiet, charismatic or reserved. But one thing they all have in common is their ability to set up the gameboard and get everyone in their organization playing the same game at the same time with the same rules.