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Throughout my career, I have worked with countless businesses owners, C-levels and their teams; each unique in their own way, but with some common challenges. One particularly pervasive and unproductive challenge is best summed up in the famous quote from Cool Hand Luke, “What we’ve got here is a failure to communicate.” Quite simply, lack of communication can severely damage company morale, productivity and growth.
There are three common work situations in which communications seem to falter. The good news is that all can be addressed rather easily, making life so much more enjoyable and your business more successful.
Setting Expectations. People in the workplace often complain that this person did that wrong or this department didn’t deliver what they had hoped for. Many business owners grumble about having contracted or hired somebody to perform a service that did not produce the results they wanted. More times than not in these situations, expectations were not fully fleshed out and specified to both parties. If I don’t know what you expect, the chances of my meeting those expectations are diminished considerably. If you have many moving parts and don’t communicate to me your expectations on how my work should relate to them, you can’t reasonably expect me to innately understand those nuances. If only we had communicated.
Red Flag Management. I am a firm believer in the practice of Red Flag Management, an effective tool that eliminates surprises. If someone owes me a deliverable or an accomplishment and they see they are at risk of not completing it (they may be running out of time, waiting on another party’s contribution or confused about prioritization), they should “Run Up a Red Flag.” If I am alerted of someone’s issue, I have a better chance of enabling success by perhaps giving them more time, reducing the scope of their milestone, giving them more resources or adjusting my own deadlines. If I only learn of the obstacle after the fact, we all suffer knowing something could have been done to help if we had just communicated it.
Recognition. Nothing demotivates people more than lack of recognition. When someone works hard or otherwise achieves what they believe to be a significant accomplishment, they appreciate at least a simple word of acknowledgement, especially in front of their peers. It is inspiring to see someone recognize that their success was at least in part due to their teammates, parents or employees; and actually seems odd and myopic when someone takes all the credit for themselves. Recognition doesn’t necessarily have to be monetized and can be as simple as:
- “Let’s hear it for Joe on a job well done bringing in that account.”
- “The marketing department deserves a tremendous amount of credit in helping us reach our milestone.”
- “Kathy really hit it out of the park in her presentation yesterday. Nice job, Kathy!”
And none of this is rocket science. Just imagine how much better your company culture, productivity and life would be if you and those around you would simply communicate your Expectations, Red Flags and Recognition of others.
By Bob Dodge
