Am I Getting the Most Out of My People?

In a recent edition of our Horizon Time e-newsletter I told of an executive who was pondering the question, “Am I getting the most out of my people?”

In the article I challenge you to consider some potential downsides of the question itself. Were you able to glance down that road and see some potholes?

Here are just a few….

Activity over Accomplishment
Seeking the most out of people can lead to a culture of busy-ness than results. My wife worked for an activity over accomplishment manager in her first job out of college. The culture was to stay at your desk looking busy until after the manager left. Important rule: never leave before him!

He fancied himself an efficient manager—getting the most out of his people. Little did he know the mass exodus from the parking lot less than 10 minutes after he left.

Sailors use the term course made good. When the wind is off the bow it can feel like you’re at the helm of a hot rod, racing across the water. But wind in the face is not an effective measure. How much closer is the boat to the waypoint? That’s course made good.

I coach teams and executives that suffer from the activity over accomplishment addiction. Withdrawal is not pretty. Don’t let the wind in your face of busy-ness take your eye off true progress.

Measuring the Convenient instead of the Important
Knowing if you’re getting the most out of your people (or manufacturing line or investments) typically requires metrics. Though I fully embrace the value of measurements, the risk is selecting those metrics that are easy to capture but are not truly measures of success.

A classic consulting example is utilization (i.e. the percentage of billable hours). Certainly there’s value to understanding if billable hours are up or not. And hours are conveniently easy to measure. Yet focusing solely on utilization can leave blind spots in overall performance. Beware convenient over important.

Burnout
Last Fall I had the opportunity to consult for a Texas power utility. A major project for them is planning the critical time when the plant is taken off line for major maintenance. You won’t be surprised to know there’s enormous pressure to keep down time to a minimum, with significant financial risks if they slip their schedules beyond certain thresholds. Yet even with staggering financial risks, they wouldn’t dream of skipping the maintenance. Running at full efficiency cannot be sustained. It’s only a matter of time before things break.

Same with people. As with life, the issue is not only how many RPM’s you can rev up. It’s about sustainability. Focusing on getting the absolute most out of our people week in and week out can create an organizational exhaustion—a numbness I refer to as the fall-behind point in Navigating the Winds of Change: Staying on Course in Business & in Life.

Reduced Innovation
In Stephen Covey’s classic Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, he uses the picture of a man too busy sawing to sharpen the blade. In a culture focused on getting the most out of people, it’s easy to slip into a mode of reduced innovation. After all, innovating takes time and involves risk. Before long your teams can end up sawing with a dull blade, slipping behind the competition because you were too busy being efficient to innovate.

But Shouldn’t We Be Getting the Most from Our People?
“Am I getting the most out of my people?” is an efficiency question and there’s nothing wrong with wanting to run an efficient operation. Indeed, the best leaders I know have the ability to achieve greater performance than perhaps even their teams thought possible.

Again, the issue is sustainability. “Am I getting the most out of my people?” is often asked with too short of a timeframe in mind, leading to the issues above.

In our quest for efficiency, leaders cannot take their eyes off effectiveness over the long haul. What questions help us do that? Stay tuned for the next newsletter.

In the meantime, what are your thoughts? Click the Post a Comment link below to add your voice to the discussion.

posted by Andy at 4:44 PM