The notes of first line manager

4.3 Action plan after round of discussions

One of the key problems after round of discussion when the team has no clue what next steps are. Sometimes this is something that managers forget to do. I have seen several examples when different companies conduct annual survey to collect feedback or managers run exercise to collect inputs from the team and do nothing after that to share what next step is. The problem with such approach is always about some humors that starts spreading around. No one understands why they have spent time sharing their thoughts and ideas and it seems to be wasting of time. So when you decide to do that next time you will get much lower response back and few inputs.

So to avoid such negative impact I keep in mind that you need to report out your observations and identify next steps or some action plan to make clear for the team what you are going to do next. Sometime it requires some time to accumulate and build this report. I usually set up clear deadline for me to prepare such presentation and share this deadline with the team before I start collecting feedback. Even if for some reason you need more time to compile report tell honestly about that. Everyone understands that you may need to analyze data a little bit more rather than having no explanation why you promise to share details yesterday and still have no excuse for delay.

Second point is about the style of reporting out. I keep in mind two classical examples of good and bad reports and I want to share them with you:

Example #1:

We had a team where a manager worked hard for about 1 month to get inputs from the team and learn each member of the team. We were pretty open because we believed that he was experienced manager (at least we found him as a good manager). Today we have staff meeting and our manager is going to present material he has prepared for review. Below is his speech (short summary that I am trying to reproduce in my own words):

Team, first of all I would like to say big thanks for your inputs I do appreciate your inputs and honest feedback I have got so far. I design a couple of slides here to summarize key observations I have made. Also I share with you what my next steps are. I also want to share with you the logic behind this action plan to make it clear why we take these steps and what we want to achieve with these plan. I split this action plan into 30 and 60 days and 90 days period to show what actions we are going to take and what type of indicators we are going to use to measure success.

Finally I understand that some actions may generate even more questions. To make sure that everyone can address their concerns we will have time to discuss it today during Questions & Answers session. In addition to that if you have further question or you may want to discuss them off-line I will set up some time with each of you to discuss that. At the same time I do rely on your support here because I believe it is critical to make this team even more successful that it has been. So I would highly appreciate your involvement in tuning this action plan if needed.

The same situation, when a manager spent a lot of time collecting feedback and inputs and again the same staff meeting to reflect some key observations.

Example #2:

Team, I have done tremendous work last 3–4 weeks by collecting feedback and analyzing situation around. I have to say that I have found many gaps here. These gaps will require immediate reaction and tough steps. Some of you will disagree with proposed action plan but unfortunately this is something that we have to accept otherwise we will not be successful. So here it is…

You may tell me: “Common, this is very evident difference”. At the same time both examples are real cases. Despite the fact that they are completely opposite to each other some managers don’t feel the difference between them when they speak in front of the team. The different is crucial: in first example you try to engage the team in this work further and try to involve them in implementation stage. Second example is all about: “Team, I have the perfect idea, you have to accept my decision. I don’t care what you feel about that. If you disagree it’s your problem not mine”. The difficulty in such approach is about how you are going to implement these changes if your team doesn’t support you or don’t believe in what you are doing!

Some of you may also tell: “It is hard to judge what is true, first situation is more about light changes when you don’t need to take big changes in the team. Second case is more about tough situation where you understand that without significant modification you won’t succeed”. At the same time I would still argue with you. We speak about the style of delivering the message but not the complexity of current environment. To address some concerns here I recall another example from my own experience when I had extremely tough situation:

Our team was about to accept much more projects without any reasonable investment into people resources. In simple words we had to do much more with the same head count. At the same time we had no chance to change circumstances at that point of time. Now let’s imagine a situation when you deliver such action plan to your team by saying: “Folks, you get extra 10 projects to you current work load, sorry team but this is what we have to accept”. What do you think they start thinking of you? How much motivation they have after such speech? Perhaps they will even accept this message but do you think you have stable team after that? I would be surprised if you start seeing big support from them.

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