Establishing a New Routine with your Team
Last week we talked about establishing new routines and making them stick. Let's revisit how you would execute on those tips in a team context. Establishing a new routine with your team can be tricky. They might wonder what you have under your sleeve when all you're trying to do is be a more conscientious leader.
Diving into the five parameters we talked about last week, we’ll be looking at this through the leading-a-team lens. We’ll map these points on to an example of a maturing startup that wants to better codify its institutional knowledge through the creation of SOPs (standard operating procedures).
Set the Vision
You have an idea for something that could improve over time, maybe in the way the team functions or the results it achieves. You can see it in your mind’s eye, you believe it, and you want to lead the team towards it.
How would the road towards this vision look in terms of regular action and alignment-building? It's important to translate the vision into a series of regular interval-based touchpoints or actions.
In our example, the leader of the startup knows that the writing of all the SOPs is not going to be a sit-down project. It’ll need to happen over time as employees execute on certain tasks. So the leader is asking herself: How do I make the case for taking time to write these up? Why should it matter to our people?
Connect to your Broader Operational Systems
What are some of the operational norms for your team that are working well? Maybe you already have a weekly team meeting. Maybe your team is successful at a quarterly or bi-annual team self-assessment. Or maybe what works for the team to help them get results is a certain software platform. Build the new routine off what is already working.
In our example: the company already has excellent file organization naming conventions and document storage. The leadership team meets weekly. This leader put the topic on the agenda for a few weeks in a row and the team aligned on a naming convention. Then, the team executed for a while and put the topic back on the agenda several weeks later to see how the SOP creation was going.
Design an Accountability Mechanism
The best accountability mechanism is finding a regular way to give the new routine attention. This is usually most effective during a live meeting. Giving the routine its own agenda item on an already-working meeting is a great approach. That way, at each meeting, there is literally an account of where progress stands.
Another accountability mechanism might be email based forms of reporting on progress. Ownership helps foster accountability because it helps the ball not get dropped. You as the team lead should certainly own the vision you’re trying to achieve, and also ownership among the others will create redundancy in catching dropped balls.
In our example, the leader bringing the topic to the team meetings was an accountability mechanism. The other was the leader and other team members suggesting to each other, usually in email, “this should probably get written into an SOP.” So it made its way into their everyday lexicon.
Incremental Upgrades
You're not going to set this new rhythm with the team and be done. It should feel iterative, which means you'll be tweaking as you go. Also, there will be tangents and places where the routine falls off. Just re-introduce it, and see what upgrades are needed to re-align with your vision and make the tangent less likely next time.
In our example, the leader knew that this wasn’t an overnight project. Incrementally SOPs would get created. AND, that the parameters for what to write and how to write it would also improve over time. The important thing was to begin in a way where there was ownership and energy among the team for the original vision of codifying the institutional knowledge.
Enjoy
Recognize what is working about this change process, and reflect on that out loud as a team.
Slowly, the SOPs got written, and better yet, started being referenced and edited by other teammates. The leader made a point of these small wins as they happened. Information was easier to find.
Bottom line: translate the vision into systemic action that builds off and hooks into what's already working. Give it attention and account for progress. Upgrade as you go and pay attention to what’s working.
