{"id":5731,"date":"2017-03-20T14:16:38","date_gmt":"2017-03-20T19:16:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.scottcochrane.com\/?p=5731"},"modified":"2017-03-20T19:51:24","modified_gmt":"2017-03-21T00:51:24","slug":"moving-the-needle-when-the-needle-is-stuck","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/scottcochrane.com\/index.php\/2017\/03\/20\/moving-the-needle-when-the-needle-is-stuck\/","title":{"rendered":"Moving the Needle, When the Needle is Stuck"},"content":{"rendered":"

Is one of your leadership dashboard needles stuck?<\/strong><\/p>\n

The international department of the Willow Creek Association recently came together and said that, as part of our 2017 plan, we wanted to move the needle of our team\u2019s culture.<\/strong><\/p>\n

As a team we spent hours coming up with a picture of what an even healthier team would look like. We described a culture where there was, among other qualities, increased teamwork, greater levels of celebration, and an ongoing commitment to quality work.<\/strong><\/p>\n

But then a faint echo of the 2016 Global Leadership Summit showed up, and everything changed.<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cDidn\u2019t Chris McChesney\u2019s talk give us some insights we could apply?\u201d one of our team members asked. \u201cThose outcomes, like teamwork and celebration, seem like lag-measures. I think we need to focus on lead<\/u> measures.\u201d<\/p>\n

That person was right.<\/p>\n

As McChesney outlined in this year\u2019s Summit talk, leaders must identify key lead measures which, if focused on, can produce the lag measures the organization wants to see.<\/p>\n

And so, when we focused on the lag measure of \u201cTeamwork\u201d, one of the lead measures I suggested was that we work with our office door\u2019s open, whenever possible. Another lead measure that was offered was to \u201ccatch each other doing things right\u201d.<\/p>\n

Just a few days later, a colleague popped by my office to ask me a question about a project he was working on. After a brief exchange of ideas, my teammate turned to walk away. But then he suddenly stopped, turned back to me and said with a smile, \u201cHey Scott; I caught ya doing something right! Thanks for keeping your office door open. It made it really easy for me to come and talk to you about this.\u201d<\/p>\n

What has all of this taught us?<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. \n

    It is vitally important that each person has the opportunity to speak into the team\u2019s goals.<\/strong><\/h2>\n<\/li>\n
  2. \n

    Focusing on the outcomes, the lag measures, is ultimately ineffective because you can\u2019t control the outcomes.<\/strong><\/h2>\n<\/li>\n
  3. \n

    It creates great energy when the team identifies its lead measures.<\/strong><\/h2>\n<\/li>\n
  4. \n

    Focusing on the lead measures really can \u2018move the needle\u2019 towards the desired outcomes.<\/strong><\/h2>\n<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    If you are not seeing progress towards some key outcomes you are trying to achieve, consider the possibility that you should be focusing on what McChesney calls the lead measures instead.<\/p>\n

    Perhaps you\u2019ll find, as we have, that the needle starts to move faster than you might imagine.<\/p>\n

     <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    Is one of your leadership dashboard needles stuck? The international department of the Willow Creek Association recently came together and said that, as part of our 2017 plan, we wanted to move the needle of our team\u2019s culture. As a team we spent hours coming up with a picture of what an even healthier team…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":5732,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_bbp_topic_count":0,"_bbp_reply_count":0,"_bbp_total_topic_count":0,"_bbp_total_reply_count":0,"_bbp_voice_count":0,"_bbp_anonymous_reply_count":0,"_bbp_topic_count_hidden":0,"_bbp_reply_count_hidden":0,"_bbp_forum_subforum_count":0,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[478,7,87,777,744,263,585],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5731","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-featured","category-leadership","category-leadership-summit","category-metrics-2","category-team-2","category-the-global-leadership-summit","category-wisdom-2"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/scottcochrane.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5731","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/scottcochrane.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/scottcochrane.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scottcochrane.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scottcochrane.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5731"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/scottcochrane.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5731\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5735,"href":"https:\/\/scottcochrane.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5731\/revisions\/5735"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scottcochrane.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5732"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/scottcochrane.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5731"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scottcochrane.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5731"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scottcochrane.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5731"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}