First, Solve The Problem

This is not really surprising but the plan almost never went like clockwork.  Something always happened. Team members got captured.  People suspected a trap and had members of the team locked up.  Equipment broke.  The weather changed.  Wildcards were thrown at them all of the time. 
What made the team great, however, was their response when things did not go perfectly.  

When plans went awry, the IMF Team focused first on solving the problem, not pointing fingers at who was to blame. 

If Rollin Hand got locked up, the team didn’t waste time trying to explain why they were not at fault for him getting caught.  That would not have been productive.  Instead, they immediately looked to solve the problem first.  “Blame Allocation” was never part of the Mission.

At a later time, after the crisis had passed and the Mission completed, I am sure that Phelps had an after-action review so they could figure out exactly what happened so they might avoid it again down the road, but not in the middle of a crisis.
 
ACTION:  What do you or your staff focus on when bad things happen?  Is your first thought to accomplish the mission or save yourself?

 What about your Team members?  Do they waste time making sure everyone knows who is to blame, rather than just completing your mission?

What are you going to do to change this in not only yourself but in your team as well?

Over-Communicate the Mission

Nearly every Mission: Impossible episode began Phelps briefing them on their mission.  Why was it important to do this?  Jim Phelps cared deeply about his people and knew that the best way to have then be successful in the mission was for them all to know and understand the mission…the whole mission, not just their little sliver of it.  He never knew when he or any one of the other team members might be hurt or arrested during the mission and everyone needed to know and understand the specific missions of everyone else in the team so that they could pick up the slack should one person stumble or fall.

He took the time to go over every detail so that each person was comfortable with what the goal was, how their actions helped ensure victory, what was going on around them and what contingency plans had been made. He answered their questions and stayed with them until everyone was comfortable with their understanding of the larger task at hand.  Hearing this level of planned detail helped assure each Team member that the plan was sound.  It wasn’t enough that Phelps knew the mission… the entire Team needed to see the big picture to ensure success.

At your utility, it’s not enough for you to be the grand puppet master and the only one to know the whole picture.  If you want your entire team to be successful in the long run, they need to understand how their part of the mission supports every other part of the mission.  They must see where they fit into the bigger picture.  How the mission of your utility is NOT to have a maintenance department…or a pump operation.  It’s to serve customers in such a way that they see and deeply appreciate your value over the long haul. 

It is important that your people understand the mechanics of the big picture.  For instance, if they want a pay raise, it is important to know that customers fund this with their bill.  Unhappy customers can raise enough objections to stop a rate increase dead in its tracks and can, therefore, stop the funding mechanism of a pay raise.  This is why remarkable customer service is so important to even the most junior field worker at your utility.  Don’t they deserve to know this important fact?  Have you taken the time to explain this to them or are you just assuming that they know?

If you truly care about your people and truly care about winning, you will take the time to over-communicate the mission in detail with YOUR team.   

ACTION:  Use every opportunity to communicate the big picture to your people.  Ensure that they understand their role in your overall success.

Let Them Do Their Job

One of the things that Jim Phelps did very well was to allow his team to do their jobs without micromanaging them. 

Willy was an expert at logistics.  Phelps didn’t dictate how Willy was going to set up a fake hotel or hospital in the middle of a hostile country.  Willy was an expert at this and Phelps let him do his job.

Barney was an electronics expert and engineer.  Phelps didn’t tell Barney what brand of listening devices to use.  Barney was an expert and he let him do his job.  

Rollin Hand was a master of disguise.  Phelps didn’t dictate to him what brand of disguises to buy or how to apply them.  He was an expert in his field and he let Rollin do his job.

Remember also that there was a lot at stake... on "Mission: Impossible", Phelps was warned that every mission carried with it the risk of being "caught or killed".  On top of this was the fact that a failed mission could have led to the outbreak of war (including nuclear attacks!) Despite this, Phelps was smart enough to let his people do their job every time.  He didn’t dictate their tools or methods.  He judged them for their results. 

The last time I checked, nuclear war has never been the likely result of a water line break or a sewer spill.  If you think about it, you will realize that there really is time to let your people take ownership of their work and do their jobs without excess micromanagement from you.  They need a little time to think through the process, to plan a course of action, to gather the proper materials.  If you make all the decisions for them, then they will never learn on their own.    

What is YOUR job as a manager?  

- To establish what success looks like.  

- To communicate this to your people. 

- To let them do thier job.

- To judge them for results.

- To work with those who can be improved.

- To replace those who fail to deliver results consistently.  

You have PLENTY to do without doing your people's jobs for them. Stick to what is your and leave them to do what is their's.  

ACTION:  Let you people do their jobs and judge only their results.  This is the way to both win and build ownership amongst your team.  

Let Them Know That They're Important

If your people are truly valuable and important to you, you should take active steps to let them know that they are so.  One of the ways we do this is by giving them our time and respecting them while we are meeting with them.  There is nothing that communicates disrespect quite like taking a call on your cell phone or checking email in the middle of meeting with your people.  Don’t do it!  (Unless you really are Jim Phelps and people are calling you regularly asking they should cut the red wire or the green wire to diffuse some time bomb, it is likely that you are not nearly as important as you think you are.)

Your people deserve to meet with you undistracted.  Turn your monitor off on your PC so that you won’t be tempted to glance over at those pesky email pop-up notifications.  If your phone rings, don’t even check it to see if its “important”.  Just reach into your pocket and turn it off.  If your people ask you if you need to take that call, just say, “No, I’m helping you right now…when we are done, I can call them back and help them later.”

If this just seems impossible, then try this cutting edge smartphone app that almost no one seems to know about.  It’s called “voice mail”.  Apparently, if you don’t answer your phone, your phone will answer itself, take a message for you and will play it back to you anytime you want it to!  AMAZING! (You really should try this!) 

ACTION:  Show your people that they are important to you by honoring the time you spend with them.  

Get Them What They Need

GET THEM WHAT THEY NEED –  Imagine you are on the "Impossible Missions Force" from the classic TV show MISSION:IMPOSSIBLE.  Jim Phelps, your team leader, arrives to brief you on the mission.

“Okay, this will be a tough mission but I am sure you’ll pull it off.  The first thing you need to know is that each of you needs to be in Munich in the morning.  Now, if you’ll recall, we’re over budget at the moment so I had to cut out all of the travel funds to keep us in the black… so you won’t be able to buy any plane tickets…but you still need to be in Munich in the morning.

When you get there, you’ll need to show a expertly-made fake IDs with your secret alias names on them at the border.  They had better be perfect or the Immigrations Officer will have you arrested.  Now, I know I cut out a Documents Expert from the staffing budget for this year but I am going to try and plan for one next year…but you still need your new IDs for this trip.

Oh, one final thing… when you get there, the most crucial part of the mission is to precisely measure the distance to the target within less than 12 inches from over 2 miles away.  This is absolutely critical...that's why we always use our laser range finder.  Oh, but if you’ll remember, it broke a few weeks ago and the repairs were going to be over $800!  We’re a little short of funds until we get more in a few months so I haven’t been able to get the range finder repaired.  But you guys have been doing really good estimating (guesstimating?) your ranges lately so I am confident you’ll do find this time, too.  Now get out there and have a great mission!”   

How many of you would think that you were being set up for failure?  You would be absolutely right!

If you fail to get your people what they need at your utility, you are setting them up for failure…and your team knows it.  How do you think that affects morale?

“Getting them what they need” might mean a tool…but it could just as easily mean training…or enough people to do a job right…or it could mean support from upper management when a tough but right decision needs to be made like laying off a bad worker who might be related to someone high up in the company.  Your people deserve the tools to do their job right.  The only thing left to be decided is whether you will provide them…or set your people up for failure. 

ACTION:  Get your people what they need to be successful.  It is the only way for them to attack the mission with the confidence it takes to win.

Listen to the Team's Feedback

LISTEN TO THE TEAM’S FEEDBACK-

The one thing Jim Phelps did during his mission briefings was to listen a lot and let others answer the big questions.  “How will we get out of the prison once we have the General?”  “Well, Cinnamon, that’s where’s Barney comes in…why don’t you brief us on that Barney.” 

Even more than that, the IMF team often asked pointed questions like, “Do you really think you can convince him that you are his father, Jim?” 

They sometimes had to point out facts like, “That’s a time delay door.  It will take three minutes to open once we have input the code.  Your timeline won’t work as is.”  Phelps never got angry with the feedback he received.  He used it to refine the plan and allow others to feel more of a part of the overall success.  In addition to this, the act of listening to his people's concerns helped build faith in the plan as a whole.  This was vitally important in completing the mission because people who feel they are sent out to fail, usually do.  Likewise, people who have confidence in the plan and confidence in the person who scripted the plan, often succeed.

If your staff meetings and company meetings consist mostly with you talking about what you want to talk about, something is wrong.  Are you listening?  Are you sharing the stage?  Are you letting other people own their parts of the mission?

If you get angry when people question your plan, you are stifling valuable input that can make or break your mission.  Is it more important that you never be questioned?  Or is it more important that your mission be a success?

ACTION:  Listen as much as you talk and always be receptive to the feedback you receive.

Accomplishing Your Impossible Mission

Your mission, Jim, should you decide to accept it…

These words kicked off one of the best action TV shows ever produced.  Each week, Jim Phelps, leader of the Impossible Missions Force, somehow found a way to accomplish what so many around him thought was impossible.  You know, it says a lot about what people consider to be “impossible” when some people routinely find a way to accomplish the mission while others are content to say it just can’t be done.

We face the same issue today in the utilities industry.  We have a seemingly impossible mission ahead of us today.  Run a successful utility operation in the face of ever expanding regulations, a troubled economy that has dramatically cut our revenues, increasing maintenance cost on an aging infrastructure, a disengaged workforce, a customer base not receptive to rate increases…it certainly looks impossible.  Yet, somehow, there are utility managers that find a way to accomplish this mission while others satisfy themselves by saying it can’t be done.  How do they do it and, more importantly, how can we all learn from their example?

Mission: Impossible was certainly an entertaining show but it was so much more than that.  It actually contains a wealth of management lessons that can be applied equally well to accomplishing our impossible missions we face here in the utility industry.  Let’s look at a few of these lessons over the next few weeks:

First, every mission started out the same way:  Jim Phelps finding out his team’s mission from some sort of recording device hidden all over the city.  One of the first questions put to him was this one, “Your mission, should you decide to accept it…”   Did Jim Phelps have a choice whether to accept the mission or not?  Of course he did!  He could have said, “No”…but could he have done so and still been the leader of the IMF? Not at all!  This is a key concept not only for you but for everyone on your team.  We all have choices, but what we choose opens and closes doors.  As IMF team Leader, Jim Phelps did not have to accept the mission…but he could not be the IMF leader unless he did.

As utility managers, you don’t have to make the tough choices that come with management… but you can’t be a manager unless you do.  As utility workers, you don’t have to be drug free or care about our customers…but you cannot work for our utility unless you make the right choice.  Instilling these lessons into your people is what will set you apart as a success in this or any business. 

Are YOU ready to accept your mission?

Pew! It's Time To Change The Baby!

I recently took my family out to eat following my son’s high school graduation. It would have been a perfect day…except for the screaming baby in the booth right behind us. The parents hardly seemed to notice their baby, however. They ate and talked while their baby screamed and threw food all around him. (From the smell, I am fairly certain it needed to be changed, too!) How could these people not notice how smelly and disturbing their baby was being to everyone in that restaurant?

The truth is that they cannot see, hear or smell the baby because it is THEIR baby. They see it every day. They smell it every day. They have seen it throw much worse tantrums in the past. They are so close to the baby that what it is doing right now doesn’t even seem that bad to them. The baby has become “invisible”.

The same thing can happen in our businesses. We work in the same building every day so we do not see the carpet getting dirtier over time. We eat lunch in the same break room every day and so we don’t even notice that the counters are getting stained and stickier each day. We ride in the same trucks every day and so we do not see the drink cans and candy wrappers that accumulate in them. In the course of our jobs, we have all experienced a major crisis or two in the past and worked in some pretty horrible conditions to fix a problem. As a public utility, we’ve seen things that were vile and smelled things that would make you gag…so a small sewer spill in someone’s yard doesn’t seem to be anything important. We are so close to what we do every day that much of it, like that baby in the restaurant, has become invisible to us.

To be great at what we do, we cannot allow our “baby” to become invisible. We must force ourselves to open our eyes fresh and new every day. We must look at our facilities, trucks, uniforms and worksites the same way a customer does when they see them for the first time. To run the kind of business we must be, we need to remember that the “baby” is ours. It smells worse than we think it does. It’s louder and more obnoxious than we think it is. If we try to ignore it, it’s only going to get worse. Our “baby”…our company… needs to be changed… for the better. It’s OUR job to change OUR baby.

When was the last time you checked on your “baby”?

Lesson #9: Feedback is the Key to Developing All-Stars

Imagine if your pay raise each year depended on you improving your bowling score.  Do you think it would be possible to improve your score over time if you had to roll the ball under a curtain that hid the pins from view?  Would it really help if someone met once a year with you to update you on how many times you rolled a gutter ball?  Wouldn’t you feel powerless and frustrated in this situation?

In business, we cannot continue to expect our employees to improve their performance by meeting with them once a year, reminding them of everything we can think of that they did wrong the previous twelve months and telling them that they need to “do better next year”.  Faced with this, your employees are going to be as frustrated as if they were bowling under a curtain.  It’s not fair to them and, frankly, it’s not fair to your company either. 

Supervisors must be in constant communication with their employees on what they are doing right (so that these actions can be repeated) AND what they are not doing right (so that the employee can stop doing a task wrong as soon as possible).  To achieve measureable improvement all year long requires constant feedback, both positive and corrective.

Done well, the annual review process should really be a “no stress” composed of simply documenting at year end a conversation that has been occurring all year long. There should never be a surprise in someone’s annual evaluation.  If there is, the supervisor has not been properly doing their job.

Remove the curtain your employees face every day.  Let them see and understand the results of their actions.  Their performance will improve and your team will performance will also.  They deserve it.  You deserve it.  You company deserves it. 

Lesson #8: Welcome to the TEAM!

Smart coaches never hire great players and just hope that they figure out on their own how to best become part of the team.  This is far too important to leave to chance or luck.  They carefully manage the transition of a new player into a productive team member.  That often means a well-planned and detailed orientation to the team where they learn the history of the team they have joined, what the strengths of the team are and what goals have been set for both the near and long term.   This helps the new player get into the right mindset of the team. 

To help the new player become a productive part of the team in the shortest time possible, they assign the new player a roommate who can help incorporate him into the team and what is expected of him as a part of that team.  This gives the new player a person to learn from and ask questions of.  As part of this process, the roommate often takes the new player to make introductions to the key staffers he will need to know…coaches, trainers, therapist medical staff, payroll staff, etc.  This is never left to chance because there is far too much money on the line to risk having the new player become isolated, a loner or jaded on whether he should have joined this team in the first place.  The team needs him to start “earning his keep” as soon as possible, and this detailed orientations process is the best way to accomplish this. 

In business, it is equally critical to transition from “finding” to “keeping” your great employees. The orientation process helps to introduce your new hire to the company and the company family. Matching new hires to a partner who can look out after them during these first few critical days, weeks and months really helps them start earning their keep much sooner than just handing them a shovel and saying, “Get to work.”  Even little things like “Here’s how to use the time clock,” can help to ease the transition of a new hire from “outsider” to “key team member”.  This is vital to the success of your company and should never be left to chance.   

At my company, we introduce every new hire to everyone in their chain of command in the first day of their employment.  This goes from the supervisor, to the department manager, the operations manager and the general manager.  They also meet critical personnel such as the customer service representatives in the front office as well as the HR and finance managers.  Each person they meet welcomes them and reiterates that they have joined a great, winning team!

Help protect your investment!  Orient your new hires in a carefully planned way.  Marry them up with a steady, reliable worker on your staff so they will very quickly have someone to teach them the ropes.  Introduce them to all your key staff in the first day so that they can feel that everyone in the organization really wants them there.  The money you save will be yours and the team you run will be all the better for the efforts! 

Lesson #4: Tailor Fit the Job to the Candidate Who Can Help Your Team Win

When a team has a vacancy, does a good coach look only for a player who will fit the jersey he already has?  Does the coach only look for players wearing the same shoe size as the last player wore?   Of course not!  Great coaches will find the player the team needs to become better and then fit the uniform of their team to that player. 

Similarly, if the coach is focused only on finding a certain set of skills for a new player (such as a good passer if a football team needs a quarterback), he remains open to the fact that he may come across such a good running quarterback that it opens up entirely new opportunities for the team to win.  Instead of remaining blindly committed to what he thought he was looking for, a great coach will be open to adapt the position (and perhaps even his entire offense) to make best use of the skills he finds in the new player

Job descriptions are like this in many ways.  You may think you know exactly what you are looking for in a new worker, and there is a outside chance you might even find an exact match to the job description you have.  But more likely, you will find someone who has most of the skills your job description requires but is deficient in some other areas that may or may not be critical.  The best strategy when facing this is to alter the job description slightly to match the abilities of your new hire, emphasizing some areas and de-emphasizing others.   

Remember, job descriptions are not sacred.  Even if you cannot alter your company’s standard job description for a specific position, you should clearly understand that some “required skills” are more important than others.  Your “team” can benefit most when you remain open to minor alterations of the job description to person you actually hire.   A good rule of thumb is to find a candidate that has at least 75% of the skills you are looking for (and adapting to the non-critical weaknesses the person has), and be open to modifying the job description to capture the additional skills the candidate demonstrates as a “windfall”.   If the “total package” still looks good, you are well on your way to building a winning team!

Lesson #3: Great players welcome a tough tryout.

To a great athlete, a brutally tough tryout is a welcome sight because it quickly and effectively weeds out mediocre players. The best players are anxious to show off their superior skills.

The very best utility workers, likewise, will not be afraid of a tough interview. In fact, they welcome it because it makes it easier for them to distinguish themselves from “average” applicants. Train your interviewers to ask the right kinds of questions, allow the candidate to answer fully and to shut up long enough to hear everything they say.  (Hint: Train your interviewers to look the candidate in the eye and count to five after each answer before continuing.  This will often make a marginal job candidate nervous and cause them to add more information… which is usually more honest than their initial “I read this is a good answer to give” memorized response.)

If you want to improve the interviewing skills of your staff almost instantly teach them this technique.  It involves them learning just one question that they can ask over and over. 

Part One - ASK THE FOLLOWING QUESTION

“At our company, we often deal with ___________________________________.

Tell me about a time when you dealt with __________________________________

and describe how you handled it.”

Part Two - SHUT UP AND LISTEN

The blank could be anything that your company encounters regularly but needs to be extremely brief, such as:

Angry customers

Long and rotating shift hours

Massive overtime requirements

Hazardous working conditions

Highly confidential information

Critical decisions you must make with little input

The reason for the short question is to make the answer as open-ended as possible.  You’re trying to learn more about the candidate in this first interview than anything else.  If you lead the candidate to only one obvious answer by your question, you don’t learn anything at all.

The reason to shut up and listen is so you will actually hear the information the job candidate is giving you.  Many people ask great questions, but only the best interviewers actually listen for the answers and press for clarification if they feel like they are getting clichéd answers from some book on interviewing. 

What kind of interviewer will YOU be?  What kind of interviewers will be hiring YOUR staff?

Lesson #2: Teach Your Supervisors “How To Drive”

My daughter just turned 15 years old and will soon go get her driver’s permit.  I think this is silly…they should just give her a driver’s license now because she has watch her mother and me drive for 15 years to date.  Surely she knows how to drive by now, right?

Does this sound strange to you? Well, sadly, this is the way most companies view training for their supervisors on how to properly interview new job candidates.  Most businesses just figure that, by the time you are promoted to supervisor, you have been interviewed for jobs so many times that you must know how to interview others fairly well by now.  It just does not work this way.

Think of it as “teaching them to drive”.  

·         New drivers have to learn something about the rules of the road before they can even sit behind the wheel.  Provide instruction to your supervisors on some of the key points first …what they can and cannot ask for instance.   Insure they understand the “why” as much as the “how”.

·         New drivers need an experienced person in the car with them at first.  Pair your new supervisors with experienced and effective interviewers on your staff so that they can see how it is done properly.

·         New drivers must pass a test before they get their license to drive alone.  Supervisors should pass a similar test with HR reps and experienced interviewers observing them but otherwise allowing them to conduct the entire interview “solo”.

·         Even good drivers get into accidents.  Hiring mistakes are not something to cover up.  Even the great Jack Welch claimed to only have a track record of about 60% on his hiring!  If a poor employee slips through with a great interview, the supervisor must be willing to do his job and get rid of the “bad apple”.  If he or she does so properly, they can still be considered great “drivers” of your company’s hiring efforts!

·         Poor drivers can get people hurt.  Poor interviewers can cause a lot of pain in your company ranks.  Both hurt and can be deadly!

Follow these simple steps to get your people driving down the road to success!

Compete In Order To Win

If any team, even the reigning NFL champs New Orleans Saints, practiced seven days a week but played no real games against opponents, they would inevitably grow weak and slow.  Without regular games against tough opponents, they would have no way to improve and sharpen their individual and team skills.  They could not identify if their game plan was effective, which specific plays worked or which players were truly great.   Even constant practicing in the absence of regular competition would lead a great team to a failure. 

In business, we see the same thing happen.  Showing up every day and doing the same old thing day in / day out will not help us improve.  We must regularly put our company up against tough competition in order for us to learn where we are strong and where we need to improve.  The opponent we select cannot be “internal standards” either since we may likely set a goal that is too low.  (If the Saints played the staff at St. Mary’s Nursing Home, it might technically be called “competition” and the Saints would surely win, but setting themselves up for an easy win would in no way help them improve as a team.) We must look for other great companies to compete against or a set of outrageously high business standards to reach for the competition to show us where we are both strong and weak.   

Competition is vital for any team (or business) trying to get faster, leaner, more efficient, more agile and in this economy, we cannot afford to be anything less than the great in these areas.  Winning motivates people to stretch a little more each time and trophies are important reminders of this feeling.  Find ways for your people to compete and win.  Look especially for hard-to-get awards and trophies. Never underestimate the ability for ordinary people to achieve extraordinary results when challenged effectively.  What this competition will do for you is incredible!  It will show you and everyone on your staff the path to success and greatness.  You can afford to be no less!