by Peter A. Arthur-Smith, Leadership Solutions, Inc.®

“We were out in Utah in our ivory tower…it just took getting out in the field to fix the rift,” Shaw said. “It was meeting people and understanding why they were feeling left out.” Skiing article in NY Times Sports Section entitled ‘East or West; the Hometown Favorite Draws the Cheers in a World Cup Race.’ – November, 2016

   Tiger Shaw is Chief Executive of the US Ski and Snowboard Association. He was attending the first Eastern-based World Cup Slalom Championship in 25 years. By holding it in Killington, VT, they were able to fill the spectator stands with thousands of local ski followers; “And the East is a hotbed.”

An article like this particularly came to this writer’s mind, when a client unwittingly overlooked his people when reviewing strategic priorities. We shouldn’t especially blame him, since so many traditional business plans only focus on business initiatives and making money. He had comprehensively covered all the requisite strategic and tactical initiatives

he and his team should be pursuing over the next 6-12 months. However, he completely omitted his own team members and their own expected human outcomes. Again, this omission is far from uncommon.

His sense of guilt at the oversight was palpable once the omission was pointed out. He immediately set about putting it right in terms of team and individual development, team participation, getting their fair share of the credit, and ways to draw them fully into the picture. He also intended to focus more on other human outcomes; like sense of pride, greater resource availability, sense of accomplishment, and greater teamwork; in addition to his team’s key financial, commercial and organizational objectives.

Human outcomes are factors that we regularly, unwittingly overlook in our drive for revenues and profits. We overlook such human outcomes at our dire expense. Again, it’s your people that make things happen and fill your organizational dreams. You take care of them and they will take care of you. Our obsession with numerical and profit objectives often makes us overlook this reality. Because we don’t adequately link the two – human outcomes and results – we likely miss numerous performance opportunities and outcomes due to our oversight.

Just think: if we took our key objectives and linked them to human outcomes as follows:

Business Objective                                                                     Human Outcomes

» Achieve 15% overall company profitability (EBITDA)         ☺ Even more investment in our people

   » Target senior level buyers for 10% sales growth                 ☺ Our pride at bringing in quality business

» Opportunistic growth in XYZ market                                    ☺ Satisfaction at making headway with XYZ

Such business objectives should be accompanied by organizational objectives, such as:

» Fully functioning operations center                                        ☺ Happier clients and prospects

» Coordinate efforts across 5 different offices                          ☺ Joy from greater teamwork

» Increase automation throughout our organization,             ☺ Alleviate staff from routine work,

without producing more paperwork systems                                without replacing it with “busy work”

Calling on approaches like this goes a long way toward reminding ourselves about the need to satisfy our customers and our people; and other key constituents. Because, without having both constituencies fully behind us, we can never maximize our revenues, profits or other worthy objectives. In fact, there are numerous books, articles and online blogs that remind us of the importance of all our stakeholders – customers, suppliers, our people, our leaders, owners, shareholders, and local community and government interests. Perhaps we grow jaded from hearing about these so much and look upon them as a given? Again, we avoid doing this at our dire expense.

Suppose you were one of that above mentioned client’s team members, who forgot his human outcomes? Suppose he had inadvertently overlooked including you and your colleagues into his game-plan. You would probably nod your head at his lists of quarterly initiatives and think: “Ho-hum! But there’s an important ingredient missing and I’m not sure what that is?”

Now let’s ask him to restate his proposals, with his intentions of people development, teamwork activities, team member inclusion, and likely benefits from team success. Your attention level will multiply dramatically and more

interest-questions would emerge. If he’s lucky, the heart-pulse rate among all of you would increase significantly. More importantly, this writer would put his money on your team doing considerably better than the team presented with no mention of their involvement.

Regrettably, managers, with their inherent focus on ownership needs, persistently overlook their people in favor of more rational and numerical objectives. On the other hand, leaders are way more interested in all interconnections between their people and overall team performance. They are obsessed with know ing that optimum performance cannot be realized without the full commitment of their team members: and that full-commitment cannot be obtained through CIGFAM factors (competition, incentives, goals, fear, accountability and measurement), but rather through PEACAM factors (purpose, equity, achievement, camaraderie, autonomy/empowerment and mastery).

As CEO Shaw of the US Ski and Snowboarding Association pointed out after the east coast event: “And now it feels like we have everybody going in the same direction on the rope and not just against each other on the rope.”

What have you done of late to fully include your people in your organization’s intentions? Do you give them enough credit for their contributions relative to their own capabilities? The great leaders like Reagan, Kennedy, Churchill or Mandela (of South Africa) always gave more credit to their people than themselves. They would never overlook their people’s contributions. That’s why they were great leaders.        

To learn more about becoming an enlightened leader, talk with: