The Good, the Bad, and the Unspoken

I met a couple of friends the other day for a drink (at a safe distance) and one of them was complaining bitterly how poorly her staff were performing, how it had never crossed their mind to do a certain thing. As I was listening to my friend, a question kept popping in my head "but do they know you expect them to do it? did you ever talk to them about your expectations?"

When things don't go as "planned" in our organisation we often make the mistake of blaming the people. And I would urge all of us to take a step back, a deeeeeep breath and... turn the mirror towards ourselves and the system we have created for our staff. My mentor Shannon Biagi - at chief Motivating Officers - calls it "the good people versus the bad system".

Before we expect any performance from our staff or collaborators, we must make sure they have all they need to perform the task, there are no interferences and - most importantly - that we have communicated our expectations. People can't read minds.

Rummler & Brache have a fantastic illustration of system problems that might impact performance negatively: