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The 3 SUPER Best Practices

Effective and efficient leaders often focus on the fewest actions that deliver the greatest impact.

At a recent professional meeting, a leader asked how she could affect her organization’s dysfunctional culture when she was “only a middle manager.”

“Let me ask you this,” I replied, “is the quality of your home life most affected by the state where you live or your neighborhood in that state?”

“My neighborhood, of course, it’s my immediate surroundings. The state affects me, but not nearly as much as my neighbor’s barking dog.”

“Exactly! It’s the same at work. If you lead a team at work, no matter what your title is or how big your team is, you have a direct impact on their “neighborhood.” Their experience at work is heavily influenced by the local environment you (and they) create.”

Then she hit me with, “Okay, so what are the fewest actions I could take that would have the biggestman stretching to step on another box, best practices impact on our environment?”

I answered her by summarizing the decade-long research conducted by Professor Nicholas Bloom from Stanford University, his colleagues, and a team of 100 researchers. (1) Their analysis of 10,000 organizations in 20 countries revealed three SUPER best practices that should be implemented at all levels in every organization. I’ve tweaked the verbiage a bit, but these three are:

  1. Set long-term visionary goals and short-term achievable objectives.
  2. Reward high performers and manage underperformers.
  3. Monitor today’s data and identify tomorrow’s opportunities.

Notice that all three are paradoxes – meaning the two issues within each practice tend to pull in opposite directions at the same time. To lead your team well you need to manage both sides of the paradox simultaneously. If you focus on one issue while neglecting the other, research tells us that productivity and profits plummet. For example, how often do you see leaders over-emphasize meeting their quarterly numbers without fully considering the long-term consequences?

How well do you manage these three SUPER, paradoxical best practices?

Listed below are four tools (of 22) from chapter 18 in my recently published book, The Executive’s Paradox – How to Stretch When You’re Pulled by Opposing Demands. Adapt the tools to help you apply the paradoxical best practices in your neighborhood.

  1. Dedicate specific and equal time in your meetings to both issues of the paradox.
  2. If you find yourself making decisions that favor one issue of a paradox, invite those who favor the opposite side to share their perspectives.
  3. Conduct small experiments to test ideas that may help manage the tension between competing demands.
  4. Encourage your team to embrace “both/and thinking” when dealing with a paradox, uncertainty, or ambiguity.

The most effective and efficient leaders frequently look for the fewest actions that deliver the greatest impact with their team. How surprised will you be when you and your team achieve extraordinary results by using these four tools to help you implement these SUPER best practices?

Keep stretching when you’re pulled by opposing demands,
Dave

 

  1. Nicholas Bloom, Christos Genakos, Raffaella Sadun, and John Van Reenen, Management Practices Across Firms and Countries, Academy of Management Perspectives, February (2012), 12 -33.

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