How to Stay on Track

I believe that every leader’s overall goal is to achieve success. Often, the gap between success and failure is having the right process that works for you and your team. There are a multitude of systems and processes that work for people and I encourage you to look at all of them and settle on the one that works for you.

In this week’s "Monday Mojo", I talked about the importance and helpfulness of using a focus board to track your leadership goals and success. The focus board is quite simply a white board that is visible to you and your team that states important goals and ideas you have for advancing your organization. It can include motivational quotes, key projects and their progress, and really whatever helps to keep you and the team on track.

At LHLN, we use the focus board to track our key projects and what I refer to as ‘the parking lot’. In this blog, I want to offer some suggestions to leaders on how to make the most of your focus board.

1. Planning: First and foremost, any organization can benefit from holding at least one annual planning session with all key stakeholders in attendance. At LHLN, we do this to plan our top priorities for the upcoming year and dive into specific projects to determine the steps for success and how it will be measured. Using the whiteboard for brainstorming and developing ideas that become actions is key to providing direction for your team.
2. Tracking Success: For each priority project we identify, a team member is assigned as the lead. Because we are a small team, we write the action items needed to be completed and then assign who will complete which ones and set an estimated date for completion. Often dates will shift, but having the visual representation helps each of us know where we are and who is doing what by when.
3. Building Teams: As with any organization, we work constantly on two things: communication and teamwork. Building teams is all about communicating with each other on a regular basis. It’s about being aware of each person’s preferred communication method (text, email, phone, face-to-face) and doing your best to meet somewhere in the middle. To complete important tasks, teamwork is essential to success. There is no room for silos of information or job functions. Yes, each person is responsible for areas of work, but being able to “pitch hit” when a colleague is out sick or on vacation is also important. When you build a strong team, you can be flexible and adapt. Having your focus board allows all team members to see where the group is at and what is next.
4. The Parking Lot: Everyone on the LHLN team carries and uses a journal. In it, we keep notes from team meetings, thoughts, and functions for our respective job areas; each of us also has our own individual parking lot. As a team, we use the focus board to list our current priorities and progress and ‘park’ great ideas whose time may not have come yet. These can be ideas that are good, but will take time and resources to which currently the organization has assigned to other projects or priorities. This allows everyone to see what the “coming” events are and gives them an opportunity to reflect on them. Maybe over time they become more important than a current project… or maybe it’s decided that it is no longer needed. The fact of having it in one location along with your goals will help you stay focused and make forward progress on your overall goals.

In my new book, The Leadership Recipe, William, Mark’s mentor, uses his focus board to track where he is in teaching the recipe to Mark. In fact, William has a couple of white boards: one he’s using with Mark and another to track his own job priorities. Having the visual reminder present and in front of you daily provides the roadmap if you will that will help you get from where you are to where you want to be. As you read The Leadership Recipe, you will see graphics of the white board in just about every chapter. Its purpose is to help you track which ingredient is being discussed. It becomes a sort of message within the message. Write it down, display it clearly for all to see, and have a system to track progress on the goals.

The ultimate goal of The Leadership Recipe and all that we do at Leaders Helping Leaders Network (LHLN), is to provide the information and inspiration to help every leader bridge the gap between their experience and the job title they hold. I know what it’s like to feel that you have been promoted beyond your experience. This book, our classes, and all that we offer at LHLN are designed to grow the next generation of leaders by providing not only what to do as a leader, but suggestions on how to do it so that you can tailor it to your own personal style and that of the team you lead. That’s what creates success and that’s what creates significant leaders!

- Dean