Your people aren’t working fast enough? Here’s what you’re doing wrong
As competition heats up and the race is on to “win”, I’m finding my clients are trying to demand more from their teams. They believe that their people should deliver more, faster — go the extra mile and give 110%.
The problem they face is that their business doesn’t seem to respond to their request to work harder and faster. This baffles them: why aren’t people able to ship fast? DON’T THEY SEE THE URGENCY?
Your business needs to able to deliver on time, and to a high standard. If Apple misses a promised hardware release, their stock price is at risk of plummeting. Apple knows that breaking promises will annoy their customers, and that frustration can quickly shift consumer loyalty. Not shipping quickly and to deadline has an impact on overall results. This is true in any sector, and at any size of business.
But here’s a truth:
People won’t work faster just because you’ve told them to.
Why? Because people aren’t machines that you simply turn to MAX and get more out of them. In fact demanding more often gets you the opposite result. A business frozen in fear won’t deliver at twice the speed, if at all.
Some leaders believe that creating a burning platform drives business results. And perhaps it can — once or twice. But that kind of approach erodes trust when people quickly realise that the building isn’t on fire. Chicken Little’s claim that the sky was falling didn’t end so well. And in the lived experience of your people at work, there is no real urgency when it comes to shipping.
So how do we get people to work faster?
In 2006 I got a call from Parlophone records. I was in the flow of my recording career — my debut album had just been released, and I was touring Europe performing and DJing. The woman on the end of the line got straight to the point:
“Neil and Chris would be really delighted if you would remix the new Pet Shop Boys single. Are you interested?”
It was probably the most ridiculous question I’d ever been asked. This was a group I had loved since I was a kid. I grew up thinking their album Behaviour was (and will always be) one of the greatest LPs ever made. My own pop aesthetic was deeply influenced by them. And now they wanted me to produce something for them?
Not wanting to seem too keen — I said I’d call back and let her know. And waited 2 hours before I responded. Of course I’d make the time to work on the track.
There was just one catch. The new single — “I’m With Stupid”— was being rushed, and the release date pulled forward. The remix needed to be delivered, in polished form, in one week. No extensions. For final approval by the band.
It couldn’t have been a worse week. I already had late nights ahead with several DJ dates, artwork for my own new single to complete, and a music video shoot scheduled. But that wasn’t Parlophone’s problem. I needed to be able to work fast, and deliver something that was worthy of their level of quality.
I delivered the track a day early. For over a year it was in their top downloaded songs. And the duo chose the mix to be included on their Fundamentalism album.
So what made me work that fast, to that level of quality, and still accomplish everything else I had committed to?
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It takes focus to be able to ship something quickly and to a high standard. That focus doesn’t come from an external expectation. For creatives to ship quickly they need to be able to access something inside themselves. Qualities that are even more critical when we need to deliver as a team.
In leading creative people, and understanding what it has taken for myself to deliver quality work, I know there are conditions that are essential to shipping fast. Our role as leaders are to establish and encourage these conditions in the culture:
Practice to build confidence
When Parlophone called I had just completed a year of nearly daily production, with an album and a dozen other remixes under my belt. I was ready mentally, as well as having a production process that was established and would allow me to deliver on time. I was confident to say yes to the deadline because I knew it was possible to do what was being asked in the timeframe.
Teams will avoid the accountability of a deadline if they feel it is artificial. They will make excuses not to sign up to a timescale where they think they might fail. The more they have honed their process around a task the more likely they are to succeed in a short runway.
How might you build your team’s practice of quality delivery over time so that they are ready to go when needed?
Break things down
Setting smaller goals within a deadline helps teams to get part of the task done and master how they deliver the whole.
Olympic champion swimmer Adam Peaty attributes his success to the micro level to which he trains, and how he understands the steps to great delivery. In fact, trying to swim “faster” has a detrimental impact on Peaty’s performance.
“Unfortunately I made a tiny little mistake on that first length, trying to force the speed a bit too much.”
— Adam Peaty, after narrowly missing his own world record
Peaty’s ability to see his performance as a series of small actions to deliver allows him to assess and course correct. Just racing to win does not earn him the gold. In a sport where speed is needed, the learning is that technique breaks records — speed is merely the outcome.
How do you help your teams break down their own technique and processes so that they can create and refine a seamless performance?
Set clear expectations
Brené Brown’s new book Dare to Lead introduces the idea of the “stealth expectation” — which put a name to a leadership behaviour I see in every business I coach. This is where we hold an unspoken need of others which we somehow expect them to deliver on. When it comes to speed and quality, leaders are guilty of this practice. They want their people to exceed expectations and wow them with miracles, often as a way of having individuals prove themselves and their value. It’s a dysfunction of the culture and does not result in great work.
Brené offers us a remedy in a ritual she calls “paint done”. This is essentially a briefing method where leaders and their teams engage in a conversation on what success looks like for any given task or project. It allows a structured opportunity to point to potential barriers to delivery by getting to the specifics of a task.
For example — in “paint done”, if I asked a team member to complete a project by Friday, but this was going to be impossible with the current resource due to another project creating a conflict that I was unaware of, the team member would have a chance to voice this — and together we would be responsible for revising the brief. I would not be able to hold a stealth expectation for Friday delivery since “done” to the expected standard was at risk.
How are you setting expectations? Are they clear? What expectations are you holding that you haven’t voiced?
Power decision making
Everything slows down when people don’t feel they have the ability or permission to make decisions. Managers create bottlenecks when they need delivery to be approved by them.
If you are the one “signing off” everything in your business because you think your position offers you divine authority, there’s a problem. When you’ve built trust in your team to move forward with decisions that are in the best interest of your customer, then you’ve created a culture that can move forward purposefully.
I love Patty McCord’s framing of “empowerment” — pointing out that once someone enters employment, the systems created in the workplace actively work to take power away from people. If we want speed, we have to trust that people we work with can make decisions.
Do you trust your people to make the calls you have employed them to do every day? And if not — why did you hire them. Or more importantly — what development do you need in order to help you let go?
Create a fast feedback loop
In my experience of leading creative teams, delivery is not slow because people don’t know what to do. Performance drags once second guessing creeps in and our inner imposter’s voice is too loud in our ears. Deadlines are missed when we can’t dive in and take risks because we’re frozen in our own doubt. Time gets used up with procrastination when people don’t believe they can do it — or that what they do deliver won’t be good enough.
When this happens we become too afraid to ask for support. And if we aren’t getting feedback on our progress, delivery won’t move forward. This is where leaders play a critical coaching role, and if teams have not set up feedback loops, they risk not meeting expectations.
The problem in most cultures is that people are not equipped to deliver or receive powerful feedback. Managers think feedback is a right they alone possess based on their status — which stops team members from asking for feedback if they feel it’s going to always be negative. And as we have so many triggers around feedback, training on how to give and receive feedback is essential. It’s a skill that needs to be developed, used consistently and often, and is critical to a high performing culture.
How do you give feedback? And how would your people honestly rate your ability to give them feedback that helps them grow?
Manage your patience
Great leaders are always several steps ahead of the rest of the business. That’s part of their job — to forge forward up the mountain we are climbing together and be able to take the rest of the business with them towards the top.
So let’s be honest — when people don’t get there fast enough, it’s annoying. Waiting for someone to catch up slows… everything…….. down.
But we can’t run back and carry people up the mountain. When we do that, we lose sight of our vision, and everyone gets demotivated. So our patience becomes critical.
One of my clients recently complained about how slow their team was and how impatient they were at the pace of the business. We talked about how they were feeling to be at the top of the mountain, looking down at their people who were still putting on their boots to prepare for the climb. Shouting “hurry up” wasn’t going to get them up that rough terrain, which many had never climbed before, any easier.
If you want everyone to join you on the journey you’ve got to be prepared to show them the best path. Just remember — carrying a few hundred people up the mountain isn’t an option.
How do you check in with your patience — and what do you do when you feel impatience has taken over your leadership?
Say thank you
Having Neil Tennant thank me and say that my work was excellent felt great. Seeing my mix on their album was one of the proudest moments of my career. To me, both actions were the Pet Shop Boys’ way of acknowledging my value.
For some reason leaders struggle to say two little words that mean so much. And yet we know from research that gratitude inspires people to perform more than financial rewards.
Thanking your people for their contribution to the success of the business shows you’ve seen their value and gives them the critical feedback required to continue to master their skills.
How do you express your gratitude? What stops you from saying “thank you”?
It’s a lot to do, isn’t it. Welcome to your full time job as a leader. Demanding faster performance doesn’t work. Building a culture that puts people in flow and working better together will.
I’m With Stupid (Melnyk Heavy Petting Remix) by Pet Shop Boys is available on Spotify
