It’s the last Wednesday of the year. Goodbye 2021, hello 2022. With that, it’s time to wrap up our series on building your 2022 roadmap. What’s left? You must involve your team.
If you have listened to and have done the activities in the previous episodes, you will remember that I have encouraged you to build a framework for your roadmap. You should know the key details, but you don’t have to have every detail defined. Why? Because it’s not required if you have a strong team to support you.
It’s time to bring your team in on the action.
1. Give them the targets.
2. Ask them to do their own assessment and share with you how they propose to deliver in the business. (Do not share your details at this point.)
a. If each person on your team does the same job but just owns a different geographical territory, groups of accounts, etc. then you can assign a metric/KPI to each person. Many leaders in this situation enjoy dividing the work as they feel like asking everyone to do the full roadmap is like having their team doing double work. Can you have each person do the full roadmap? Absolutely. You have a choice in this instance.
b. Now, if each direct report owns a specific part of the business and that part of the business is unique, no overlap with a peer, then I would encourage you to let them take the KPIs/targets that apply to their specific part of the business.
3. Be clear with the direction. Set a deadline for them to complete their roadmap with details (no longer than a week’s time). Let them know what you expect them to share with you (actions, timelines, support they need, etc.).
Remember, give them a chance to come up with something better than your ideas. If they come up with it, they will own the plan, the execution, and the results. This is exactly what you want!
If they don’t come up with something solid, then share your ideas and teach them how to do this exercise. In other words, use this process to grow your team’s planning muscles, celebrate them accordingly, execute their strong ideas, build trust, and ultimately deliver in your business.
If your team is on vacation this week because it’s between the holidays, tackle it next week. How fantastic it will be to start the new year working on a solid plan?
Here’s to the end of a great year and to the start of another amazing one!
Be Legendary!