Allow the people to Perform – Simple mantra for Excellence

“Allow the people to perform” was one of the few things which I learnt in my early days of career. Thanks to Mr. Saibabu, my senior during early stage of my job, who mentored me in those days and provided insight on many aspects to become successful. This was one of the one-liner which has stuck with me and I find it incredibly effective. I feel if we absorb the essence of this one liner, implement the same in our day to day life, be it personal or professional, it automatically helps individuals / teams to achieve higher levels of excellence.

Allow the people to perform, looks very simple and naïve statement. It does not depict any hint as to what a vast transformative potential it has and thus gets ignored easily. So how do we use it? Let us take an example where you are leading a team of people and you need to complete a project along with this team. What we normally do is, make a comprehensive plan, distribute the work amongst the team members and members complete their work according to schedule using the framework defined for them. You as a team leader monitor the progress rigorously to ensure that everyone is doing their tasks correctly and timely. In this whole process, we tend to build rigidity in the process through creation of structure, processes, and framework. Detailed monitoring at higher frequency brings in more rigidity in the whole game. Although we have seen quite a few benefits from this, we have a significant downside i.e. the team gets bogged down with framework and their tasks that it tends to overlook the improvement aspect. The team does not apply its mind in terms of how they can improve, how they can do a specific task in better way, or how they can improve the overall level of excellence that they want to operate. The project works with level of excellence defined by one brain i.e. of Project leader and other brains are not used for this purpose. Many a times it happens that one of the team members does not do a work in correct manner and brings it to us. What do we do? We correct his mistake, tell him what is the correct way, ask him to do it the way we have told and complete it fast. The team member goes back and completes the work exactly as we have said and brings back the work. While we are going through the same, we realize that there is another simple thing if done, it can improve the work significantly so we ask our team member that why he has not done this simple thing? We get an immediate response that I have done whatever you have told me to do. Here again it is clear that the rigidity with which we run our project stifles the thinking ability of the team members and project as a whole loses. Sometimes our team members do not do the work correctly and instead of telling them to correct, we ourselves correct it. We are thinking in mind that this task needs to be completed fast and we feel that even if we tell, team will not do it correctly plus we do not have energy to train the team continuously. Once we are used to do this, we observe that there are more and more cases, where our team members are bringing in the work which is not complete and you tend to spend a lot of time completing the same. The team seems to have stopped learning and improving, they are depending on only one person to perform effectively.     

One of the prominent reason for this is we do not allow them to perform. We build such a solid structure that removes flexibility from the picture which is essential for any one to think differently and experiment and come out more effectively. Also the rigorous monitoring or micromanaging prohibits their thinking process. Through micromanaging, the team leader in a way enforces his thinking on every small activity in the project which again stops team to look for more effective ways to do a specific task and they are rather happy to do what has been told to them by their manager. So every time they have a problem, instead of thinking themselves they tend to come to manager and ask for solution. Manager happily gives the solution and team implements; in this process team stops learning and improving. More and more such team members in the team, the level of excellence the team can achieve comes down.

So how do we enable people to perform? Few simple things like

·         Build robust plan but leave some flexibility down the line for each of the team member to maneuver.

·         Encourage team members to come out with improvements, show willing ness to change and set a few examples right in the beginning.

·         Do not micromanage

·         Guide the team members to find solutions themselves rather than providing the solutions and be ready for allowing some time to the team members till they get the solution

·         Lastly, believe in your team members to find solutions to complete the project on time and have patience with them