TIME BOXING FOR BETTER TEAM MANAGEMENT
For leaders of people, managing conversations, processes, and goals related to performance becomes more predictable, less random, more fact-based, less emotional, and easier to understand when talked about as time-bound activities, goals, and assessments, and decisions.
In my practice, I’ve seen the Time Box approach deployed over phases, each more useful when thought of and managed as a time-defined process.
Time Box 1: Pausing to Make Better Decisions
A critical area of leadership is decision making. Leaders are paid to make decisions. Decisions about people, priorities, investments, strategies, etc. Leaders gather data from various sources, then use their experience, intuition, and judgment to make decisions. The better the decisions, the better the results. Then do it again in this VUCA environment where unpredictable change the norm. And again. And again. And…
Much is written and many experts have opinions about the parameters of decision making:
- Speed (too fast, too slow, just right)
- Quality (close enough, fail fast, learn from everything, mission critical, betting the farm)
- Actual making of a decision (clarity), rather than just not deciding (ambiguity).
My experience has shown me repeatedly and unequivocally that the most impactful decisions that drive results are about people. Your team. And your other stakeholders like clients, suppliers, partners, etc. Mostly your team.
A powerful tool in decision making is the time box. You have many decisions to make every day. Studies estimate that most humans make 1,000 or more small decisions per day. Researchers at Cornell University find that we make an average of 226.7 decisions each day just concerning food! They report that the average adult makes about 35,000 remotely conscious decisions each day — and as your level of responsibility increases, so does the multitude of choices you make.
Leaders make more, usually including decisions that impact multiple stakeholders (team members, customers, suppliers, etc.). The time box allows us to pause a decision while waiting for more data.
When the decision involves team member performance, you want to give a reasonable amount of time to get actionable data. This data will inform your decision based on the amount of progres the team member has made during the time box period.
What amount of time is reasonable to you? How about the team member? What about the other stakeholders (peers, customers, etc)? As the leader, your definition goes last in the equation because you have a smaller amount of patience to wait than the team member.
If the team member is hearing the expectations clearly for the first time (be honest with yourself about this point), then the time box should be large — months or quarters to get up to speed. A recent Gallup report shows that new employees take about 12 months to become fully productive in their new role. And there is wide variation depending on the background of the individual or complexity of the job – suggesting a job performance curve that falls anywhere between 6 and 24 months.
Let’s say the team member would like 6 months to work on the performance issue, now that they have clear expectations and resources to help them. One of their peers is as frustrated or more than you. They want the person gone yesterday. After a clear conversation or rumble with the peer, they may agree that a month is reasonable.
Now you have to look at the gap of one to six months and determine the length of the time box. You have had some time to consider, so you agree that one month plus three is the right size. You will communicate that the first month should show some real progress and, once that gate is cleared, the team member will have another three months to sustain and continue to improve. This gives the peer a sense that you are taking this seriously and the team member a reasonable amount of time to do the work.
This is a general and fictional scenario. The peer is an example stakeholder, you could replace that with a key customer. Even though this is a fiction, three months is often a reasonable time box starting point. A full quarter gives you enough data to make an informed decision.
Some organizations formalize these into performance improvement plans (PIP). Even with that mechanism in place, they are rarely used well. They are either saved until the decision is already made – a formality – or avoided altogether because of the stigma of being on a PIP. Whatever tool you use, the time box is a pause before you’ve made a decision.
Time Box 2: Setting Performance Parameters
Now that you have determined a reasonable amount of time for this performance scenario, you must also have parameters to gauge progress. Progress is too often emotion based and might involve statements like ‘I feel better about that meeting’ or ‘that presentation went really well – it felt good.’ While having an intuitive sense for this can be helpful as an indicator, the performer or team member isn’t a good judge. Especially if they are working in a time box.
Part of the reset conversation you had with the team member was to set clear expectations and provide resources (training, documentation, other team members to support, etc) for them to improve their performance. That reset includes what you expect or what success looks like. Being clear about this is critical to the reset and to the time box. The clarity of expectations provides the context for progress.
A simple example would be on a sales team. The expectation is for the team member to have ten first contact meetings per week (in person or video calls) with new qualified prospects. The team member in question is averaging two per week. In this fiction, they weren’t told that ten was the goal and weren’t given the qualified leads or direction of how to generate them. After the reset, they know that ten per week is the goal. After the first month of the time box, it’s straightforward to see progress from the previous average of two. Hitting ten for one week is not success, merely an indicator that success is possible.
A more challenging and more common example is related to behavior. Core values are the behavioral standard in an organization. Culture is more than values, but without the fundamental standards being set, the foundation for culture is weak.
If the Core Value or standard is to Respect Each Other and the performance issue is related to this, how to know if progress is being made during the time box?
Notice that the example is a behavior – so it is focused on a soft skill. Leaders and manager should approach time boxing differently for hard vs soft skills – allowing ample time for hard skills development in those who are a strong culture fit, but perhaps shorter windows for those whose behaviors are not a fit, no matter how strong their hard skills.
Time Box 3: Framing Individual Performance Parameters with the Organization’s Core Values
Behavioral performance can be observed in words and actions. Our example standard of performance is Respect Each Other. You have a reset conversation with the team member where they have learned, possibly for the first time, that they are not meeting the standard. You tell them that it’s time to improve and that there will be another conversation in a month. How do we make this clear enough to see if progress is made or not?
A step that your team has likely made during your quarterly growth planning is to define the core values and other cultural expectations. You need this for hiring, onboarding, training, recognition, etc. If you haven’t done that or haven’t validated that work in awhile, that is required for this to work. There must be a foundation layer of documented expectation for everyone in the organization. Leaders can have more principles / expectations, those are in addition to the foundation layer.
Respect Each Other could include these definition statements:
1. Don’t hurt anyone. (Delta Air Lines): https://bit.ly/3yIFWMy
2. Everyone belongs (Ingredion) https://bit.ly/3yOt7QY
Let’s say one of the key performance issues is that the team member has a well-established pattern of verbally shutting down peers by interrupting and talking over them. Now you or others may do that on occasion as a result of passion or in response to an idea. Doing that on occasion is much different than a pattern.
Over time, shutting people down is hurtful. It sends the message that the team member in question believes their thoughts are more important.
Your part in the issue is that you haven’t said anything, clearly, before. You’ve noticed the pattern. You may have even commented to others about the pattern. Unfortunately, you have avoided the clear conversation with the team member.
Now the team trust has eroded, work is getting done collaborating – in other words it’s jutting the business!
What does progress look like in this example? Never doing it again would be nice. Changing from an entrenched behavior to a new behavior takes work. It requires acceptance of the issue, a commitment to change, then support to make the change over time. Progress is in the acceptance and asking permission from the team members’ peers.
Think of it as Change Management applied specifically to people.
You can suggest the following during your reset.
Once the team member understands the issue and acknowledges it to you, the actions to make progress look like this:
- At the next team meeting, apologize. This must be real, not forced. I should be short and specific. The apology must avoid phrases like “I’m sorry you felt that way” or “I’m sorry for you”
- After the authentic apology for violating the core value / standard of Respect Each Other, the tem member asks for permission. Permission for you and the rest of the team to call out the behavior in the moment. Immediately when it happens. This is to help the person make progress.
- Now the work is to be intentional and keep the behavior front of mind. The team member must track the number of occurrences. With a goal of zero being the end state, consider a range of zero to 2 occurrences per week.
A zero tolerance policy isn’t reasonable for a behavior change. If the team member adds value and commits to the work on change, then this time box solution can help you succeed. This also shows very clearly to the rest of the team that the behavioral standards are real.
Leadership and decision making, practiced in a time boxed construct, can be very effective in reaching goals related to performance, in raising the level of performance across your organization, and in making a tangible difference in your organization’s health, profitability, and value.
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