How does your team define a successful week? How do you define a successful week?
It can be difficult to determine whether you – or your team – won the week, but getting some clear wins can dramatically improve overall job satisfaction and performance.
As leaders, we are very busy, but so is our team. We must avoid falling into a reactionary delegation system that hijacks our team’s time and energy. How do you know if you are stuck in a reactionary delegation system?
- Do you check in with your team at unpredictable times of the day?
- Do you pepper your team with tasks and questions – in person, via email, or via post-it note reminders – throughout the day?
- Do you regularly need answers from your team on short notice?
If you answered yes to any of these questions, your team may be struggling to finish their task list every day. As the week progresses, your task list may get done, but their list just gets longer. How will they – or you – know if they had a successful week?
If you can relate to this dilemma, I want to introduce you to a new way of measuring success – a Winning the Week Scorecard.
In our experience, team engagement increases as team members are empowered to work autonomously without relying on their boss for daily decisions. One of the tools I created for my team is called a Winning the Week Scorecard. If they accomplish what is on the scorecard, they win the week. This makes an otherwise subjective assessment of their week’s accomplishments more objective. We celebrate what they did and address what they did not do in our weekly one-on-one meetings. They have more clarity about what must get done that week, and I can trust that they have prioritized the week appropriately. It also allows me to tie their accomplishments into their compensation structure.
Are you ready to set your team up for winning the week?
- Meet with your team members individually. Bring a list of all the tasks you’d like them to complete every week.
- Ask your team member how they define a successful week. If their definition of a successful week is different than yours, talk about it. Help them adjust their priorities to align with your expectations.
- Come to an agreement on their weekly activities. Determine if there’s enough time during the week to complete those activities and leave enough margin to address unforeseen tasks.
- Add their weekly activities to their Winning the Week Scorecard.
- Review their results every week in a one-on-one meeting. Talk about what went well and what challenges they had.
- Design a compensation plan based on the scorecard. Incentivizing your team helps them take more ownership and drive tasks forward.
How do you create your own scorecard? Follow these steps:
- Make a list of crucial activities for the week. This would include daily tasks, recurring weekly tasks, and recurring monthly tasks.
- Add a section for reflection. What were your biggest wins for the week?
- Create a worksheet that can be printed and used each week. I use an editable PDF with boxes to check. You can also use an Excel spreadsheet with daily, weekly, and monthly columns.
Give your team a chance to take more ownership over their roles by setting clear expectations, involving them in the process, and setting them up for success.