Five Winning Ways to Execute Brilliantly
By Susan Battley
If you want winning results, get specific.
When Terry, a managing partner and client, was looking to hire a new Human Resources director, we reviewed the relative strengths of the three short-list candidates.
Like many seasoned decision makers, he focused on their relevant work experience, professional accomplishments and personal traits.
Still, he confessed that he and the search committee were stumped making the final selection. On the basis of their resumes and interviews, the candidates appeared evenly weighted.
“What makes a senior executive successful here?” I asked him.
“You know what a cast of characters we have here,” Terry replied, smiling.
He went on to answer my question thoughtfully and thoroughly. At the end, more to himself than to me, he said, “Well, I know who’s the clear choice now.”
Two years later, the person Terry hired is now the firm’s Chief Talent Officer and a member of his executive committee.
Getting very specific up front helped Terry to make the best choice. And one that has paid dividends ever since for him and his firm.
Specificity Supercharges Results: A Case Study
Specificity improves more than decision quality. It can also be a powerful tool for inspiring, motivating, and managing people. In fact, specificity can motivate people to do what they might not otherwise be inclined to do.
Consider the results of a new study in the Journal of Consumer Research that examined how people respond to differently worded appeals.
The study involved hotel guests and how they reacted to the plastic cards in their rooms urging them to forgo daily laundering of their towels. Some guests had a room card urging them to “save the environment” by putting their towels back on the rack.
Other guests had highly customized cards, such as “75 percent of the guests who stayed in this room (room 313) had reused their towels.”
The results? The towel reuse rate was 49.3 percent in the rooms where the request was highly specific. This compared to a towel reuse rate of 37.2 percent in rooms with the generic card.
The lesson here for managers? To guide and inspire your people most effectively, opt for specific, “close-to-home” messages over universal, abstract or fuzzy language.
This is especially important in today’s turbulent business and management environment. When people are anxious, specificity – and repetition of key messages – helps to keep everyone focused on what needs to be done and why.
Five Winning Ways to Execute Brilliantly
1. Keep it local. Make your points as targeted and personal as possible to your audience. For example, “Here’s what [fill in the blank] means to you and the team.”
2. Keep it clear. Provide concrete examples, or metrics, or desired outcomes. A phrase like “Do your best” is not nearly as actionable as “Your division needs to increase revenues by four percent to make your numbers.”
3. Keep it simple. Distill your message to its essence: no more than three points. And don’t undo the power of specificity with a data-dump of statistics. (Dense PowerPoint presentations are the surest way to lose minds and hearts.)
4. Keep it real. You want precisely defined targets and goals to inspire and challenge your people, not de-motivate them. So be sure what you ask or describe is actually attainable.
5. Keep the focus on “what,” not “how.” When you’re specific about the former, you’re an effective leader. When you’re overly specific about the latter, you’re a micro-manager!
As John Dewey reminded us, “We cannot seek or attain health, wealth, learning, justice or kindness in general. Action is always specific, concrete, individualized, unique.”
Copyright © Susan Battley. All rights reserved.