Defining the Playing Field for Your Organizational Team
Have you ever seen a group of kids playing football on a playground?
It’s an interesting phenomenon in that they instinctively know how to choose teams, talk about the rules of the game and automatically define boundaries. In other words they realize that, in order to play the game, you have to know where the goal lines are, out of bounds markers, how to achieve milestones (first downs) and what it takes to win the game. All of these definitions come easily.
Yet, ironically, many times employees in companies or organizations of any kind do not understand what the playing field looks like for their own job. Remarkably, most employees don’t even have a definition of what high performance looks like. All of these things need to be “explicitly” defined so people understand how to play the game and win. Yet, many organizations assume they communicate these important parameters “implicitly” which is confusing for everyone, at every level. So what are the answers?