Clear Expectations

My cell phone rang at 4:30 a.m. It was my boss, back in the Washington D.C area. “Are you not coming in today?” he asked.

“No, I’m in Phoenix,” I answered sleepily.

“Why are you in Phoenix?”

“You told me to help them straighten out their production issues. I’ve been in the plant all night, and just got back to the hotel half an hour ago,” I said.

“Not a bad idea. Will you be in tomorrow?” he asked.

“Yep, taking the red-eye back tonight, so I should be in the office normal time,” I said.

He closed with, “See you then. Get some sleep,” which I certainly did.

Clear expectations are the heart of the manager-employee relationship. It’s a two-way street: people complete tasks and take on responsibilities, and in exchange their employer compensates them. The compensation part is generally pretty clear, but the expectations of exactly what is expected from the employee in return can be more fuzzy. 

Employees have a basic right to know that they are doing what is expected of them, and to be able to go home each day feeling satisfied that they were successful.

Start At The Beginning:

“What are you looking for?” was my first question. I had been approached by a recruiter about a company looking for a senior operations leader. In addition to the face value of the question, I also wanted to see how they answered the question. If the answer was vague or made up on the spot, it would be a short conversation.

Clear expectations start before the manager-employee relationship even begins. Every job opening is an opportunity to clearly define the expectations of the position, whether it’s replacing a prior employee or a newly-created role. Time spent articulating expectations will improve the odds of future success of the employee, and it can also speed up the recruiting process by quickly screening out unsuitable applicants.

Goal Setting:

I had the opportunity to direct a large manufacturing facility expansion, with a 30 month timeline and an $85 million budget. The budget and timeline were the overall goals, but the success of the project hinged on hundreds of smaller goals. I printed out the Gantt chart for my office wall just to illustrate the scope of the project, and it stretched seven feet high, with nearly a thousand individual steps.

It’s obvious that with a project of this magnitude that each step – each goal – had precedence that needed be completed first. In other words, the resources had to be in place for the goal to be met.

This concept should be applied to all goals, whether that’s production plans, sales quotas, or professional development plans. With the goal in mind, managers have a responsibility to make certain that the resources needed to reach that goal are provided. Otherwise we might as well be throwing darts at a “goal setting dart board”.  As a manager of mine once said, ‘hope is not a plan.”

For goal setting to be considered clear expectations, it should be collaborative. The manager and the employee can look at business requirements, resources and capabilities to come up with a goal. This doesn’t mean the goals will always be easy to reach, but the manager and the employee should come away from the process with the confidence that the goal can be achieved.

Other Duties As Assigned:

While working for a corporate division president, it was a real privilege to occasionally be included on trips on the corporate jet.

On one trip, I was sitting toward the front of the cabin reading the newspaper when a piece of cauliflower hit the page, nearly knocking it out of my hands. I looked around and saw my boss with his glass held up. “I’m going to need another cocktail,” he said. “Remember, ‘other duties as assigned’ includes flight attendant duties.” As I headed back to get his empty glass, I took requests from the other three passengers. I knew it was a pretty cool opportunity for a twenty-something guy, and I was happy to play flight attendant.

Clear expectations are not inflexible. Being clear isn’t limiting, in fact it’s quite the opposite. If the initial instructions are clear, then it’s easy to see what isn’t included. My boss didn’t assume I would refill his cocktail. He knew that it was outside of what was expected of me on a daily basis, so he clarified the updated expectation. With cauliflower.

Feedback:

Most companies that I’ve worked for have had some kind of review process. Some processes are better than others, but one thing they all have in common is that nothing on the review should come as a surprise to the employee.

I experienced a surprise once while sitting with a VP and going over my own annual appraisal. The comment, “Tony can be overbearing and intimidating to his subordinates” came out of the blue. I was particularly surprised because I had gone to great lengths to create a collaborative team. I quickly guessed that the comment had come from my art director who chafed at my insistence on expense control in her department. When I asked the VP if she could give me an example of a time when I had been overbearing or intimidating, she had a blank look and said, “no”. Not helpful.

Feedback needs to be more than just annual, and wherever possible it needs to be objective. Dashboards are a helpful tool that can automate the process to the point that employees are getting near real-time feedback.

Positive feedback that is specific an genuine is a great motivator and a sense of pride. It’s important for all of us to have our hard work recognized. Negative feedback can, if handled correctly, have the same effect. Instead of saying, “Bob, you’re not hitting your goals. You’d better turn it around or I’m going to have to make a change,” try saying, “Bob, you’re not hitting your goals. I’m concerned about you. Let’s look at what’s keeping you from being successful, and how I can help.”

Equity of Expectations:

One day I had a top performing employee pull me aside as I walked through the production floor. When the conversation starts with, “I really don’t want to complain. . .”, I’m immediately 100% focused because something interesting will follow.

“I don’t mind getting all of these jobs done,” he said, “but it’s a little irritating that while I’m doing it that fat f*uck over there does half the work and gets away with it just because he’s been here 20 years.”

While the root cause in this case was the company owner’s impractically high sense of loyalty, the incident highlighted that uneven expectations are not invisible. A manager needs to make sure to not keep lowering expectations to the point where underperformers can finally meet them. It can cause significant damage to the team, and can hurt a manager’s credibility.

Get It In Writing:

When a machine operator position opened up in one of our production departments, we looked internally and promoted an internal candidate. This guy – after a brief jail stint – had obviously been working hard to turn his life around, and this move would put him on a good trajectory.  

At that point the company’s “Old Joe” training method was still in place, so he was assigned to the best operator to show him the ropes of his new role.

Six months later, I followed up with his manager about why he wasn’t fully capable of running the equipment on his own. I discovered that he had not been given a written training plan, and that no milestones had been established. I felt terrible that this had happened on my watch, so I helped the manager – who was new to his position as well – develop training plans with specific milestones to be reached.

Expectations that aren’t written down are by definition unclear. Written expectations are still capable of being misinterpreted, but that’s an opportunity to reword them for additional clarity.

Clear expectations improve performance, reduce stress, and can minimize turnover. And maybe just prevent a 4:30 a.m. phone call.