A Leader's Guide to Consultant Cliches

Cliché 4 - “Red flag” Definition: There are many reasons why people miss commitments they have made. To minimize or eliminate the challenges that come from not delivering as planned, it is simply a matter of creating a culture where individuals will raise the jeopardy to missing their commitment before that commitment is due. Statistics: Most people would rather give an excuse to why they missed a deadline instead of telling you ahead of time that they are going to miss it. Story: This was the second time that Max had been surprised by Evan Tully in their weekly status meeting, Tuesday at 2:00 pm. As Evan tried to explain why he hadn’t met this week’s key deliverable he had promised, Max cut him off and said, “Let's move on to the next agenda item, we’ll have to make some schedule adjustments after the meeting.” There were still 20 minutes left in that week’s hourly status meeting and Max, as team and project leader, decided to end the meeting early. “Let’s wrap this up early and get back to work, I’d like to spend a few minutes with Evan to re-plan”. There were a lot of hushed comments being made as the rest of the team left the conference room and Max asked Evan Tully to stick around. He did this for three reasons. One, he knew that Evan had the next 20 minutes free on his calendar since he was already in the meeting. Two, he wanted to send a message to the rest of the team that this was important without it being condescending. Three, Max really wanted to cautiously and positively confront Evan with regards to the surprise to the team of his missing his commitment; again. After the room had cleared, Evan sat quietly sheepishly looking at Max who sat across him at the table. Evan expected a tongue lashing and was prepared with a list of excuses on why he had not delivered to the team as planned. But Max certainly did not want to make this a punishment session so he simple looked Evan directly in the eye and said, “What’s up?” A few painful seconds passed by and finally Evan started to share his top three reasons why he was late to the team with his deliverables. Max listened for a little while and then realized that these excuses were not going to solve the real problem. That’s when Max stopped Evan and said, “Evan, you are a key part of this team and no matter what excuses you provide to me now, no matter how good they are, I can’t help you meet a past deadline. My real question is why didn’t you follow our Red Flag Rule?” Max realized that he should review the simple operating agreements with the entire team briefly each week to assure that they were valid, understood, and being complied with. The Red Flag Rule simple stated…when you are in jeopardy of meeting a commitment you have made to the team, let the team know before that commitment is missed. After a moment of silence, Evan Tully realized that he had violated his agreement to support the team’s ground rules and apologized. “I’m sorry, Max, I realized a few days ago that it would be a stretch getting this deliverable done and I misjudged the timing. I should have let you and the team know then and maybe we could have still made it.” Max smiled and said, “this is the culture we have to reinforce for the entire team to be successful. We have to count on supporting each other when it is needed, but we have to know early so we can prevent this type of slippage in the future. I’m counting on you, Evan, to trust the team to support you and not have to hide any challenges you are facing. Now let’s re-plan a new date that is achievable for you to get this done.” After a short discussion and some negotiating, Max assured that the new date that Evan came up with was realistic and attainable and that Evan owned it. Before Max left he told Evan that he would be checking in occasionally to ensure that everything was on track and that he would offer a red flag to Evan if he needed it. Meanwhile, outside of the conference room there was a lot of gossip going on. Some of the team members that were in the room thought that Evan Tully was going to get fired or at least put on probation. Others that knew Max better were confident that Max was simply going to coach Evan into paying by the rules they had established and encourage him to be more of a team player. Some of themselves had been coached by Mac and they knew that punishing Evan’s behavior or threatening him with his job was not going to solve the problem. If Evan was going to survive and the team was going to be successful, they would have to work together and support the culture that Max had developed with them; collaboration. Since it was only Tuesday and Evan Tully had told Max that he would have his deliverable complete before the next status meeting, they both agreed that by noon next Monday it would be complete. Max knew not to wait until the next status meeting to assure that Evan was successful. He had already shared his intentions with Evan that he would check in with him occasionally to assure the new plan was met. It had not yet been two days when Max went to visit with Evan early Thursday morning to see how he was doing. Max called these drops ins, tours, and in the process of touring he would be following up with key people with specific points of interest to proactively support the deliverables for the team. He often called this a validation versus discovery process with the intent of reinforcing the red flag rule and preventing surprises. To be continued…