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Saturday, October 5, 2024
Create Clear, Effective Frameworks For Your Team in 30 Minutes
Once you reach leadership and management the success in your role becomes less about what you can do and more about what you can get others to do.
Prior to your leadership role you had a unique way of doing your operational job that got great results.
You now face the what can seem like challenging task of getting others to do things the way you did without being overbearing or micro-managey.
The way you do this is though frameworks and today I’m going to show you exactly how to build yours in 30 minutes or less.
Why You Need Frameworks Now
Say you go to your barber/haridresser one day. You’re met by the lead barber with a warm smile and offered a complimentary drink whilst you wait.
Your barber shows interest in you and asks you lots of questions. He gives you a great cut and at the end reclines your seat, puts a hot towel on you and leaves you to relax for 5 minutes.
You've had a fantastic experience and book in again four weeks away.
When you revisit you've got a different barber.
No drink on arrival.
Your barber hardly talks to you because he’s too busy chatting with his colleague about what he was up to on the weekend.
You get to then end of your cut and there’s no hot towel.
You’ve got a good haircut… but you’re disappointed because the standards of your experience have changed and you probably won’t go again.
The solution to this isn’t the lead barber keeping overwatch on everyone… it’s the creation of a framework.
Good frameworks are win/win.
They give your team a clear standard to work towards, ensure your customers get a consistent experience and increase the value of your business.
Let’s look at how to easily create them.
Overarching Categories
Start by thinking about the board categories your people need to excel in to be great in their role.
Over the years we’ve noticed this is usually 3-4 categories regardless of industry.
With my first business (a gym) I scored my coaches across the main areas of:
- The Basics (appearance, timeliness, attitude)
- Briefing (communication)
- Session Flow (management)
- Coaching Skills (technical)
A cleaning company we have worked with broke their 4 main areas down into:
- Technical
- Sales
- People Skills
- Attitude & Appearance
With the barber example above it could be:
- Technical (good at cutting hair)
- Communication (how they communicate with clients)
- Organisation (being prepared and on time)
- Experience (As in providing an exceptional experience)
When mapping these out with clients the questions I ask that give the most clarity are:
- What areas does someone need to excel in to do a great job in this role?
- What areas would it be disastrous if a team member was incompetent in?
- How do we know when someone is doing a great job?
- How do we know when someones isn’t doing a good job?
- What do our clients love about us?
Action Item: What are the 3-4 overarching categories you need your people to perform in to uphold your standards and unique way of doing things?
Sub Components
Next you choose the sub components for each category. This should be no less than 3 and no more than 5 measures.
Limiting your numbers forces you to be specific about what matters.
For example, with my gym business I knew how important it was that our members (who usually weren’t confident with the gym) had a really good introduction to the session they were about to do.
They needed to know how it was going to help them and how to adapt it if they had any injuries.
So we added five key components of a good whiteboard session:
Example of subcomponents for coaches in a gym - my first business
Example of subcomponents for technicians in a cleaning company
With the barbers in the 'Experience' section we could simply have:
- Client was welcomed personally within 1 minute of entering
- Client was offered a drink within 2 minutes of entering
- Client was given a hot towel at the end of cut
See how simple but effective that is?
I can also tell you from experience that employees love having this level of clarity and guidance.
They will take this process and add their unique personality to it which means you’re preserving standards whilst allowing freedom - win/win.
Implementation
You’ve created your framework, how do you implement it?
It should become a part of your onboarding for all new staff.
Communicate it clearly to all of your existing staff and invite feedback.
Ensure that everybody is scored on the framework quarterly (this can be done in conjunction with the PDP process that we provide a training course for here).
To score people you can either shadow them at work, get managers to shadow them or use feedback systems - you’ll be able to find your own unique way of doing this.
With the gym all coaches - including me - were shadowed at least once a month - more for new joiners.
Have a feedback session after the shadowing. Ask them what they think went well and didn’t.
Be sure to highlight what went well before digging into areas for improvement.
Give them guidance on what they need to do to improve, don’t just say get better, coach them, refer them to training and resources.
Keep a copy of previous scorecards and go back to them to show improvements or highlight sticking areas.
Wrapping Up
Frameworks are your simple way to preserve the essence of your ways, at scale, without having to micro manage.
Without frameworks you're not making it easy for your people to do what you want them to - lose/lose.
Your people want to do a good job. You want your people to do a good job. Your customers want a consistent experience.
Make this happen by building your frameworks, don't sit on this, get it done.
Without your frameworks you end up controlling standards by telling your employees what you don't want.
With your frameworks you control you standards by making it clear to your people what you do want.
The latter is a much better culture, get after it.
p.s. if your first run of this takes longer than an hour you're being a perfectionist.
About Mike & Better Happy
I am a best selling author, business owner and consultant. As a previous military intelligence analyst, resident with monks and burnt out business owner, I now help business owners, leaders and managers create cultures of health, happiness and high performance without burnout.