Inspect What You Expect: Getting Results Where It Counts
Leaders set the cadence that produces results for those they lead. If you notice your team does not get the results you expect out of them, perhaps you should inspect what you expect. You can improve your team’s performance when you strategically inspect the results you expect from them.
For some leaders, this does not come naturally. Consult with a coach to develop strategies that work to help you get the results you need from your team.
Inspect What You Expect: Why Is It Necessary?
Consider what happens if you leave a cake baking in an oven. Though all the preparation steps were properly executed, the critical part of cooking is monitoring the progress of what’s being cooked. If monitoring and follow-ups don’t happen, you will burn the cake.
Therefore, inspecting what you expect is necessary. It ensures your objectives execute effectively. Plans without proper execution create failed expectations. Your plans are the business goals that determine your business's profitability.
Your team is why it is important to inspect what you expect. Ideal leadership is about developing people to perform well and increase results. Goal setting is a crucial part of team development. In fact, those who follow the S.M.A.R.T. system for goal setting have embedded inspection into meeting their goals.
When you inspect what you expect, you create opportunities to provide feedback to your team – this is different from micromanaging. With micromanaging, you take your team’s ability to be autonomous in how they carry out a task. Inspect what you expect implements managing outcomes alongside the plans and processes already in place.
How Do You Inspect Your Employees Work?
When supervising employees, a few things are crucial for long-term success. You need to set clear expectations, stay consistent, and be present to ensure that employees will not only understand what is expected of them but will respect you more for your commitment and communication to the team.
1. Set Clear Expectations
The expectations you set must be clear and specific. They should also be realistic and attainable. Ensure you provide the roadmap regarding how expectations are met. It’s difficult to inspect what is not clear. The specifics give you a baseline that guides your inspection.
2. Stay Consistent
Nothing will frustrate your team more than moving targets. Expectations should always remain consistent. Therefore, you must provide expectations that are tested and proven. Accountability is a large part of consistency with expectations. Your inspections should be consistent without any deviation from what’s expected of your team.
3. Be Present
Inspecting expectations require your presence. The benefits of holding a team accountable for results weaken if you are never around to monitor how their output is going. Your presence around the job site, factory floor, or business also gives you the opportunity to provide valuable feedback. You can coach your team along the way as you identify what they should improve to meet expectations – this allows you to monitor the effectiveness of your processes.
Major Difficulties When There's a Lack of Quality in a Workplace
Quality is the name of the game when you inspect what you expect. Companies use quality control to verify if their processes work and to verify that teams are carrying out these processes correctly. Poor quality affects multiple players in your operations, and they can cause these difficulties:
Retaining customers
Promoting collaborative teams
Equipping managers to execute objectives
Most people enjoy their jobs, but low morale happens when a team’s performance quality is low. Poor morale leads to poor customer service, which affects the bottom line.
Customers who are unsatisfied become customers who cancel services and move to competitors. Therefore, you should inspect what you expect to get temperature checks on how well your team is performing and how happy your customers are with how your team is performing.
The "Six Sigma"
The concept of inspecting what you expect is what project management training encourages. Six Sigma is a specific set of tools that provide a roadmap for managing projects and tasks by checking efficiency and accuracy along the way.
DMAIC
Do this with DMAIC, which is an acronym for Define, Measure, Analyze, Improve and Control:
Define - Create, document, and communicate objectives.
Measure - Determine how goals will be measured and put measurement tools in place.
Analyze - Review the data results from measurement tools and develop a meaningful analysis of the data.
Improve and Control - Determine what of the analysis deviates from the objective – make improvements and implement new controls to ensure the outcomes align with the goals going forward.
Great Leaders Walk the Floor
Your presence means a lot to your team. Even if you have highly competent contributors, without the presence of the leader, what you expect from them eventually corrodes.
It’s about awareness. Walking the floor doesn’t make you a brooding micromanager, but it allows you to get a view of how your team is managing processes. It allows you to step in and help those who may have questions. It also reminds your team to stay on task so that they can meet expectations.
As the leader, the buck stops with you. When things go wrong with a process or an important policy has been violated, eyes will be on you as the leader about what went wrong. You are the representative of your team and should accept responsibility when something occurs.
Involve the Team
Involve the team in all stages of goal setting – this helps to make them feel more comfortable with the team and like their voices are being heard and implemented:
Review the desired goals with team members in detail. Show them why the goal is important, and then give suggested steps that help them to meet the goal. Receive their feedback and make changes where necessary.
Get an agreement from the team about the expectations – this is an opportunity to address any issues that may arise during inspection later.
Equip the team to meet expectations by providing tools, equipment, and training. Also, setting performance standards that allow the team to know how their performance towards meeting the goal shows you how well they are meeting expectations.
Inspect results. Discuss the results and include action plans that address issues preventing the member from meeting expectations – this is where consistency plays a massive role.
Be Open to Feedback
The result of your inspection opens a dialogue between you and team members about the effectiveness of meeting the expectation. Team members may use this as an opportunity for the community if an expectation is too challenging or if they don’t have the tools they need to meet the expectation.
This feedback allows you to improve processes or determine if you must invest in equipment for your team to meet expectations. Your team is on the frontline concerning your process. Their feedback is valuable. Be willing to consider that they provide valuable insight into where your process is weak. Many times, teams are not meeting expectations because of improvements in processes that are needed.
Data Utilization to Recognize and Reward Employee Performance
Key performance indicators (KPIs) help measure how well an employee performs their job. KPIs drive data you use to evaluate where an employee needs additional training, perhaps if they deserve a promotion, or it can identify where they may be overburdened compared to their other team members.
As you review KPIs, develop an incentive program that highlights top performers – this not only encourages team members who consistently meet expectations to continue doing so, but it motivates those who are not to increase their output so that they can meet expectations as well. This benefits your inspection because it also will show you if expectations are achievable or not.
KPIs can measure many areas of performance, such as:
Customer Service
Quotas
Quality
Productivity
These four examples directly impact customer acquisition and retention. It costs your business if these are not inspected regularly. In addition, if they are not being inspected, you teach your team to believe that their individual contribution to a goal is only the individual and that their inability to meet expectations carries little weight.
KPIs can be collected using electronic devices or through online surveys. In some cases, you can measure KPIs using paper methods. KPIs are the leading set of data behind the discussions you have with a team about their expectations. They set the standard, so if you have a team member who believes they are performing at expectation – KPIs reveal otherwise. KPI removes the grey areas. You and the team are equally aware of the expectation.
The Bottomline
The start to meeting a goal is to set it. You can’t begin to succeed as a business without clear, measurable goals that everyone on the team can work toward. The success of meeting a goal is to make it measurable and measure it – this is what it is to inspect what you expect. It is a strategy that ensures good process management. Get help with your strategy with the help of a brief consultation.