Workplace in Flux? Rethink how you Drive Business Results

The workforce right now is full of intriguing stories and eyebrow-raising statistics. 

Some data shows remote workers are actually more productive, while other information highlights how employees feel isolated. An article by The Wall Street Journal reports that companies are noticing higher turnover among remote employees they hired during the pandemic. 

Now, there could be several explanations for this. A lot of employees who resign could have accepted anything to get them through the pandemic, and now that the job market is heating up, they’re jumping ship. Maybe the majority of companies weren’t prepared for a surge in remote hiring and were unable to integrate new employees into their teams. Or, it's possible that never meeting anyone in person made remote employees feel less of a connection to their companies.

While it’s hard to make sweeping generalizations about what certain trends really mean, it’s important to recognize that the height of the pandemic was a unique time. Companies and individuals alike were focused on their financial survival.

But everyone is trying to find their footing again. Many companies have new remote employees, some have switched to a hybrid environment, and others are keeping an eye on local and federal mandates for the right time to bring everyone back into a physical office. 

Whatever work looks like at your company, now is the perfect time to reset your execution strategy to ensure everyone is connected and aligned.

Execution alignment is crucial to teams, no matter your company's work situation.

I think we can all agree that people aren’t automatically aligned and focused on execution just because they’re in an office or hold weekly company-wide virtual meetings. The success or failure of a team is based on both the employees and the managers.

So whether your team is remote or sitting in the same building as you, you need to have a way to ensure that alignment around initiatives is happening. 

How do you know if productivity is slipping now that production is ramping up? How do you know whether your team is aligned and prepared to execute? How do you move forward confidently in this new work environment?

Answering those questions requires a standard set of metrics. No matter where your employees clock in or log on, you have to measure their performance and engagement in the same way.

One way to think about this is through formal and informal metrics. Informal metrics can introduce bias into performance evaluation, such as the number of days employees are in the office or how many hours they work. Formal metrics are often a set of lead and lag indicators for a certain initiative or group and can reduce bias by holding everyone to the same standard. 

For instance, let's say your mid-level sales reps have a goal to land five new sales every quarter. You've found that, on average, it takes this group about 20 calls to close one sale. So every rep should be holding at least 100 calls per quarter. If the metric works for your team, it's clear whether or not people are hitting their goals.

You want to avoid any sort of apples to oranges comparisons because using multiple standards degrades your ability to compare performance accurately.

Think about what you want to accomplish, and decide if you need to reset traditional ways of thinking.

We’re all familiar with the annual sales or product conferences that used to happen in Vegas or other major cities pre-pandemic. They were usually billed as a way to walk people through new products and processes, and set the strategy for the year. 

When those conferences were cancelled, everyone figured out how to accomplish the same things digitally. For many companies, those conferences aren’t coming back. They realized that a large gathering once a year isn’t a particularly efficient or effective way to ensure everyone is aligned with new strategic initiatives. 

Does that mean everyone should cancel their conferences? Not necessarily. It all comes down to deciding the real purpose of a company's effort. In other words, what’s the job to be done? Is it actually to disseminate the new company-wide initiatives and processes? Or is it to build goodwill and give people an opportunity to socialize and have some fun?

If it’s the latter, then maybe that conference continues. But if it's touted as a true learning event that’s going to drive execution throughout the year, that’s the mistake.

Instead of stepping back into old ways for the wrong reasons, this is the perfect time to reevaluate what successful execution looks like and how to get there. Ask your team:

• How can we bring end of year results metrics into weekly or monthly discussions?

It's essential to include people from various levels of the company in conversations about execution goals and metrics. There is likely a group leader who can outline a set of metrics for a manager to achieve, who can then break those down to a team and individual level. Recurring discussions allow senior leadership, managers, and individual contributors to stay on the same page and course correct if a goal gets off track.

• How can we create an execution-focused mindset with short-term metrics? 

The aim is to get people focused on the metrics they can hit each week or month. Once people consistently achieve these, they're ready for new lead indicators. You can't include every goal right from the start, so decide which metrics are most important for the team or company goals. 

• How do we make sure we’re talking about those goals in a way that’s both continuous and realistic?

Tunnel vision can be beneficial in the short-term but disastrous in the long-term. It's important to bring people into conversations about their goals at multiple points throughout the year to ensure everyone is aligned on execution expectations.

The answers to those questions will define the way every company moves forward post-pandemic. Even if you have the technology to reach every employee, wherever they are, you need to ensure your team is aligned and able to execute.

Akhil Kohli is the CEO and founder of MindStrength, the preeminent initiative execution platform for Fortune 500 and mid-size companies. MindStrength's Initiative Platform enables companies to execute against strategic initiatives at scale and with accountability at all levels of the organization.