Your email, thoughts, conversations and every other damn place you look, all full of numbers. Profit or loss, turnover, pipeline, assumptions, funnel, conversations, customers, utilisation, production, cashflow, sales, income, throughput, stock.

Every one of them indicates something. Making it easier to tell, and maybe sell, yourself a story. Good or bad, going in the right or wrong direction, on the up, in line with expectations, something to worry about.

That pesky quantifiable number makes us think we know something.

Do we?

Pull back the veil.

What exactly is causing this number to be this number, on a granular, piece by piece basis? Without composites or averages, how is it made up? How did it come about and what does it mean?

Guaranteed, you’ll learn a little less respect for the number itself, a little more respect for the detail, and a whole lot about what’s going on.

Skippy strategy: Take a number.

Maybe we’re programmed to almost finish things. Maybe it’s natural to get seven or eight tenths of the way and then divert – allow ourselves to get diverted, passively diverted – toward another thing, and then another.

Let’s not do that.

Let’s agree to finish the things we start.

To kick things into play, and then roll with the rough and tumble until the whistle blows at the end of the game. Maybe we win, maybe we lose, but at least we’ll know.

The alternative – the distractions – are nothing more than self-preservation devices, designed and executed to give us a veil, an excuse, so that when we fail at the first thing, nobody notices because we’re beavering away on the second thing, or by now, the fifth thing.

We know that.

So let’s start the thing, and then follow it through to the end.

Skippy strategy: Finish the first thing first.

It’s someone else’s responsibility. You delegated it. They tell you it’s on track. But you don’t get comfort about how it’s going.

Now what?

Do you leave them to it whilst crossing your fingers and waiting for the grand reveal, do you stick your nose in, or do you peck away for details at every opportunity?

This isn’t about comfort, yours or theirs.

It’s about getting the best outcome for the team.

There’s plenty of formal ways around it. Intermediate reports, board updates, reviews and presentations, but the quickest and probably most effective is … just ask.

Ask, how’s it going? Really? Maybe over coffee. Ask to give feedback. Ask to help.

The kind of people you want on your team are the ones who like to share, who like to team up, and who like to make progress. Work with them.

Skippy strategy: Just ask.

It’s the buzzy things that we ignore. The ones we don’t want to deal with, that raise our anxiety, that we know are in the danger area. Until they sting.

We know what we need to do – to take them seriously, to give them respect, to dig deeper and work out an appropriate and coherent plan of action steps and review points – but we don’t.

Maybe because it’s hard and we’re lazy. Or because it’s complex and we aren’t able to prioritise the time. Either way, the wasp keeps buzzing, we keep flicking it away, away, away and relying on hope rather than judgement that it might just fly away on its own. And most times it solves itself and we give thanks and learn a bad lesson.

If an issue keeps coming back, the issue is you.

Skippy strategy: When the wasp keeps buzzing, don’t just flick it away.

At all times, the thing we expect of all our people is that they do what they say they’re going to do. If that’s pulling up trees, show me the roots. If it’s about pushing the tiny ball an inch up the hill, show me the ball up the hill. When we agree the next milestone, show me that stone and the results of the labour.

That’s accountability.

That’s the job.

What’s good for the goose, is good for the role model.

When you say you’re going to do something, do it. When you say you’ll do something by Tuesday, do it by Tuesday. When you make a promise, fulfil on the promise. When you say you’ll check in, check in.

Do what you want them to do.

Set the standard, be the standard, hold everyone else to the standard.

Skippy strategy: Do what you say you’re going to do.

You can’t just hit Send, and forget.

You have to tie everything to a piece of string marked Follow-up.

It would be lovely if you didn’t have to.

It would be lovely if everybody and everything always played out exactly as imagined. If C followed B followed A every time in every way.

Back here in the real world, it doesn’t work like that. 

If you don’t follow up you’re leaving yourselves in the hands (and your immediate future at the mercy) of others.

It’s easier, and higher risk.

So which do you want?

A (seemingly) easy (in the short term) life, where things may or may not go as you hoped. Or more involvement, where you know what’s going on and have the opportunity to nudge things back into line when they look to be wandering off track.

Skippy strategy: The shortest, surest path loops around a follow up.

There’s a worry when you delegate – will this person do the job that needs doing, will they do it well enough (and, if you’re honest, will they do it as well as you would).

Step one around the worry (at least, the way around the rational worry) is to be specific about the objective of the work. Be clear about what done looks like, what standard is expected and how you’ll both know when the hoops have been jumped.

The second step is the winner. Get them to share the how – how they’ll go about the work that will deliver the objective. This isn’t an opportunity to trip them up, it’s where you see how they think, when you help them think better, and get an insight into the intermediate deliverables that will give you both comfort things are on track.

Then you track.

Skippy strategy: The what, the how, the tracking.

This meeting.

The one we’re having right now.

What is it for?

Is it to make a decision?

In which case we need a way to make a decision, information to decide on, time enough to talk enough, and an expectation that the decision, when it comes, will be followed by a list of actions that will come after the decision. This meeting then, needs an objective and an expectation of actionable steps.

Is it to get everyone on the same page on something?

In which case we need a fair discussion and a way to determine clarity and buy-in. This meeting then, needs an objective and a way to measure the outcome.

The point is to start every meeting with direction – an objective and a plan for how the meeting will meet it’s objective and what happens next.

Skippy strategy: So this meeting – where’s it taking us?

It turns out that the problem with ideas is having too many of them.

Too many to act on, too many that aren’t so good, too many that get in the way of doing something about the ones you’ve already committed to or to other new ones with the longest legs.

Which means, part of the process of harvesting and dealing with ideas – like in any whiteboard session – is the discipline of ditching most of them.

What that doesn’t mean is casting them out because of biases, because of who said them, or because of the killjoys who will rain on every parade.

Put ideas through the ringer.

Poke them, prod them, combine them into better ideas, sift and sort and polish them, size them, chew them over, let them sit for a while … and then prioritise the survivors for the action tray.

Skippy strategy: Commit to the best ideas.

And then they move on.

Good people come across good opportunities all the time and it’s inevitable that one day they’ll be inclined to take a left turn to some place else. That’s a good thing. It might leave you short of a particular expertise or set of experiences, but it’s your own opportunity to bring someone new into the team, with a new set of experiences and a different way of looking at things.

Good for the leaver, good for you, good for the newbie.

Sometimes of course, you have to precipitate the not so good members to move on too.

And that’s a good thing all round too.

An opportunity for them to find somewhere that will fit their talents and charms more closely, and to be happier.

For you, a chance to start over with a new set of bright eyes.

Skippy strategy: Moving day is a good thing.