The Goalpost problem

Scott Berkun wrote a great Letter to Micromanagers this week. This one paragraph got the wheels turning.

If you’re a manager, you must assume you have thoroughbreds working for you. Your job is to give them what they need to win their respective races, agreeing with them on the goal and rewards, but then getting the hell out of the way. Until they start jumping fences or attacking other horses, you have to let them run their race.

Agreeing with the on the goal.

But what if the troops don’t know where the goalposts are located? Well, someone screwed up and there was a failure to communicate.

If everything boils down to being a people problem, the root cause of that is likely communication. Or lack thereof.

When people don’t know where / what the goal is, they can’t operate with the same worldview as management. They may think they are, but any occurrence of that is just coincidence.

Maybe you do have some grand, rule-the-world scheme. But if the people you are going to rely on to implement it don’t know / understand it, you will fail.