Grand Slam Home Run Goals

Now that the baseball season is back in full swing (mostly foul balls from the Seattle Mariners, unfortunately), I thought it would be a good time to talk about one of my favorite tools for focusing individuals and teams on excellence - the Grand Slam Home Run Goal. Here is a wee bit from Developing Great Managers:

Grand Slam Home Run Goals - What's Yours?

There are days that feel like the daily fires are demanding your attention, but managers are NOT just cogs in the corporate wheel. They’re the engines and they set the pace of the work, workplace, and results. The last thing you want to do is sit back and let the fire hose of daily to-dos flood our brains and bodies from morning until evening, right? There are far too many good things to do in any given day. You and your team need to focus on the few great things that will move work forward. You want to feel like a success and you want our teams to win and thrive. You want to produce outstanding work – products and services - that make you proud. Anyone can produce results, but only the best managers can produce results that make a big difference.

The grand slam home run is a great benchmark for managerial results because everything you do ought to have a positive and additive affect on your teams, peers, and the organization. If you are going to do something, make it a grand slam!

Ask your manager to clarify the results you and your team need to product over the next year. For each key result, ask him or her what a grand slam home run would look like.  For example, if a key result is to successfully implement the new accounting system within budget by August 1st, a grand slam home run might be to:

• Complete the implementation by July 1, before the busy season
• Involve the accounting team in the project such that ownership and acceptance is high
• Implement the project while improving accountant computer skills (so they can better use the new system’s features)
• Develop robust contingency plans to cover any potential project setbacks
• Find a way to do all this and reduce the costs spent on the project – harness the creativity of the group to find the best way to transition to the new system

There’s getting a project done and then there’s doing a project such that many other aspects of the work are improved as well – that’s great planning and management. As a driven and talented manager, you want to know what excellence looks like. Actually, you need to know because you need to be able to define excellence for your team. Define and strive for the grand slam home run to have the deepest and broadest positive impact on the organization.

What would a grand slam home run look like for you this week?