Paired Elements for Leaders
INVESTMENT AND SCORE
Optimizing Investment by Tracking Progress
academy
Investment and Score, two of the 16 Elements in the Act Pillar of the Human Achievement Process, have powerful, synergistic characteristics.
Leaders who learn to leverage score to track investment can navigate complex journeys with their teams without all the rough characteristics usually encountered.
lesson 1
Introduction
INTRODUCTION
One person’s junk is another person’s treasure. How we invest—and what we invest in—we inherently keep score of to answer one simple question: “Was it worth it?” The answer to that question helps determine if we keep investing. Understanding the interplay between investment and score is vital as a leader so you can keep your team investing.
When it comes to score, we use two fundamental constructs that can apply to nearly anything… and it all comes down to velocity (speed and direction).
Your “Score” should ask “Am I going the right direction?” and “Am I getting there fast enough?”
lesson 2
how investment choices get messy on a team
Every individual on your team will invest differently. And how some invest will not be viewed by others as how they would choose to invest, or may not seem as valuable an investment.
A leader must manage these individual differences by being able to both understand how each person invests, making sure that investment is valuable, and making sure others know its value.
the football
Individual team members will Invest, at least initially, and in doing so will make themselves vulnerable to how other team members “keep score” or perceive the value of those investments. Creating Psychological Safety (a safe environment to be vulnerable) is critical to team health and individual performance.
How an individual’s investments and contributions are treated by these other team members, as well as by you, the leader, will greatly influence future investments by that individual. It may also affect whether they choose to unsubscribe entirely and go invest somewhere else.
This, in part, deals not only with the elements of Investment and Score, as in the way you and others keep score of that individual’s investment, but also the elements of Value and Perspective (both elements of the Achievement Pillar).
If a team member ultimately doesn’t feel valued or that they’re making a difference (the element of Impact), then they will disengage and either quit and leave; or worse, they’ll simply quit and stay.
As a leader, one of the main ways you can keep your team members engaged can be guided by many of the 16 Elements.
Identity — Make sure you know what the team member is both good at and enjoys doing.
Objective and Alignment — Make sure they’re given work that both Aligns to who they are and what they’re good at, and what the team both needs and has Value for.
Impact — Make sure that the work they do does actually make a meaningful difference. If someone is given work that doesn’t ultimately make a difference, they will feel that they don’t matter and will disengage.
Score — Make sure that the way you keep score measures that Impact and Value.
Perspective — Make sure both you and the rest of the team both see and understand the Value and Impact of their Investment.
winning teams
There are three big opportunities leaders have to create winning teams. As leaders do these three things, they’ll find their teams
are more engaged, more satisfied, more productive, and higher performing.
1. Be aware of the differences people are bringing to the “game”—both in the positive and the negative context. A leader is someone who can create a culture that manages the negatives and emphasizes the positives across all team members.
2. Create a culture of caring. As a leader, pay attention to group dynamics as much as individual ones and intervene quickly and directly when the group culture is starting to mock, minimize or abuse one person’s investment.
3. Call out positive investments quickly and consistently by individuals and teams as a whole. Celebrate those wins while simultaneously holding those team members, and the team generally, accountable for the right Score.
Investment is part of the ACT pillar in the Human Achievement Process. It is difficult to ACT and keep on acting if the consequence of your actions is that your investments are repeatedly minimized or abused.
lesson 3
maintaining investment in a "salty" environment
time, talent, and energy
Leaders must continuously invest in the three key areas that lead to human achievement: time, talent, and energy.
But of those three, when it comes to performance, energy tends to have the biggest impact.
salt water & icebergs
As a leader, learning to optimize for the energy in the individuals on our teams (and what is often below the waterline of our organizational attention) is actually where the greatest opportunity for investment resides.
As you learn to tap into and unleash that energy, adding “mass” to what’s below the waterline, you’ll drive UP the impact of time and talent (what’s above the waterline and easier to observe as “actions”). That is the key to maximizing performance.
investments are like icebergs
Individuals within your teams and within your organizations will all invest differently.
Getting those individuals, teams, and investments to coalesce into a single cohesive investment is key.
energy matters most
Energy is the most potent investment a team member can invest in their team and their work.
Learning to see and measure that energy is difficult, but pays big dividends when it comes to performance.
While measuring for energy has been elusive for so long, the Life Engineering Diagnostic tools made available to leaders and organizations now provide a solid, effective approach to finally getting optics on what for so long has been below the waterline of our organizational attention.
We have been carefully crafting these science-based diagnostic instruments for years; and they are incredibly effective at giving you visibility into this valuable resource… energy.
To learn more about these diagnostics, click here.
lesson 4
How Birds Keep Score
eyes, ears, beak & Brains
In this lesson we’ll learn some valuable leadership lessons by understanding more how birds keep score (measure progress).
There are opportunities for leaders to utilize some of the same techniques in how they keep score.
learn from the birds
Let’s now focus on some takeaways from the our bird-brained analogy. There are a few key things that you can do as a leader and within an organization to help you create a sort of “team
organizational memory” that will help you navigate the terrain today—and tomorrow as well. It takes work and communication, but it can make a world of difference.
Destinations that Count
The Score Element is part of the Act Pillar in the Human Achievement Process, where the prior two pillars (Orient and Assemble) are put to work.
How we keep score to track progress over the course of our individual and team journeys is critical, and should contain metrics that measure both for speed and direction.
Click here to go take the course on Score, where you’ll learn how the Score components of Speed and Direction (which make up Velocity), affect our experience.
Additionally, you can access The Velocity Tracker and Trajectory Tracker… two of the tools available in the Toolkit to help you track Speed and Direction over time for both you and your team.
lesson 5
The Need For Speed
managing speed
When it comes to “managing for speed,” it’s valuable to reflect on what you do currently.
Reflect on the following question and see what you come up with, then ask yourself if there’s anything you would change.
flying through space
Our inherent inability to detect speed makes it all the more important for us to have a means of measuring it.
Without a metric for speed, people on our teams and on the journey with us will often feel like we’re not making progress.
the brake and gas pedals
While we can’t detect speed, we are pretty adept at recognizing acceleration and deceleration.
Rapid changes in either can be disconcerting, so managing for both is important for a leader.
look down the road
As a leader, being deliberate about creating your “navigation capabilities” and developing the ability to “look down the road” can help you create a smooth journey for your team.
When the journey is free of some of those otherwise emotionally jarring starts and stops, it allows them to focus more on the work they have to do.
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