Molly Graham: evaluation

Transcript context

…Another very vivid metaphor and just, I love how it builds on it with the snorkeling. Okay. So, just to be super clear about this, the takeaway here is, you have a problem with your team, with the company, many people think it's, they jump to the people are the problem. "They're not good enough, they're not working hard enough." Really, what you're saying is, most often, the issue is not the person, it's the situation, whether it's the structure of how they're set up to work or the dynamics amongst the people. And specifically what you're saying is that the role maybe isn't clear or what success means for that role is not clear. Every company I've worked with or advise, I often start with like, "What are the goals?" And usually what you get the hack is, "Uh, not clear." And that in and of itself is a structural issue, right? How can someone show up and decide what they're going to do with their day all day if the goals aren't clear, if they don't actually know what the priorities are? And then it goes to, okay, role, right? "Do I know what my job is? Do I know what number I was hired to own and drive?" And then, "Do I know what success looks like? How does my role tie to that overall goal that the company has?" Just literally right there. You got probably 80% of problems inside of companies because this is the hard work of company building. It's the stuff that's not intuitive. "How do you organize a group of people to know which direction to row?" And that equation, again, I would say 80% of problems that I see, performance issues. I always start with, "Does this person actually know what you expect of them?" If not, go back to step one. Do you know what I mean? Clarify expectations, so the Waterline Model is just helpful for reminding us, like, "Start at the top." So what would you do there? Say you're a manager, you're having an issue with a team member, would you go and ask, "Hey, let's just make sure we're aligned on goals and roles." Is that how'd you approach it or is there a different approach?…

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