Eight Leadership Mistakes: #4 – Focusing on Compliance Rather than Achieving Shared Goals

A recent article, Eight Mistakes Leaders Make That Kill Employee Trust, briefly discussed different management shortcomings and problems that we may unknowingly have or use, which can ruin employees’ respect for us. I wanted to address each of these mistakes and help you learn how to avoid them.

One of the most frustrating managers to work for are those more concerned with following the rules than actually meeting their goals and objectives.

I’ve worked for companies that were more concerned with results than with the process, and I’ve worked for bosses and companies who were only concerned about whether you followed the rules. The results were less important, or at least equally important, as the steps you took to get there.

To them, they wanted to make sure you focused on compliance more than they wanted you to accomplish your goals.

To me, that’s a little stupid. And it’s not leadership.

If you want to be successful in business, the first important thing is to understand what your business objective is. Second most is understanding how to get to the objective. Those managers are fun to work for, because they’re focused on accomplishments and achievements.

For example, let’s say you’re working on a project where you’re required to get five quotes from vendors before the project is completed by a particular deadline. You reach out to your typical vendors, but only get four quotes. You expand your search and invite some new vendors, but still, you only have four quotes.

So you proceed with the information you have and complete the project on time. And then get crapped on by some middle manager who’s upset that you didn’t get that fifth quote.

That’s a manager who is less concerned about the results than the process.

Now, this doesn’t mean you should cut corners, or break federal or state regulations, or even the law! But if you don’t have a predetermined set of procedures you have to follow, like ISO (which is a procedural standard for every function in the organization), then you should focus more on the end result. Your measurement point should be the outcome, not the process.

The process is important, of course, because that’s how you achieved the results. And you can measure the process to find the best, most efficient, most effective way of getting things done. You can learn from what you did as a way to improve in the future.

In our hypothetical example, the manager should be more focused on whether the project was completed on time, to the manager’s satisfaction, and that it was as good as it could be. That’s what a good manager looks at, that’s what good leadership does. A bad manager doesn’t care as much. And the company’s success rate and place in the market will reflect those results.

I’ve been a manufacturing executive, as well as a sales and marketing professional, for a few decades. Now I help companies turn around their own business. If you would like more information, please visit my website and connect with me on Twitter or LinkedIn.

Photo credit: Pexelx (Pixabay.com. Creative Commons 0)