The most effective technique for managing anything (with examples)

Not all of us are taught how to manage things. If we’re lucky, we learn management techniques in our education or from our employers. All too often, we show potential, rise up the ranks, and we’re left to our own devices. If we’re lucky (again), we have mentors that teach us what and how to do things. But too often we struggle – and the people or projects we’re supposed to manage suffer as well.

Here then is the most effective technique you can learn to manage anything – from companies to teams of people to projects.

The technique

The technique consists of 4 questions and a follow-up. It works well on your own if you run a small business - larger teams benefit from facilitation (because the person leading also needs to participate).

The questions are:

1. What do we do, and why?

2. What does success look like?

3. Where are we now?

4. How do we get to where we want to be?

And then there’s the all-important follow-up that determines whether you’re going to be successful at managing your team, company or project.

1. What do we do, and why?

The first double-barrelled question is simple:

What do we do, and why?

Depending on what you’re looking at, you may want to rephrase the question to something like “what are we doing, and why?”

However you phrase the question, you need to make the answers as simple and concise as possible. No embellishments, no marketing speak - just (as my friend Michael would say) the unvarnished truth.

Get the answers right, and everyone will remember it. It becomes your guiding light.

Example 1: You run a business

Let’s say you run a branding agency. Your answers may look something like this:

We build kick-ass brands for small business because our clients deserve to kick ass.

It’s tempting to add more things, like “…because our clients deserve to kick ass and be memorable and succeed in the market”.

Avoid this temptation. As soon as you see the word “and”, stop and think whether it is necessary. Keep it simple, keep it short - keep it memorable.

Example 2: You run a team

If you run a team in a larger organization, you have to “drill down” from the top. For example:

• What does ACME Corp do, and why?

• What does our department / division do, and why?

• What does our team do, and why?

Add or remove layers depending on how large your organization is and how far down the hierarchy you are. The answers may look something like this:

• ACME Corp builds affordable electric bicycles because we all deserve clean air.

• Our marketing department tells everyone because they all deserve to know.

• Our team rocks social media because clean air is a social thing.

Your style may be different - but in each case (company, department and team) the “what” and “why” is short, simple, to the point and memorable.

As a side note, businesses benefit from doing this top-down. First with the CEO and his or her direct reports, then each of the direct reports with their teams, and so on down. Facilitating this process is highly recommended.

Example 3: You run a project

Even projects benefit from getting very clear about what you’re doing and why. Here’s a real-life example - my current labour of love:

I’m building SoloBOSS (the Solopreneur Business Operating System) because managing a solopreneur business should be easy.

I actually struggled quite a bit to refine this statements down to the unvarnished truth. Because this is my project, I know everything about it and I want to tell you all about it. I had to work hard to boil it down to the essence – chances are some version of this statement will show up on my website.

2. What does success look like?

There are two ways of looking at success:

• What does success look like for your clients / end users?

• What does success look like for you?

We’re looking for 2 to 5 key points that define success. Stick to the key things that would mean success - too many and you won’t know which to prioritize.

Example 1: You run a business

Our example business is a brand agency that “builds kick-ass brands for small business because our clients deserve to kick ass.” We can define success as follows:

• Our clients tell us they‘re kicking ass.

• Their businesses perform better because of their kick-ass brand.

• We love what we do and the people we work with.

In most cases, I’ve seen people list way too many things in their success criteria. One way around this is to use the principle of necessary and sufficient. Each success criteria should be necessary (success wouldn’t be complete without it), and the collection of success criteria should be sufficient - you don’t need anything more to say “we’re successful”.

Example 2: You run a team

Our example team rocks social media because clean air is a social thing. They may define success as follows:

• We have a passionate following on social media.

• Our follower base is growing every month.

• We love electric bicycles because we love clean air.

These three criteria are both necessary to define success (for our end clients and ourselves) and all of them together are sufficient to say “we’re successful”.

Example 3: You run a project

Back to my project: I’m building SoloBOSS (the Solopreneur Business Operating System) because managing a solopreneur business should be easy. When the project is done, I will be selling SoloBOSS to solopreneurs who deliver a service to their clients.

I define success for my end users as follows:

• Solopreneurs tell me (and the world) they love SoloBOSS.

• They spend less time juggling multiple apps to get stuff done.

• Their clients love them because they deliver the best service they’ve ever seen.

If I see these three things, I know my project (building SoloBOSS) has been successful.

3. Where are we now?

Defining where we are now is deceptively simple - all we have to do is to look at our success criteria and say how well we’re doing relative to each.

Example 1: You run a business

Here’s how our brand agency defined success, and how they feel they’re doing now:

• Our clients tell us they‘re kicking ass: We don’t really follow up with clients so we don’t know. We’ve heard from one or two that rave about what we’ve done, but we don’t know how most of them feel.

• Their businesses perform better because of their kick-ass brand. Again, because we don’t follow up, we don’t know.

• We love what we do and the people we work with. We love the creative parts of our work, but we seem to be fighting a lot of fires and missing promised delivery dates.

Note that we’re only measuring “where we are now” relative to what success looks like. Avoid the temptation of diving into more detail - remember your success criteria are all necessary, and together they are sufficient. You don’t need more detail.

Example 2: You run a team

Our example team rocks social media because clean air is a social thing. Here’s how they defined success and where they are now:

• We have a passionate following on social media. We have a small number (around 10) of very vocal and passionate followers, but we should have hundreds.

• Our follower base is growing every month. Our growth has been pretty good averaging around 4% per month. We would like to see it grow around 10% per month.

• We love electric bicycles because we love clean air. Everyone on our team rides an electric bicycle to commute or run errands. We love how quiet and easy they are - and they don’t pollute the air.

Room for improvement in 2 of the 3 success criteria.

Example 3: You run a project

Back to my SoloBOSS project again:

• Solopreneurs tell me (and the world) they love SoloBOSS. I’ve just started beta testing so the verdict on this will come soon.

• They spend less time juggling multiple apps to get stuff done. I know this for myself because I use it every day. I don’t know how much of this my users (solopreneurs) will see.

• Their clients love them because they deliver the best service they’ve ever seen. I’m using the Client Portal features to manage my own clients and they love it. I still need to get feedback from beta testers and beyond.

Note that with a project you often have to wait until the project is complete and rolled out to really see if your end users are getting the benefits. Here’s the important thing:

Focusing on the benefits a project is designed to deliver keeps you focused on doing the right stuff.

Too many projects suffer from scope creep and design by committee. Focus on the benefits and you’re more likely to deliver something that is fit for purpose.

4. How do we get where we want to be?

Now we get into the nitty gritty of planning what you need to do. It can get quite detailed, but the key is to focus on the gap between where you are now and where you want to be.

Example 1: You run a business

Here’s what our brand agency needs to do:

• Follow up with clients: Follow up with clients from the last year to see how they feel and how their business are doing. If we find they’re not overjoyed at what we’ve delivered and how that helps their businesses, we need to find out why and what we can do about it. Build in follow-up into our client engagements.

• Business performance: Addressed in the first actions.

• Stop fighting fires and always deliver on time: Formalize our processes and create checklists to make sure we don’t miss stuff. Spend 1 hour a week analyzing our workload and activities to identify wasted time and overloading ourselves. Make changes and monitor for improvements.

Note that we’re not trying to boil the ocean here. Just list the next things you need to do to get one step closer to success.

Example 2: You run a team

Our social media team decided they need to do the following:

• Grow our passionate and vocal users to over 100: Identify the things that make people passionate and vocal. Design social media campaigns to attract those people. Spend 4 hours per week actively engaging with those people. Offer rewards for engagement. Run this for 3 months and then review.

• Grow our followers at 10% per month. Review our past campaigns to see what worked and what didn’t. Double down on working campaigns. Increase daily posts from 1 per day to 2 or 3 per day and monitor to see what works. Create a cause and offer incentives to take it up. Monitor for 3 months and review.

• We love electric bicycles because we love clean air. We’re good at this already - but we can engage the rest of the company in doing the same.

Work with your team to decide what should be done. Stay out of the details - your team will take care of that.

Example 3: You run a project

To measure the success of my SoloBOSS project I need to complete the project - build it and start testing it. But along the way the critical thing is to keep the eventual benefits in mind. This will keep me focused on just those features that will deliver benefits - anything else is probably fluff.

The all-important follow-up

All of the above is going to fail if you don’t follow up. Even worse, if you don’t follow up exactly on those things you said were important, all your efforts will be regarded as a good exercise that got drowned in everyday tasks.

Project are relatively easy to follow up. Every competent project manager will have a project plan (or at least a task list), and you can report back on the milestones or check off the tasks.

Following up when you’re running a business or leading a team is not difficult - but it takes discipline to get your head out of the weeds and focus on what’s important. Here’s the best way to do it:

• Create a dashboard or presentation you update and present at least once a month.

• What you do - and why - should always be the first thing people see.

• List the success criteria and give each a score.

• Show progression over time.

Here’s a simple dashboard for our agency business:

Here’s why this works:

• Everyone in the business participated in defining what success looks like.

• They know it’s important because they see it regularly (at least once a month).

• They can see things getting better.

Nothing breeds success like success. When you’re managing - or leading - a company or a team, showing this progression is critical because that what success looks like (right?). And don’t shy away from delivering bad news. Progress towards success is never a straight line.

Hope this helps.