Capture the Milestones

Milestones are the building blocks of tactical capacity that turn a Burning Imperative into a manageable action plan. Your team's milestone management practice, if done right, will be a powerful team reinforcer. This is all about follow-through. Burning Imperative meetings tend to produce many ideas and choices on flip charts. They are all completely useless unless someone takes action to make them happen. This chapter is about ensuring that they do. In brief, to help ensure that the team delivers the desired results, in the time frame specified, you should strive for absolute clarity around:

• Decision rights—who can decide what, who is the ultimate decision maker
• Accountabilities—who owes delivery of specific items
• Linkages—what interdependencies exist with other teams and projects
• Information flows—what information needs to be shared with and by whom
• Collaboration—what joint efforts are needed to ensure alignment and adherence

Rarely is the delivery of a milestone reliant on one person. More often than not a milestone requires contributions from several members of the team across many functions. Despite the complexity of delivery, each milestone should be assigned one “captain” who is ultimately accountable for the delivery of that milestone. The captain is not the person required to do all the work, but rather the key spokesperson for the communication of issues regarding that milestone. The captain should be the final decision maker, responsible for communicating across groups, ensuring needed information flows, collaboration, and delivery of the final result. Avoid cocaptains. They never work. There needs to be a single point of accountability.

Follow through—Or Don't Even Start

Sam's team put a lot of time and energy into creating a Burning Imperative during a two-day workshop. The team left excited and ready to move forward. Then Sam got busy and never put the milestone management process in place. As a result, the team quickly went back to doing things the way it had been doing them before. If Sam wasn't going to follow through, why should the team?

Practices are the systems that enable people to implement the plans. They need to be coupled with systems of metrics and rewards that reinforce the desired behaviors. There is an old saying: “Show me how they are paid and I'll tell you what they really do.”

John Michael Loh, U.S. Air Force Air Combat Command, during the first Gulf War said: “I used to believe that if it doesn't get measured, it doesn't get done. Now I say if it doesn't get measured it doesn't get approved.…You need to manage by facts, not gut feel.” As Michael Bloomberg, the former mayor of New York City put it, “You're entitled to your own opinions, but not your own facts.”²

Specific performance measurements, accountabilities, and decision rights free people and teams to do their jobs without undue interference and provide the basis for nonjudgmental discussion of performance versus expectations and how to make improvements. It is essential that people know what is expected of them. When the expectations are clear, people also must have the time and resources needed to deliver against those expectations. The milestone management process is focused on clarifying decision rights and making sure that information and resources flow to where they need to go.

Milestones Are Checkpoints along the Way to a Defined Goal

Recall these definitions from Chapter 5:

1. Objectives: Broadly defined, qualitative performance requirements.
2. Goals: The quantitative measures of the objectives that define success.
3. Strategies: Broad choices around how the team will achieve its objectives.

Now add:

1. Milestones: Checkpoints along the way to achieving objectives and goals.

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and the Apollo 13 ground team provide a useful example of this. The objective of getting the astronauts back home alive after the explosion in space was compelling, but overwhelming.

It was easier to work through milestones one by one:

1. Turn the ship around so it would get back to Earth.
2. Manage the remaining power so it would last until the astronauts were back.
3. Fix the carbon monoxide problem so the air remained breathable.
4. Manage reentry into the atmosphere so the ship didn't burn up.

The power of milestones is that they let you know how you're doing along the way and give you the opportunity to make adjustments. They also give you the comfort to let your team run toward the goal without your involvement, as long as the milestones are being reached as planned.

You might evaluate your team's journey to a goal like this:

1. Worst case:The team misses a goal and doesn't know why.
2. Bad:The team misses a goal and does know why.
3. Okay:The team misses a milestone but adjusts to make the overall goal.
4. Hit:The team anticipates a risk and adjusts along the way to hit key milestones.
5. Best:The team hits all its milestones on the way to delivering its goals. (In your dreams.)

Imagine that you set a goal of getting from London to Paris in 5½ hours. Now imagine that you choose to drive. Imagine further that it takes you 45 minutes to get from central London to the outskirts of London. You wonder: “How's the trip going so far?”

You have no clue.

You might be on track. You might be behind schedule. But it's early in the trip, so you probably think that you can make up time later if you need to. So you're not worried.

If, on the other hand, you had set the following milestones, you would be thinking differently:

• Central London to outskirts of London: 30 minutes.
• Outskirts of London to Folkestone: 70 minutes.
• Channel crossing: load: 20 minutes; cross: 20 minutes; unload: 20 minutes.
• Calais to Paris: 3 hours.

If you had set a milestone of getting to the outskirts of London in 30 minutes and it took you 45 minutes, you would know you were behind schedule. Knowing that you were behind schedule, you could then take action on alternative options. The milestone would make you immediately aware of the need to adjust to still reach your overall goal.

You and your team are going to miss milestones. It is not necessary to hit all your milestones. What is essential is that you have put in place a mechanism to identify reasonable milestones so that you have checkpoints that allow you to anticipate and adjust along the way to hitting your final destination on time.

Manage Milestone Updates with a Five-Step Process

Deploying a mutually supportive, team-based follow-up system helps everyone improve performance related to goals. Organizations that have deployed this process in their team meetings have seen dramatic improvements in team performance. Follow these steps as well as the prep and post instructions laid out here and in Tool 6.1, and you'll be well on your way to ensuring that the team achieves its desired results on time.

Step 1. Prep. Circulate individual milestone updates to the team to read before each meeting so you can take update sharing and reporting off the agenda, while deploying a disciplined process to make sure that information flows where it needs to go.

Executives often skip this step, much to the team's detriment. It seems like an easy process to put in place, but we've heard every reason in the book as to why it has not been implemented.

Usually there are some logistical protocols that need to be established, tracking method choices and time frames established for submitting and distribution of information before the process can begin. You must require that everyone complete the update and premeeting review on time. If you allow excuses here, the rest of the process takes a hit. Yes, it can be a pain to get it started, but once it is embedded as a team expectation and value, you'll be thankful that you endured the brief period of pain. Just do it. Trust us.

Step 2. Report. Use the first half of each meeting for each team member to headline wins, learnings, and areas in which the person needs help from other team members. Resist the typical urge to work through items at this point.

Discussing items here—as opposed to simply reporting status—reinforces a first-come, first-served mentality where the people who share later in the order tend to get squeezed for time. This is an inefficient use of time. Removing the discussion piece from the first half of the meeting opens up time to identify “where I need help from team members.” This is often the most important part of the meeting. Each of these items should be captured in real time. It's a good idea to keep a set time limit for each individual update. Those who tend to be long-winded might not like it, but the rest of the participants will appreciate it. A tight and controlled limit goes a long way toward making the meetings more dynamic.

Step 3. Prioritize. Pause at the meeting's halfway point to prioritize items for discussion so the team can discuss items in the right priority instead of first-come, first-served.

These won't necessarily be the universally most important items because some items should be worked on with a different group or subset of the team. You should make note of those items in the meeting, but defer them to another meeting where the full and proper group can address them. Instead, give priority to the most important items for this team to work on as a team, at this time. Tend to give priority to items that are off target, in danger, or in areas where help is needed. Develop a list in descending order of priority.

Step 4. Problem solve. Use the second part of the meeting to discuss, in order, the priority list you determined to be the overall team's most important issues and opportunities.

The expectation is that the team won't get through all the items. That's okay because you're working on the most important items first. (Which is why you paused to prioritize.) This is the time to figure out how to adjust as a team to achieve the most important goals, all the while reinforcing predetermined decision rights.

We suggest an approach to group problem solving that is particularly appropriate for these conversations (see Tool 6.3):

1. Share pre-reading to let people think about the problem and potential solutions in advance. This pre-reading should include, at a minimum: the problem, current best thinking, context, and some potential options.
2. Start with the problem owner's current best thinking. (You'll need clarity around who is the problem owner and who is the decision maker.)
3. Decide whether the group will discuss the problem. If yes:
4. Answer questions for clarification (to help people understand context and current best thinking, not for them to comment on or improve the thinking—yet).
5. Highlight the most positive aspects of the current best thinking contributing to making it work.
6. Identify barriers keeping the current best thinking from working. (Get all the barriers on the table at the same time before working on any of them.)
7. Decide on the most important barrier.
8. Direct a brainstorm on the most important barrier with all participating, including the problem owner. Look for statements from the team members that might help remedy the barrier. Require statements to be in the What you do is…(WYDIS) format.
9. The problem owner considers and pulls together a possible remedy to that barrier. Test it with the group.
10. If the tested remedy is not strong enough, continue to work on this barrier. If the remedy works, determine whether that is enough to solve the overall problem. If yes, move on to action steps. If not, work on the next most important barrier.
11. Action steps: Agree who will do what, by when, now that this problem is solved.

Step 5. Close the loop. Defer other items to the next meeting or to a separate meeting. Update the tracking reports with any changes or new directions. Communicate major shifts to those key stakeholders who need to know.

Use Milestone Management to Lead Postmerger Integration

For Warren, milestone management was the critical tool to drive the myriad of projects needed to integrate an equal-sized acquired business into his private equity–owned business services company.

First, the Burning Imperative workshop identified eight complex strategies that would ensure a successful integration. Warren set the tone for milestone management during that session, making it clear that there would be high expectations for on-time delivery of agreed-upon plans.

During the workshop, Warren appointed captains from both the acquiring and the acquired company to lead each strategy. He gave the captains full authority and told them he expected full cooperation, open information flows, and collaboration across the two organizations. At the end of the Burning Imperative he made it clear that each team member, regardless of where he or she came from, was expected to contribute and lead for the newly combined entity.

Next, during the milestone meetings, Warren communicated the process in advance and followed it with rigor. He challenged longtime members of his team as much as he did new members. The meetings' focus was all about the plans and progress against the milestones.

Almost immediately the milestone management meetings became the primary venue for cross-functional, cross-project, and cross-company communication. Not only did the discipline deliver tangible business results, but within several weeks, it was also clear the two teams were united in their shared purpose and commitment to project deliverables. The practices of communication, joint problem solving, and accountability to each other became a galvanizing force that drove their team success.

Use Milestone Management at the Board Level

Garr's board meetings were out of control. Individual board members kept taking the meetings' agendas offtrack in order to emphasize their own favorite issues.

To combat this, Garr put in place a milestone management process.

Each board member submitted his or her updates to the board secretary ahead of the board meeting. The secretary then compiled them and sent them back to everyone at least 48 hours in advance of the board meetings.

At the 2-hour board meetings, the first hour was spent with the 24 board members giving 2-minute recaps of their updates, emphasizing the areas where they needed help or thought more discussion was warranted.

At the halfway point, the board president looked at all the outstanding issues and ordered them from highest priority to lowest priority.

The board spent the next hour working through the issues in priority order, not worrying about time. They never got through the entire list in the meetings. But that was okay because the issues they got to were more important than the issues that had to be discussed later.

This schedule revolutionized the board meetings. Everyone got 2 minutes in the spotlight. Everyone got a chance to raise issues. But the agenda was no longer managed on a first-come, first-served basis. As a result, the board could spend more time on the more important issues.

Early Wins

There is often a conversation about six months after a leader has started a new role. Someone will ask the new leader's boss how the new leader is doing. You have probably taken part in these conversations before.

“By the way, how's that new leader Rhonda doing?”

“Rhonda? She's fabulous. Love the intelligence. Love the attitude. She may be off to a slow start. But what a great hire! Really like her.”

Result: Rhonda's probably on the way out, or at the very least, in real trouble. Rhonda may not find out about it for another six to 12 months but her boss's “off to a slow start” plants a seed of doubt that could eventually lead to an unhappy ending for Rhonda.

After all, senior leaders are hired to deliver results first and foremost, and it is assumed that the required intelligence, personality, and attitude come along with the package. So when that question is asked about your transition, you want the answer to be about specific results, or early wins.

Compare the previous answer with “Rhonda? Let me tell you about all the things she's gotten done.”

In that scenario, Rhonda's made it. Of course, she has not done it all herself. Her team has. But Rhonda got the team focused on delivering early wins and by doing so gave her boss something concrete to talk about.

Early wins give the leader credibility and provide the team confidence and momentum—three very good things. For NASA and Apollo 13, fixing the oxygen problem was the early win that made the entire team believe it could succeed and gave it the confidence to deal with the rest of the challenges and the momentum to push forward despite incredible odds.

The early win prescription is relatively simple:

1. Select one or two early wins from your milestones list:
   1. Choose early wins that will make a meaningful external impact.
   2. Select early wins that your boss will want to talk about.
   3. Pick early wins that you are sure you can deliver.
   4. Choose early wins that will model important behaviors.
   5. Pick early wins that would not have happened if you had not been there.
2. Jump-start early wins by Day 60 and deliver by your sixth month:
   1. Early means early. Make sure that you select and jump-start early wins in your first 60 days that you and the team can deliver by the end of your sixth month. Select them early. Communicate them early. Deliver them early.
   2. Make sure that the team understands the early wins and has bought into delivering them on time.
   3. This will give your bosses the concrete results they need when someone asks how you are doing.
3. Overinvest resources to ensure that early wins are achieved on time:
   1. Do not skimp on your early wins. Allocate resources in a manner that will ensure timely delivery. Put more resources than you think you should need against these early opportunities so that your team is certain to deliver them better and faster than anyone thought was possible.

      When asked what he would have done differently during his time in the White House, former U.S. president Jimmy Carter referred to the botched raid to rescue American hostages in Iran.

      “I wish I'd sent one more helicopter to get the hostages, and we would have rescued them, and I would have been reelected.”³

   2. Stay alert. Adjust quickly. As the leader, stay close, stay involved in the progress of your early wins, and react immediately if they start to fall even slightly offtrack or behind schedule.
   3. Send one more helicopter.
4. Celebrate and communicate early wins:
   1. As your early wins are achieved, celebrate the accomplishments with the entire team. This is important and should not be overlooked.
   2. In conjunction with your communication campaign, make sure that your early wins are communicated as appropriate.
   3. In general, early wins are not synonymous with big wins. They are the early, sometimes small, yet meaningful wins that start the momentum of a winning team. They are the blasting caps, not the dynamite. They are the opening singles, not the grand slam home run. They are the first successful test market, not the global expansion. They may be found generally by accelerating something that is already in progress instead of starting something new.
   4. Finally, they are sure to generate credibility, confidence, momentum, and excitement. Remember the watchers? The people who have not shown themselves to be detractors, yet, have also not stood up as strong contributors. Once early wins begin, some of the watchers will edge closer, and eventually will jump in as contributors. After all, everybody wants to be part of the winning team, right?

Use Early Wins to Prove the Benefits in a Postmerger Integration

Michael was excited about an opportunity created by a recent acquisition that he had participated in and strongly supported. The belief was that the two companies' products, when packaged together, would represent a “total solution,” which would command premium pricing and higher volumes.

To implement the total solution product, a new selling process needed to be developed and implemented. However, despite his efforts Michael had been unable to get traction from either sales organization to make any changes and move toward the new integrated model. The team had even identified an early win as closing a piece of business from a major customer, within a month, by leveraging a new selling process and combining the benefits of the two products. But progress was slow and they were clearly in danger of not hitting the early win.

So Michael allocated more resources to the early win and put his top implementation team, consisting of players from both sides of the integrated company, to execute the changes needed to craft the total solution. He promised his support to help them remove barriers along the way. He challenged the coleaders to design a rough selling and service model that would deliver the first sale—and that could be refined and automated later—as opposed to insisting on a perfect design, which would have taken weeks to implement.

The team had its first total solution sale within three months. Michael led the celebration. Later, he leveraged the rough, manual processes to build a repeatable system that allowed the team to realize the promise of the acquisition.

Don't Wait Too Long to Build Momentum

Adrienne had a bias to be accommodating to the people whom she worked with. Not that this is a bad thing per se, but she fell victim to the thought that everyone's individual priorities were more important than the team's Burning Imperative. As a result, she allowed the team to finish individual priorities that were established before she joined and waited to schedule her imperative workshop until it was convenient for everyone. She then scheduled it in a time and place that minimized travel for everyone and limited it to a one-day session to minimize disruption to the team's routine. Everyone appreciated that.

The trouble was that the Imperative session didn't happen until she'd been in her new job more than 90 days. By then, three months of momentum had been allocated toward the goals defined by the previously failed leader. The team members had decided that Adrienne wasn't going to push them to do anything differently, so they continued along the same track and realized they didn't have to take her initiatives seriously.

Held so late in her tenure, the team's Imperative session had no urgency and was rushed through without delivering any meaningful value. The team appreciated that it was minimally intrusive to members' schedules and left the meeting with the same individual priorities they had before Adrienne started. When she tried implementing a milestone-tracking process to track the delivery of the few new goals they defined in the meeting, the team protested that the process took too much time from day-to-day priorities, and it never took hold.

By being overly accommodating, bowing to existing priorities defined by someone else, dragging her feet on the Burning Imperative session, and failing to implement a rigorous milestone-tracking process, Adrienne guaranteed that she'd be delivering more of the same.

Focus on the Results with the Most Impact

Pamela came into lead sales and marketing for a struggling software provider. She knew that the product was very strong and well priced, but the company had little market penetration because of its less-than-stellar marketing efforts. Immediately on joining, Pamela co-created with her team a compelling Burning Imperative and the resulting strategies, plans, and milestones. Her team's important milestones included redoing the marketing strategy, positioning, branding, brochures, and trade show booth.

As an early win, she and the team picked redesigning the trade show booth and the trade shows strategy. Her logic was that there was a major trade show coming up in a few months and this was a great chance to make a powerful impact on the market. She knew that if the team was successful, the end result would be a significant increase in client interest and inquiries. If she could increase client requests for proposals, she knew fortunes would turn around because the sales team had an excellent close ratio once it got on a client's radar. By generating more client requests, she knew she would gain credibility for the marketing group, gain confidence for her team, and give senior management some meaningful results to talk about.

She closely managed the project while effectively engaging her team along the way, and she delivered a superior product in record time. Pam's team came up with a concept that attracted key clients and then blew them away once they were there. The sales team gave more presentations during the trade show than they had in the previous eight months. Her team's early win generated tangible, effective, and exciting results. It was far better than what the team had achieved before, and it was clearly something they never would have accomplished without Pamela. It was a great early win!

Champion the Champions

Oscar decided to focus his efforts on four projects. He reached into his organization to pick four champions to drive the projects and then gave them extra support and resources to ensure that they could deliver in their new roles.

Three of the projects produced early tangible results. One did not do so well.

But the three that did well were enough to turn the whole business around. The division that Oscar had been brought in to run had experienced declining sales for 24 months, and continued its downward trend during Oscar's first two months. However, as the early win projects started to deliver results, the downward trend stopped in month three with a 1 percent uptick. By month four, it was up 4 percent, and in month five, it was up 10 percent. It was clear to all that the successful delivery of the three early wins was behind the overwhelming jump in sales. That success bought Oscar more time to achieve a win on the fourth plan.

No one even bothered asking how Oscar was doing in month six. Everybody knew because the numbers told the story.

Redefine Success

Quincy did not like the early win concept at all. He had just become the new head of the music division of a major entertainment company that was looking to make a dramatic impact on the music industry and turn around years of declining sales. Quincy knew that the existing pipeline of artists could not deliver the sales punch that his bosses were looking for, and he was certain that it would take 12 to 18 months to deliver anything tangible. To him, delivering a meaningful early win in his first six months seemed impossible.

Then he rethought how he defined early wins. He borrowed the pipeline concept from pharmaceutical companies and created a recording pipeline. On Day One, the pipeline was near empty. But, by month six he had an exciting array of new artists signed and viable projects in the pipeline and could show senior management the new face of the music division as his measure of success. His early win was a pipeline of opportunities—showing tangible momentum toward a longer-term goal.

Charter the Team for the Win

For the early win to create a sense of confidence and momentum in the team, the team needs to drive the win. You, as the leader, can inspire and enable by directing, supporting, and encouraging the team in the process, but it can't be your win. It must be the team's win. Therefore, your role as leader is to set the team up for success and support its efforts. The team charter and its five components are useful in doing that. They are laid out here and in Tool 6.2.

1. Objective—What?
   1. Clearly and specifically define the early win.
   2. Use the specific, measurable, achievable, realistic, and time bound (SMART) goal format to define specifically the early win and the required components along the way.
   3. The goals must be tangible results.
2. Context—Why?
   1. Provide the information that led to the desired results of the early win. (Be sure to include customer requirements if they exist.)
   2. Explain the intent of the early win to ensure that team members understand the collective purpose of their individual tasks. Monitor and adjust along the way to achieve that purpose while minimizing unintended consequences.
   3. Clarify what happens next. Make sure that the team understands the follow-on actions to ensure that momentum is sustained after the win is delivered.
3. Resources—With what help?
   1. Ensure that the team has and can access all the human, financial, and operational resources needed to deliver the objective. (Remember, for an early win, you're going to overinvest in resources to ensure delivery.)
   2. Clarify what other teams, groups, and units are involved and what their roles are.
   3. Allocate resources in a timely manner to ensure delivery.
4. Guidelines—How?
   1. Clarify what the team can and cannot do with regard to roles and decisions.
   2. Lay out the interdependencies between the team being chartered and the other teams involved.
   3. Decide what essential data is needed to measure results.
   4. Provide frequent and easy access to required data.
5. Accountability—Track and monitor
   1. Clarify what is going to get done by when by whom and how the team and you are going to track milestones so that you can know about risks in advance and can intervene well before milestones are missed.
   2. Clarify command, communication, and support arrangements so that all know how they are going to work together.
   3. Schedule regular updates.
   4. Know the signs when course corrections or reevaluations are necessary.

Celebrate Early Wins and Significant Milestones along the Way

Tracking milestones is not a revolutionary business idea. However, the idea of using them as a team-building tool is new to most leaders and their teams. Royal Caribbean's chief executive officer (CEO), Richard Fain, fully appreciates the power of milestones and exemplifies how other leaders can use them to keep projects on track and recognize employee achievements.⁴

Richard's emphasis on milestones is not a surprise, because ship builders have been leveraging milestones' emotional impact for millennia. Shipbuilders celebrate “keel laying” as the formal start of construction, naming, stepping the mast (accompanied by placing coins under the mast for good luck), christening (accompanied by breaking a bottle of champagne over the bow), a whole range of trials, “sail away,” hand over, and onboarding the new captain (the genesis of the term onboarding).

One of Royal Caribbean's big projects was the creation of a central gathering area on the ship Oasis of the Seas. This area—which is aptly named Central Park—is located in the middle of the ship and opens to the sky for five decks. To celebrate the design, it created a full-size model of part of this open space in the massive hangar-like building where parts of the ship were being built in Finland. Also, the company treated the whole team to an alfresco fine dining experience so they could celebrate the space.

“It was a magical evening.…We were having a lovely cruise dinner in Finland (in early Spring—when it's still cold outside).…It made us all realize how special the space would be and that it was worthy of the effort to really make sure that not only was the overall space good, but that all the details were perfect.”

Drive Operational Accountability: Summary and Implications

Milestones. Define them and begin tracking and managing them immediately. Compiling milestones is a waste of time if you do not have an efficient, effective, and clear process in place to track them. Use this process to establish and reinforce expected team norms in three steps:

1. Get milestones in place.
2. Track them and manage them as a team on a frequent and regular basis.
3. Implement a milestone management meeting process.

Tracking milestones can be particularly effective when you are merging teams or creating new teams—the process unites.

Early wins are all about credibility, confidence, and momentum. People have more faith in people who have delivered. You want your boss to have confidence in you. You want the team to have confidence in you and in themselves. Early wins will provide that confidence.

Additional Articles and Tools on www.onboardingtools.com

6A.1 BRAVE Meeting Management–Curating Meetings

6A.2 Strategic Selling

6A.3 BRAVE Creative Brief

6A.4 Senior Management Trip Planning