Dear Friend,
Now that you’re back at work after our Managing to Change The World training course, you might be wondering how you’re ever going to translate everything you learned to your team.
We want to make that easy for you, so we’ve put together an email (it's below!) that you can tweak and send out to your team to explain the most important concepts from the course, and let them know how they can help you implement some new practices – like MOCHA, goals, check-ins, and debriefing meetings. The best part is you just have to send the email, and your staff will do all the rest! Well, some of it. (Don’t forget to customize the areas below that we’ve marked in all caps!)
Also, for the next 12 weeks, we’re going to send you additional prompts and concrete “next steps.” (However, if you don’t want to receive these 12 emails, you can opt out here.)
SUBJECT: Big changes afoot…
Dear Team:
Yesterday I attended the “Managing to Change the World” training, and I came out with a lot of great new tools and ideas, but I’ll need your help to implement everything.
This email outlines some of the new approaches I’d like to implement, and explains what that means for you, in terms of new ways to approach, manage, and evaluate your work. I want to give you each big goals, and let each of you have ownership on how you’ll achieve those goals.
At the end, there’s a list of ACTION ITEMS for everyone. I know this is a lot of information, but I promise that these tools will help you manage your own work better, and will help you get what you need from me (and others) to get things done.
CHECK-INS
I’d like you each to schedule a one-hour meeting with me (to occur before DATE). Please send me an agenda for this the day before our meeting so I have time to reflect on it as well. Here’s a sample agenda to use as a template. We’ll have these check-ins weekly (please be in charge of ensuring that that happens!). This week, we’ll review the other action items listed in this email, as well as cover the other topics listed in the template.
MOCHA
MOCHA may sound like a delicious but pointless acronym, but it’s a way for everyone to be totally clear on his or her role within projects. The idea is that when there are a bunch of people involved in a project but a lack of clear roles, things can languish. But when roles are really clear, it’s easier to determine who’s responsible for driving things forward, what the next steps should be, who you need to get approvals from, and who you can turn to for help. And it’s super quick:
M: Manager. This is the person managing the project. She guides the work and assigns responsibility. (This will often be me, but not always.)
O: Owner. This is the person who truly owns the project, and is responsible for its success.
C: Consulted. These are people who should be asked for input or need to be bought into the project.
H: Helper. Helpers can help you out with some of the work. They may even be mini-owners of a small segment of the project.
A: Approver. Approvers need to sign off on the work (or decisions about the work) before it’s final.
So, as an example: [INSERT THE MOCHA YOU CREATED DURING TRAINING, AND EXPLAIN IT A BIT.]
To help us get used to using this terminology, would you write a (very short) MOCHA describing a project that you are currently the owner of, including the roles you and others play in this project? We’ll discuss this MOCHA during our first check-in meeting and use it as a way to get us all familiar with this framework so that we can use it going forward.
REPEAT-BACKS
Possibly the weirdest thing I’ll ask you all to do (often) is called the Repeat-Back. It’s exactly what it sounds like it is: after we discuss what success looks like for a project, and we’ve agreed on the next steps, I’ll ask you to just repeat everything back to me to make sure we’re on the same page. This may be awkward at first, but I promise that if we try it for a few weeks, it will help us spot areas where I haven’t been clear or we’re on different pages or we just need to clarify something.
(Feel free to ask me for a repeat-back too! If you need something from me to advance your work, this will help us make sure we’re on the same page about what I’m getting it you and when.)
THE DEBRIEF
When a big project or event is finally done, I know as well as anyone that it’s tempting to immediately move on to the next one and leave the past in a metaphorical dust cloud. But I’d love us to do a better job of talking about recently completed work and reflect on what went well, what could have gone better, and what lessons we can take away for the future. So, please schedule a 15-minute meeting with me to debrief on a recently completed project – or add it in the agenda for our next check-in. I’m really excited about having more structured reflection on how our work is going – and especially on things that have gone really well that I might not know about from the outside.
GOALS
I’d like to us to have more clarity around our goals for this year, individually and as a team – in order to get aligned about where we will (and won’t) put our energy and what concrete markers we’ll use to measure success.
Specifically, I’d like us to all to create SMART goals that we’ll use to drive our work. Here’s a quick rundown of what “SMART” stands for:
S: Strategic. Does the goal reflect an important dimension of what we seek to accomplish?
M: Measurable. How will you know when you’ve accomplished the goal? This doesn’t need to be a bunch of numbers, but should be a standard by which reasonable people can agree on whether the goals has been met.
A: Ambitious. Is the goal challenging enough that achieving it would mean significant progress?
R: Realistic. Is this something we really can do? Do we have a plan to achieve it and know what it will take in terms of resources and time?
T: Time-Bound. Is there a clear deadline?
OPTIONAL ADDITION: For instance, one goal I wrote for myself during the training is [INSERT EXAMPLE GOAL].
To get the ball rolling on this, I’d like you to select one of your goals for this year and evaluate it using the SMART model. Does the goal, as you understand it, meet all of those specifications? If not, can you reframe it so it does (and, in doing so, do you feel like it’s a stronger goal)? By [DATE], please send me your musings on the goal you’ve examined or raise it with me one-on-one. This need not be formal; something in the body of an email is fine. If you get stuck … well, then, raise that with me that too!
ACTION ITEMS FOR EVERYONE
To sum up, here’s what I’d like you to do:
1. Schedule a check-in meeting with me by DATE and send me an agenda for check-in the day before the meeting.
2. Use MOCHA to assign roles to a project YOU own (we’ll review at the check-in meeting).
3. Schedule a debriefing meeting for a current project or include it on your agenda for our next check-in.
4. SMART-ify at least one goal and email to me by DATE.
Thank you in advance for spending some time on these new ideas with me, and absolutely feel free to ask me any questions you have about any of this!
[SIGNED]
Best,
The Management Center
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