Businesses with financial challenges experience a vast
increase in organizational workload that will cause team member and stakeholder
performance to degrade.
Due to diminished resources, routine, repeatable processes
must be handled manually and micro-managed.
These increased tasks add stress and lead to mistakes which require even
more counter-measures.
Team members, suppliers and other stakeholders become weary. They lose confidence. Little by little, the added tasks go undone
or are delayed. All stakeholders begin
to perform less effectively.
Organizational performance degrades, sales drop, and costs rise due to
poor execution.
To prevent and combat the fatigue induced “death spiral”,
leaders must do the following with team members and stakeholders:
1)
Do not understate the severity of the problem
2)
Define the problem the company faces and explain
it completely
3)
Collaborate on a realistic vision of the
solution
4)
Set clear expectations
5)
Be honest and clear in your communications
6)
Maintain open, proactive communication
7)
Deal with concerns directly and promptly
8)
Get commitments and assess willingness of each team
member and stakeholder to rise to the challenge
9)
Focus on the best and most committed of team
members and stakeholders
10)
SHOW UP for the hard stuff
11)
Model calm and deliberate behavior
12)
Help. Be
part of the solution by taking on additional roles where your skill set
delivers good outcomes, demonstrates commitment and reduces overall
organizational workload
13)
Clarify and Simplify continuously by focusing
only on essentials
14)
Define the metrics for determining progress and
report them - good or bad
15)
Iterate as necessary, quickly
