The three habits that evidence-based leaders must master

Law firm leaders seeking to inspire their firms and achieve excellent results must measure their results and not act based on guesswork, writes Stacey Barr.

In the past decade, there has been considerable discussion within management ranks about the concept of evidence-based leadership. Yet there are still misunderstandings about the phenomenon. Evidence-based leadership is not about how to lead. It is about what to lead. It is not about how to communicate, or inspire, or direct, or engage. It is about using all these factors to lead the organisation or firm to fulfil its reason for being; to make the difference that the firm exists to make; and to do it all with excellence.

How a firm performs is evidenced by what it achieves, not by the work it does. To know what results it is achieving, those results must be measured. Performance measures are evidence, taken over time, of how well we are achieving results. Without good performance measures, we have no evidence. With no evidence, we cannot know. If we cannot know, we are guessing – and evidence-based leaders do not guess. Three habits separate evidence-based leaders from the rest. These three habits are the foundation of how to inspire an organisation or firm to perform with excellence.

Habit 1: Direction is about articulating a measurable strategy

To be measurable in a meaningful way, a strategy must be results-oriented, understandable to everyone and ruthlessly prioritised. When these conditions are met, people feel compelled to make the strategy a reality. The three most important principles of this first habit are:

1. Results, not actions. Strategic goals need to be results-oriented, not action-oriented. That is what it means to perform: to produce results. The actions we take are a means to an end. Actions are not goals. Results are.

2. No weasel words. Strategic goals need to be understood before people can buy in to them. Management jargon, buzzwords and weasel words must go. They create confusion and cynicism, not conviction.

3. Be ruthless. Strategic goals have to be ruthlessly prioritised to focus on what matters most, right now. Strategy is often far too operational, and reads more like a business model. The more goals we have, the fewer we will achieve.

Habit 2: Evidence is about setting meaningful performance measures for each strategic goal

Surprisingly, just about every strategic goal that matters can be made measurable in a meaningful way. The most meaningful measures are quantitative, evidence of goals and focused on improvement. Three important principles for this second habit are:

1. Measures quantify evidence. The only way we can know that a goal is happening is to observe it. Like Sherlock Holmes looking for clues, we must look for convincing evidence of our intended results. Quantifying this evidence gives us direct measures of those results.

2. Measure what matters. Lots of stuff can be measured, and too much usually is. We need to narrow down our measures to only those that matter most. And what matters most, right now, is articulated in the organisation’s strategic direction.

3. Learning, not judging. The biggest fear people have about performance measures is that they will be used to judge them. Measures are powerful only when they are tools in people’s hands, not rods for their backs.

Habit 3: Execution is about getting the corporate strategy implemented and the strategic goals achieved

The best strategy execution, which produces the highest return, uses the leverage of continuous improvement of business processes. It is not about ‘bolting on’ new capability; it is about un-constraining what is there. The third habit is based on these principles:

1. Leverage, not force. Strategy execution is not about working harder; it is about working smarter. It is about liberating latent performance capability constrained by a firm’s policies, processes and systems.

2. Patterns, not points. Execution is not about hitting the numbers; it is about reducing variability. Chasing quotas encourages tampering and gaming, and performance usually gets worse. Understanding variation, and managing it, brings lasting improvement.

3. Processes, not people. Improving performance is not about managing people; it is about improving processes. People are constrained by policies, processes and politics. To expect people to perform better in a poor process is harassment. It is the processes that need to perform.

These habits and their principles might sound logical and obvious – and they are. But how well are they practised?

Stacey Barr is a specialist in business performance measurement and KPIs. She is the author of Practical Performance Measurement: Using the PuMP Blueprint for Fast, Easy and Engaging KPIs. For more details, visit www.staceybarr.com.