Robert Valentino is the Founder and CEO of Lean Coach®, an innovative Operational Excellence consultancy and SaaS solution.
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As a senior leader at Amazon, I had the opportunity to spend time coaching and mentoring managers. They often asked for my advice on career progression. I want to share my philosophy with you, which I commonly refer to as lean leadership.
From my experience, it doesn't matter what industry you work in or your job function. Entry-level to mid-level management are typically rated in three categories: productivity, projects and people.
Productivity
Being rated in productivity means that your leader evaluates your ability to execute your basic job functions. For example, if you are an office manager, you are rated on how well the office meets its daily, weekly and quarterly objectives. If you are a manufacturing manager, you are rated on your team's or department's key performance indicators. If you lead a small software development team, you are being rated on the quality and productivity of your team.
You are typically compared to your peers or a known standard when rated. In both cases, your productivity can be measured. For simplicity, let's assume your core productivity metric can be rated as a percent. If you consistently achieve 105% or above, you are classified as a leader who exceeds expectations. If you consistently achieve between 100% and 105%, you are classified as a leader who meets expectations. If you consistently achieve 99% or lower in your role, you are classified as not meeting expectations.
Unfortunately, this is where a lot of coaching stops. Many people believe focusing on productivity is all they need to do, and if they are struggling with productivity, they may not know how to turn the situation around. This leads me into the second category.
Projects
Focusing on projects is another way of saying "leading continuous improvement opportunities."
Continuous improvement projects require a different type of leadership compared with your management role. Managers responsible for productivity perform tactical work, where direct authority is critical. For example, if someone on your team is not meeting expectations, you usually have the authority to correct or discipline the employee. This is referred to as positional power.
Leading a continuous improvement project is very different, as the direct approach may not work. For example, you typically do not have direct authority when leading a cross-functional team, and you may not have positional power when trying to make changes.
Instead, you should rely on influence, communication and persuasion to drive results. These attributes are commonly found in strategic leaders.
Leading continuous improvement projects encourage you to adjust your leadership style and think more strategically. Recognizing an opportunity for improvement, conducting analytical thinking to identify the root cause, then designing and constructing tests and prototypes to correct the problem as well as an implementation plan, and leading that change initiative is very different from enforcing standards and holding your team accountable for execution. Leading continuous improvement projects is a strategic role.
Unless you work in a full-time continuous improvement role, I suggest entry-level managers dedicate 10% of their time to leading continuous improvement activities and 90% of their time to tactical work, meaning running daily tasks and routines.
Mid-level managers should spend 50% of their time on strategic initiatives and 50% on tactical. Most senior leaders are inversed, as they typically spend 90% of their time on strategic initiatives and 10% on tactical.
Improving your ability to lead strategic initiatives can help set you apart from your peers and prepare you for future strategic roles.
People
The third category is people, which refers to your team, peers and leaders. This category is much harder to measure, but it may have more weight than the other two. This is also an excellent time to highlight how all three work together.
When you are focused on your team through engagement and empowerment, their productivity begins to increase. You also earn their trust, so they are more supportive when you have an idea for change.
When you implement continuous improvement projects that add value to your customers and team, their trust in you increases, and their productivity will also improve due to the benefits from the project.
As you lead more improvement projects throughout your organization, you will find that your peers are your greatest asset. When you seek to improve your relationships with them by helping them with their projects, soliciting their feedback on your changes and giving them credit when credit is due, their trust in you increases. Having your peers' support makes it much easier to implement change. The more effective change you implement, the more it can help them and their teams, improving productivity beyond your normal scope.
As you continue to implement change and deliver results, you may receive recognition from your senior leaders. As you report your projects to them, their confidence in your problem-solving abilities will likely increase. Their trust in you will improve, and they will ask you to take on more responsibilities.
Focusing on these three categories becomes a virtuous cycle: Spending time in one area improves the cycle as a whole and makes it spin faster and faster.
The more projects you lead, the more strategic experience you gain—and the more people you work with, the stronger your influence. The more productive your team becomes, the more time you can spend on strategic initiatives. And the more you focus on developing your team and teaching them the lean methodology, the number of projects you are responsible for grows. You can now delegate much of the work and spend more time mentoring.
In my opinion, this is the essence of what it means to be a lean leader: You focus on productivity, projects and people. As a result, not only can you gain an excellent reputation in your organization, but you can experience meaning and fulfillment in your career.
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