The New Leader's 100-Day Action Plan, 5th Edition

CHAPTER 7Drive Operational AccountabilityEmbed Milestone Management by Day 45.

The real test of a high‐performing team's tactical capacity lies in the formal and informal practices that are at work across team members, particularly around clarifying decision rights and information flows.¹ The real job of a high‐performing team's leader is to inspire, enable, and empower others to do their absolute best, together. The most effective leaders spend more time integrating across than managing down. This is best achieved by implementing a straightforward milestone management tool that focuses on mapping and tracking who is doing what by when. High‐performing team leaders exploit this milestone management tool to hold each other accountable and enable people to work together as a team!

Early wins are about credibility and confidence. People have more faith in people who have delivered. You want team members to have confidence in you, in themselves, and in the plan for change. You want your boss and your colleagues to have confidence in your team's ability to deliver.

Milestones Are Checkpoints Along the Way to a Defined Goal

Recall these definitions from Chapter 5:

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

  Now ...