Nobody has it easy. Working people have a tough way to go and so do their managers. Everybody has challenges.
When teams aren't hitting their goals, we tend to look at the people on the team and ask "What's wrong with them?" We might even beat up on them and tell them they're going to get bad performance reviews or even get fired if they don't hit their marks.
That's foolish. When people on a team don't hit the goal, we have to broaden the lens and look at the overall environment.
Here are the Eight Mojo Blockers we run into most often in our work with clients at Human Workplace. These Mojo Blockers show up in large and small organizations. They keep teams stuck and on top of that, they can be hard topics to bring up.
Nobody wants to be the one to say "The plan is convoluted" or "There's a lot of overlap between our roles." These Mojo Blockers can be sticky topics to talk about.
That's why the number one job of a leader is to create an environment where important topics get aired, even if they are sticky. A leader's job is to make the workplace a place where people can tell the truth without getting in trouble for it.
You can use the topic of Mojo Blockers to start a discussion at your staff meeting. Ask your teammates whether they've run into any of these Eight Mojo Blockers on the job. You can use the drawing in this story as a conversation-starter.
At the top of the Eight Mojo Blockers Wheel you can see a little tornado on a yellow background. The tornado represents a disturbance in the Force. You remember the Force from Star Wars, right?
A disturbance in the Force is any controversy or difficult topic -- usually one with an interpersonal aspect -- that is affecting the good energy on your team. It's a topic that needs more airtime than it's getting.
Maybe Sally gave notice and threw the team into a tailspin or maybe there's been a change in your incentive plan. Whatever your disturbance is, you'd better talk about it and get it handled! Otherwise, the disturbance will throw off your team's energy and keep it from hitting its goals.
To the right of the tornado is a guy holding an umbrella. The second Mojo Blocker is fear. People get fearful at work when they aren't sure how they are situated. If you're talking about making changes that could affect a person's job security, you owe it to that person (or people) to talk frankly about that topic. There are other reasons people get fearful.
Maybe somebody is in trouble -- "on the bubble," in Business Speak -- and in danger of losing their job for performance reasons. That person needs to know exactly where he or she stands and what can be done to solve the problem.
If you as the manager can see that there just isn't a fit between a person and his or her job, why let that employee slowly twist in the wind? Offer that person a soft landing instead in the form of a severance package and a respectful exit. You can wish your departing employee well and the team can get back to its work.
The third Mojo Blocker is burnout. Your employees are human. They can only push so hard for so long. Eventually they get exhausted. They can't keep pushing a rock uphill. When people are working hard and still not hitting their goals, they're going to give up - and who could blame them?
Your job as the manager is to soften the energy and show people the path to success, or change the goal in acknowledgement of the fact that it was never a reasonable goal to begin with. A job should be challenging, but not defeating! Maybe it's your turn to tell a higher-up to yank the needle out of their arm and set a more reasonable goal.
The fourth Mojo Blocker is Crossed Wires. That's what you get when different people have different ideas about what the goal really is or how to reach it. You can call a truth-telling meeting and get all the differing ideas out on the table and sorted out.
At the bottom of the Mojo Blockers wheel you see a roll of red tape. Red tape is bureaucracy. It grows like kudzu and chokes the life out of your team and its energy. A manager can reduce the level of red tape that his or her employees have to deal with, and it's every employee's job to speak up when red tape is getting in the way of the team's purpose.
Do you really need all those signatures and approvals just to take baby steps toward your goals? Too much bureaucratic sludge in your engine will kill the team's momentum and motivation. Bureaucracy is one way a fearful management team clamps down on original thinking and independent action. Hack away at the kudzu before it overtakes you!
The sixth Mojo Blocker is unaddressed issues. The elephant in the room signifies topics that desperately need discussion, but no one is talking about them. Here are a few unaddressed issues we've run into lately with our clients:
- Samantha the Scheduler needs more training. She is a lovely person but she is really messing us up because she doesn't understand our systems.
- Both Jack and Xavier think they're doing the same job. Somebody needs to straighten that role confusion out.
- The incentive plan pays us for delivery date of the report, not for the level of detail. Yet the VPs want an excruciating amount of detail in their reports. How can we synch up the compensation system with the deliverables our executives want, so that we don't feel taken advantage of?
You and everyone on your team will breathe more easily and smile more broadly when all the elephants in the room are named and discussed openly. It may feel sticky to bring up difficult topics at first, but later you'll be glad you did!
The seventh Mojo Blocker is a Confusing Plan. We run into this issue all the time. A VP may have set the overall tone for the plan while Directors and Managers flesh out the details. To the team, the resulting plan is as clear as mud. It's time to pull the truck back and revisit the plan from start to finish.
Why push forward on a plan no one understands or buys into?
The last Mojo Blocker in our wheel is No Latitude. When employees are empowered to do their jobs, the work is easier and faster. Everybody will be happier when you give your teammates the latitude they need to move forward with their projects.
Nobody likes to stop and start all day long, or send constant email reminders to people who have to approve tiny steps forward in your project!
Open up the energy at work by removing these eight Mojo Blockers and watch your team move mountains!
