Prep-Do-Review - Hill and Lineback offer tips on management that apply directly to effective teams
Hill and Lineback on post-action review:
Great managers make post-action review a regular practice for themselves and their people. You can make it the focus of a one-on-one after an activity has been completed. Or it can be part of periodic meetings with each of your people or a standard procedure you go through in the updates your people provide at staff meetings. Be sure to model what you expect when you describe something you did — Here's what we learned. Next time we'll do it this way.
Their post is not explicitly focused on making your teams better, but the lessons are perfectly applicable. The Prep-Do-Review process is what allows managers to be both present and engaged, while keeping enough distance to avoid micromanagement. But the process works at both ends of the daily managerial spectrum.
In times of high stress -- such as high-velocity change projects -- managers are often faced with the daunting task of actually managing, or providing feedback to team members, direct reports, or functional managers. And when we get busy, putting our all into these management tasks is one of things that tends to fall off the rails.
By operationalizing the Prep-Do-Review process, particularly the act of reviewing key milestones and accomplishments with staff, you're building the right habits, the right modeling behavior for the rest of the team, and you're keeping your promises to those that count on you for performance feedback of your team.
So take a read of Hill and Lineback's latest opus -- it's a quick read and worth consideration!
