“I only care about results – I don’t need the details, Chris.”
I’ll never forget being told this by a senior leader early on in my career. Excited to share everything that the team and I had been doing, I rambled off a myriad of tasks to my leader during a 1 on 1 conversation. From his perspective, I must have gone through every meticulous detail, from what we did to how we did it since we last connected. Getting through my list of items was essential to me. The reality was, he only cared about the how and the why – the result.
Lesson Learned – Results
Leaders at all levels of organizations have a lot on their minds. Running from meeting to meeting, fighting fires, and crises, in between the constant ping of email notifications, leaders are balancing a lot of plates. Sometimes all they want to know is what they need to know. Are you meeting your targets? Is success on the horizon? Do you expect your project to be delivered on budget and on-time? Yes, great! If not, what are the blockages? What do you need from them to move forward to produce the desired results?
Results matter. Goals, KPIs, metrics, objectives – choose your word to describe what matters most to those higher up the food chain, it’s all the same. Everyone is accountable for delivering results. If you do deliver that’s great. If you can’t, it’s better to tell them sooner than later. This is an essential part of managing up, as no one wants to be blindsided by poor results. If done right, goals are often cascaded through various levels of the organization, so there’s a good chance a leader has a related or similar goal as a direct report. If the goal is in jeopardy of being achieved, leaders want to know to course-correct and adjust.
Time is a Factor
With a lack of time available, many leaders just want to know the facts. The higher up the leadership ladder one is, the less in the weeds (details) they want, need, or should be. To manage up adequately, I suggest that employees (at all levels, including lower or middle-level managers) follow this method to concisely communicate with their leaders about results – SCAR approach.
SCAR Approach
- S –
Define the Situation
- What happened?
- C –
Clarify the Connection
- Who is involved?
- A –
Explain the Approach
- Why did it happen?
- R –
Share the Result
- How does this impact?
If it takes longer than 2 minutes to share an update with your leader, then you are talking too much. Talking with an executive? Aim to get your message out in less than 1 minute. This approach works because you aim to be as concise as possible, explaining what happened, who is involved, why something took place, and, most importantly, the overall impact. No one section should take more than a couple of sentences, making them less than 15-30 seconds each. If your leader wants to know more and dig deeper, they will ask. Structuring your communications, whether in person or over email, helps to create a more coherent story. In the end, you get to the result much faster than you might have if you took another path.
Here’s an Example
- Situation: We completed a review of our team’s employee engagement scores for the year.
- Connection: We captured feedback from all Supervisors, Team Leads, and employees.
- Approach: In a focus group, we held a Start, Stop, Continue Session to drive discussion and build a list of action items to drive ongoing continuous improvement and engagement.
- Result: Armed with this list, we identified 3 quick wins that should improve our engagement score by at least 10% next time around. We also found a new process opportunity to improve our website content that will help drive revenue.
The deeper into the conversation, the more details get shared. The updates build more in value. Unfortunately, the reverse often happens with many employees spending loads of time building context or dancing around giving a result. Lost getting out of the gates, employees will often ramble about the situation, before getting to the outcome. I have witnessed this way too many times in my career, with ramblers struggling to get to the point, annoying everyone in attendance. All anyone cares about is the result. Aim to get there as fast as possible.
Final Thought
Being concise and getting to the point takes time and practice. To manage up effectively, it’s vital to know your audience and how they want to receive communication. Some people are different. Many people prefer visuals as part of any discussion. Others wish to have email briefs or memos prepped and sent in advance for their review. Regardless of what they want, be concise, and share what matters, the results.
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