This is part of a series of posts about servant leadership to influence change and inspire greatness. My goal is to make servant leadership more understandable and actionable for everyone regardless of position, title, or status. Because this is the only way to create meaningful change in our complex world. Instead of feeding into division, fear, and disempowerment, we will lead by inspiring, enabling, and empowering.
As people take ownership of their process and outcomes and drive towards continuous improvement, the next area to focus on is removing barriers to success. This is one of the most visible things you will do as a servant-leader.
When others see you tackling the barriers to their success so that they can work easier and faster and more effectively, you grow trust and respect.
There are 5 steps servant-leaders can take to remove barriers. As with most things in the world of complexity, it starts with transparency.
First lets talk about what is meant by barriers to success. No matter your industry or domain, you can broadly define success as frequently and reliably delivering value.
Essentially, we’re talking about how well value flows through your system. If you are in the Scrum/ agile world, you are familiar with the term organizational impediments. I’m going broader in this post to apply to any type of team and also address the barriers that are within the team’s control.
Barriers to success show up in many forms. Some will be obvious but others will not. Remember, this is not about you; it’s about serving others. Ask them what their biggest pain points are. But also observe what is actually happening to shine a light on the less visible barriers.
Here are some examples of common barriers to success:
Visual work management techniques will help you make interruptions, delays, and waste transparent. If you are using a visual board (physical or electronic) to manage the plan and progress towards goals, then you can easily make the barriers to success visible. (Note: You don’t have to be a Scrum/ agile team to create a simple board with the columns To Do, Doing, and Done.)
Every time someone has to do something they consider to be wasteful (i.e. delaying the flow of value to a customer), they can quickly capture it on a post-it and note the approximate amount of time spent on the activity.
The same thing can be done when the team is interrupted with unplanned work (e.g. a bug or a “favor” for a manager) or runs into a delay.
Beware of the barriers that are more like “anchors” rather than “roadblocks.” A team may be able to push on, moving forward while continuing to drag the anchors behind them. Over time the team continues to tire and slow down. Waiting until a barrier becomes urgent is usually a huge impact. Be proactive.
Once you have made the barriers transparent, track them and quantify the impacts over a period of time. For example, every one or two weeks the team can look at the barriers they’ve identified through their visual work management. Consolidate this data to make it visible and facilitate conversations to identify common themes and trends. It can be as simple as using a spreadsheet that is updated on a regular cadence. It may be helpful to label which items are within the team’s control, within the team’s influence, and those outside the team’s influence.
Given the many challenges teams face when doing complex work, it is likely that not all barriers will be immediately addressed when they are identified. Some may not seem as high of a priority to tackle given the cost of resolving them. Therefore, it is important to have objective data to help guide decisions around which barriers to prioritize.
The previous steps will bring transparency, as well as provide data to make the case for investing time and money into removing the barriers. This may be especially important for those that are not within the team’s control. As a servant-leader, you must make the business impact tangible for the people you need to support the change in the organization.
And when you get pushback from either the team or the greater organization, consider asking some powerful questions.
What will happen if we don’t deal with this now?
This helps people really think about the cost of living with the current situation. It can be a strong impetus for action.
What if we could do anything we want to solve this problem? What would that look like?
Often people confuse assumptions and constraints. People assume they have to follow certain processes or use specific tools because it is a constraint in the organization. However, the majority of “constraints” I see in organizations are usually just recommendations or “best practices.” Most things are open to negotiation.
What is the goal of [process/ tool/ policy/ etc]?
This is a great follow-up question if you identify a “constraint” that you want to challenge. There are usually exception processes when it comes to organizational policies, processes, and tools if you have good reasons for doing something differently or not at all.
Rely on input from others, transparent data, and your wisdom and foresight to determine the approach you take to remove barriers. Remember that you’re dealing with complex work, so you don’t have to know the perfect solution. Design an experiment and learn from it.
Now that you know the results of the solution you tried, you can inspect the actual results and determine a way forward.
Perhaps you got the exact results desired, so the team wants to continue forward with the solution. Perhaps the results were good, but you have some ideas on how to make the solution even better. Now you have another experiment to run. Maybe there was no improvement at all, but at least you learned something and can go back to the solution ideas and try a new experiment.
As a servant-leader, removing barriers to success is an essential role. You can teach and coach the team to do this for themselves. However, you must also be willing to take direct action to remove the barriers that are beyond the team’s control. This may involve pushing uncomfortably hard against the status quo. This may involve taking risks yourself – ask for forgiveness rather than permission. This may require building a case for change and a coalition of support, which could take a lot of time and effort. You must remain vigilant in removing barriers to the success of those you are serving.
Read all of the posts in the servant-leadership 101 series:
