I first want to give credit to my colleague, Brent Patmos for introducing me to the concept of Time To Effectiveness. When on-boarding a new employee, re-boarding a current employee, building a team, or re-building a team, it’s all about TTE. To decrease your team’s TTE, you have to flatten the curve. In other words, it’s a competitive advantage for you, your team, and your organization the longer your people and teams spend in “Recommitment”.
Let’s look at a couple examples: First, let’s talk about on-boarding a new employee. When on-boarding, TTE represents how long it takes a new employee to provide a positive return to the organization. For new employees, there is lots of “Anticipation”. There’s excitement, anxiety, uncertainty, and energy. They’re not effective yet, because they don’t know what to commit to. They don’t have clarity yet. A new employee may quickly move through “Letting Go”, makes sense as they don’t have already let go of the last job they had and are moving on to something new. For new employees, I like to think of “Appraisal” and “Commitment” vs. “Reappraisal” and “Recommitment” as it is their first experience with both of those. When a new employee reaches commitment, they are focused and effective.
We are seeing a trend in re-boarding current employees and as they navigate the new way to work they are spending more time in “Letting Go” and “Disorientation”. There is confusion, doubt, and maybe even some depression. Current employees need to work through “Letting Go” and “Disorientation” before getting back to “Reappraisal” and “Recommitment”.
I have noticed leaders feel as though they cannot spend any time in “Disorientation” as that would be a sign of a weak leader. I don’t agree with this…I believe a weak leader is not using any tools to help navigate change. Strong leaders are helping themselves and their teams maintain effectiveness.
Let’s look at a second example which I will call “Re-building” by using a sports story. You’re a college sports coach. College sports teams are going back to campus. 75% of your team is returning from last year, but things are going to be different so you must re-build the team. Your team will have more “Anticipation” than usual and you have less time to get your team effective. As coaches, our goal is to get our team to “Recommitment” as quickly as we can while enhancing relationships which we call “Do With RealTime Coaching”.
Every player will experience all five stages of this model. The time they spend in each stage will vary. It is also possible to have a player get to “Recommitment” only to fall back to “Disorientation” or another stage as they lose focus for some reason. Our team will reach maximum effectiveness when we are all at “Reappraisal” and “Recommitment” together. The single best way to get your players to “Commitment/Recommitment” is to show them this 1-page model and ask them how they are feeling about the season and where they are. Take notes with the date, what stage they are in and why they feel that way.
If you are a coach or leader and are serious about TTE of your team, there’s another strong way to shortcut your TTE and that is with our Style Insights Playbook.
Reply back to me on how I could help your team improve your Time To Effectiveness.