Managers: Address these gaps to nurture purpose.

A team’s engagement level will make or break it, yet many managers struggle to gain a pulse on it.

The majority latch onto a yearly engagement survey to do so. These surveys are too infrequent to matter and rarely make a dent in improving team morale. They become yet another measurement in a sea of imposed metrics. And these surveys are often the only touchpoint a manager has with the teams.

So, an engagement survey can easily become an ironic, neon sign of low engagement.

I’ve found something much better.

Let me start by explaining how I assess team engagement.

I take cues from Daniel Pink to define a team’s engagement — by its level of autonomy, mastery, and purpose. In my experience, of the three, purpose is the strongest driver of intrinsic motivation. Even so, purpose is highly tied to the other two aspects of engagement — autonomy and mastery. Ensuring these are high will drive purpose.

And after working with 156 teams in my career, I know well the signs of the conditions that erode team purpose.

You too, as a manager, can learn to spot these signals, so let’s review the 8 most common ones I look for, no survey required.

This year, I’ve committed my focus to a concept called lean leverage, as described in my inaugural 2024 post. Each article I craft this year, including this one, will focus on an aspect of Lean Leverage. Enjoy and stay tuned for many ways to do more with less.

Signal 1: Tasks, not customers

Tasks don’t motivate when severed from the customer need.

When a team does not know its customer and only has a list of tasks to complete, purpose becomes muddy. “I finished my task list today,” does not build purpose. “I made my customer’s life better today,” does.

You know tasks are the focus when teams are:

• Working in a silo on a small, disconnected piece of a user solution (components, layers, activities).
• Isolated from direct interaction with customers and stakeholders.
• Following a task list without connection to customer outcomes.

Teams must have their customer front and center, so tasks have meaning.

Signal 2: Success = output

Team output does not guarantee value achievement.

Yet, task planning and tracking are rampant. It is the dominant way teams get measured. Tracking task completion to plan is not a value-added action for building purpose. It rewards (or punishes) behavior not tied to the attainment of customer or business value.

You know output is seen as success when teams are asked:

• “How many tasks did you complete today?”
• “What is your capacity to do more?”
• “Did you finish everything you planned to do?”

Instead, align teams to customer outcome and business impact achievement, not output.

Signal 3: Goal = deadline

Marching to a deadline has killed many a team purpose.

Dates don’t motivate. Nobody ever looks back with pride and claims, “I am so proud we hit the deadline.” Instead, team pride is built by directly influencing a customer’s life for the better.

Here are indicators that deadlines have become the goal:

• The main (and first) question for the team is, “When will you be done?”
• Deadlines are set up front (often for the team, not by the team) at the moment of highest uncertainty.
• High team performance is delivering all fixed scope by a date.

Purpose is better found in finding the right path to a solution sooner, through learning.

Signal 4: Individuals, not team

A collection of individuals does not make a team, and it fragments purpose.

When team member specialization becomes the focus, collective team ownership evaporates. Team members begin to only care about finishing the tasks specific to their lane. This leads to busy team members cranking out more and more of their unique type of task, working ahead. Integrating individual work early to solve a customer need does not get a second thought.

Here are some signals your team might be operating as a collection of individuals:

• “We need a RACI to ensure clear lines of responsibility.”
• “That’s not my job.”
• Performance equates to individual specialty contribution.

To amplify team purpose, dissolve silos inside the team and have them focus together on one user need at a time.

Signal 5: Hands-on-keyboards

Measuring keystrokes is worthless and meaningless.

Yet, I see this as a common go-to measure managers use to track individual team member performance. And it has become even more used as remote work increases and team visibility decreases. Here’s the rub: thinking, decision-making, and iteration produce stellar outcomes, not typing speed.

These are the signs of this unfortunate scenario:

• The goal is to maximize hands-on-keyboards.
• “We need less meetings to debate and more typing.”
• A tool gets installed to track code or words typed per day per team member.

Instead of worrying about keystrokes, ensure teams have time to think, debate, try, learn, and pivot.

Signal 6: Start > finish

Starting cultures dilute a team’s sense of pride from finishing.

When a team starts everything at once, it all takes longer to finish. And the dopamine rush of delivering on a customer need gets postponed. Alternatively, finishing one thing before moving to the next creates a flywheel of momentum.

I notice these common signs that starting is taking over:

• Starting is seen as a sign of progress.
• Obstacles and defects pile up and don’t get resolved.
• Everything is partially done and unintegrated until right before release.

Have teams finish one customer need at a time, as finishing is real progress and purposeful.

Signal 7: No changing allowed

Purpose will take a hit when teams see a better path but don’t have the authority to take it.

When change is restricted or difficult, teams quickly feel hopeless and frustrated. Even if they have a sense of purpose, they lose control over deciding how best to achieve it. Having a purpose means nothing without the ability to pivot along the way.

Here are the most common antipatterns that show change is not welcome:

• No space is available for a team to inspect and adapt.
• Needing permission to change when a better path emerges.
• Standardized processes are enforced over allowing teams to customize approaches to context.

Rather than constrain change, ensure a team can emerge and follow its best path to its destination.

Signal 8: Told, not involved

One-way, top-down decisions take away team control and turn off purpose.

Yet, many organizations do this very thing. The intent is to protect the team so they can focus on the work. But the work becomes just a job and not a purpose without team involvement in deciding its destiny.

These are the three most common signs I see that strip team decision ownership:

• Teams get solutions to build, not problems to solve.
• Smart, centralized groups decide, teams follow the recipe.
• Effort and dates are set for the team upfront at the moment of highest uncertainty.

Keep pride of ownership strong by involving teams in the decision-making process.

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As a manager, you can learn to recognize these eight signals.

You will then be able to quickly assess if the environment nurtures team purpose or sabotages it. The presence of these signals practically guarantees a low purpose. So, forget engagement surveys, and instead, correct the bad signals. Then, you can show leadership by taking action to “right the ship.”

This is yet another way to practice Lean Leverage, respecting people and doing more with less.

And we all could benefit from one less survey, right?

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Related Posts

You can read more posts I’ve written similar to this one below:

How to optimize product team success: measure what matters

Agile Leaders Must Build a Problem-solving Culture

We Need Managers to Become Agile Leaders