Patty has a fantastic blog post about how you need to connect the dots for your team. I love how she makes it so clear that our job is to help people understand how their work matters.
Since we know that purpose is a key to motivation, doing so not only protects the results, it also increases the satisfaction of the results.
A perpetual cycle of goodness, if you will…
But, connecting the dots is not really a one-time concern.
As a leader, you need to build systems to identify places where people and processes are missing the connection. You need to be looking out for any evidence that the dots are not lining up for people – and you need to fix it.
People get busy. People are focused on other things, they can easily confuse what is locally important, with what is strategic to the business. It is not their failing when this happens, it is a leadership failing.
Your job is to connect the dots and keep them connected — when they are not, results will suffer.
Meg Bear 