CHAPTER 11

A Final Message

HOW TO BECOME AN IMPACT CATALYST 5 x 5 x 5

Improve Your Effectiveness and Use the Skills When You Should

As laid out throughout this book, making a difference in any complex organization is a daunting challenge, especially in and across teams. Making a difference in our work and in life is a powerful motivator and fundamental to our sense of purpose. My hope is that Work That Counts provides you with an actionable and meaningful framework and road map to progress more rapidly and successfully toward achieving your most important goals—at work and at home.

Consider the three ACE mindsets:

Alignment: Do the Right Thing for Your Real Team

Collaboration: Partner In and Across Teams to Achieve Goals

Empowerment: Provide and Get the Fuel to Take Action and Drive Decisions

Simple but powerful. Grounded yet fresh. Think about ACE when you are analyzing and executing your work and your life.

When aligning to do the right thing, the objective is to individually and collectively choose to do the right thing for your broader team—your real team. Figuring this out is tough, especially in a rapidly changing environment, even with the best company-wide vision and strategy cascaded and translated from the top. The more context people have, the wiser decisions they’ll make regarding the priorities they pursue. Applying the Get the Support You Need skills will strengthen your influence across the organization and throughout life.

Collaborating in and across teams to achieve goals addresses partnering skills, which are key to tackling any large projects or initiatives. We all need to work and live with others, and when dealing with people, conflicts emerge. Talk It Out offers steps and starters for better outcomes. Embrace the Tension as you discuss your challenges. People often give in or give up too early. The goal is not necessarily to get your way, but rather to make the best decision or build the best solution.

Empowered relationships, which provide the fuel to take action and drive decisions, are built upon the trust established between the team leader and the team member. This relationship can be fine-tuned and continually updated to reflect relevant shifts in circumstances and needs. It will play out differently for different people and in different areas of responsibility. Whether at work or at home, always keep in mind what the team leader can do to be more empowering by letting go and lifting up, and what the team member can do to be more empowerable by stepping up and earning it.

In chapter eight, you used a 1 to 5 scale to rate yourself (and your organization) on several aspects of each of the three mindsets. This produced your Impact Score, by multiplying the three averages together. Then we offered up an aspirational goal of becoming an Impact Catalyst—someone who scores a 5 x 5 x 5. In chapter nine, I gave you tips for creating a development plan to improve your score and strengthen your impact.

Remember, it’s hard to collaborate if you aren’t aligned. But you can’t align without collaboration. And don’t forget the fuel you need to take action and drive decisions. They are all inextricably linked.

What would it mean to you if you were able to improve your effectiveness in each of the three mindsets? And not only that, but what if you could increase the likelihood that you would use the skills when you should? By improving even a little, you can inordinately strengthen your impact in and across teams, to get the right stuff done—for you, for your team, for your organization, and at home in your personal life. It’s Work That Counts.

Richard Lee

Portola Valley, California