When you want to give power to people who have been traditionally powerless, norm setting is a great first step in returning them control. Norm setting says, “This is your team. How do you want to run it? How do you want to be in it?” It also says, “I the leader don’t have to be in charge of everything.”
The beginning of every quarter is a magical moment for a do-over. It’s never too late to try something new. Create a team charter or “rules of engagement” or whatever you want to name it. Run weekly retrospectives.
Your role as a leader here:
Get serious about your weekly one-on-ones. If the schedule is difficult, make them biweekly but not less often. But don’t treat them as something you can cancel and not reschedule. They aren’t disposable. Even when nothing critical is discussed, you have still connected with your report as a human being, increasing psychological safety.
Your role as a manager:
Change how you run performance reviews, unless you are running them quarterly and compassionately already. Your ability to coach people is the difference between team members who keep getting better and team members who get a new job.
Your role as a manager:
If you’d like to change your entire organization to the 9x team process, try starting with one team first. Let them be the pilot. I’ve seen so many companies fail epically with OKRs when they try to “roll it out company-wide.” Go slow. Evaluate. Adjust. This is not a religion, this is just a set of best practices. They will work best if you try them as is with a small group, let that group make adjustments, and then roll them out slowly.