As a leader, you know that you should be capable of answering straightforward questions about your organization like “are we on track?”.

It’s tempting to turn these questions around to your teams and ask them “are we on track?” – or worse, schedule a regular meeting to ask that question. But this probably puts you squarely in the “management overhead” category (you’re just relaying messages at that point).

So try asking your teams “how do we know if we’re on track or not?”. This will likely lead to a good conversation (including getting everyone on the same page as to what it actually means) and hopefully an automated mechanism for determining the answer without anyone having to ask (you can cancel that recurring “status” meeting). Hint: use metrics.

“How do we know?” questions work in many other places – but as with anything, careful not to overdo it.

Good luck!

-Gary