Alignment and Trust - Keeping Score

This week has been interesting ....... we are called on at our club to elect members to lead.......
How do we make the right judgmental calls? For a start......
1. look at the themes that candidates are running on,
2. compare the themes and look for key differentiation,
3. focus on the theme that is most likely to meet the immediate needs of the membership base,
4. review the credentials of the candidates to ascertain whether they have the qualities to fulfill their promises.

Qualities include
1. trustworthiness - posses integrity and competency
2. team player - has high EQ, ability to empathise and build consensus
3. strong ability to deliver on promises made
4. open and transparent - willing to keep score

A right direction has been taken in aligning the interest of key stakeholders. However we must avoid the temptation of falling into the "trust me" syndrome. Instead we need to build a platform that is based on ( mutual )trust. Hence we have rules. These rules are to foster and engender trust amongst key stakeholders and collaborators. Without trust, things will grind to a halt.

Rules must be created naturally to meet specific needs and or concerns. Chiefly, it is about aligning the interests of key stakeholders i.e. members, elected officials and management.

To ensure that key stakeholders focus on a common purpose, we need to ensure that the processes are transparent, where we can keep track of things and are comfortable that things are moving in the right direction.

One of the most important rules to set is to submit your scorecard. We may ask ourselves why? Can't we all merely declare our "handicaps", and why can’t I expect my "flight mates" to trust me to declare the right handicap.

For the very reasons that we have rules on submitting scorecard after completing each round, we must also keep score for the affairs of the club and submit it forthwith and have it published/shared.

You may ask why?
1. Exercising empathy - how would you like if your business associate make a request for you to hand over your precious resources and merely say - "trust me". Even if you do agree, it cannot be a sustainable relationship.

2. Fulfill on promises made - scorecard keeps it clean, and allows us to accumulate credits in our trust account. We may need it for the rainy days.


3. By measuring we know where the fixes are required and we can manage and live within our means - it instills discipline.

4. Make ourselves sexier. Knowing our strengths and weaknesses ( because the scorecard tells us the benchmarks i.e. index, par, length .... and we match our actual score against these ) we can begin to improve on our shortcomings, groom ourselves...... understand the causes-and-effects, learn how to align our resources, and string a series of shots to get the birdies and eagles.

5. Allow us to keep things "civil". Any disputes, disagreements......we can have a basis to focus and resolve differences.

Need we say more.......

So, draw up your wish list....... 18 of them...... and give it to the candidates and let them match / rank them against the scorecard ( there are plenty in the club house ) in terms of difficulties / standard ( index, length, par ). These are the deliverables that they promise to deliver...... judge whether they meet your needs and vote accordingly.

It will be interesting to see the score that they return.

Suggested wish list:
1. submit / publish scorecard ( aganist the deliverables that they have promised )
2. build consensus / be a team player
3. represents the interest of members
4. able to connect to members, undertand and meet their needs
5. instill financial discipline
6. identify unmet needs and turn it into a profitable franchise
7. install a process-driven model ( build a data bank of corporate memory )
8. leverage on the mavens and connectors to develop new profitable products and services
9. create value to members ( membership price )
10. exploit technology to achieve higher productivity
11. train of staff / develop training manual / templates that can be replicated
12. achieve high quality standards for the facilities
13. achieve high quality service standards
14. identify the break even load factor and set a benchmark to achieve an acceptable level of profit
15. ensure reach to the memebership base ( penetration rate in terms of usage of facilities )
16. conduct timely member satisfaction survey
17. conduct staff satisfaction survey
18. promote good corporate citizenship

Keywords: quality, value systems,
trust, domain knowledge, technology, networking, maven traps, speed of trust, lifestyle