Move Your Bus

If you want to build a successful organization, you must cultivate high expectations.

For business owners, it’s a tough world out there. But luckily there are a few simple tools for improving ourselves, motivating others and helping our companies succeed.

First, cultivate high expectations of yourself and others. In other words, set goals to accomplish more, be better and succeed faster.

But here’s the thing: high expectations don’t mean bupkis if you aren’t accountable. Meaning, if you expect a lot from someone, you have to make it possible for them to deliver by clearly communicating what you expect. For instance, you might ask them to prepare two pages on a specific subject by tomorrow morning.

And if they don’t come through, deliver the message again with more clarity and specificity. You should be encouraging and make sure you don’t communicate everything all at once. By making requests in small doses, you’ll make it possible for the other person to take it one thing at a time.

Consider Ron Clark’s eponymous Ron Clark Academy, an award-winning nonprofit middle school in Atlanta. The institution makes a point of educating its teachers, thus sending them into the classroom with energy and passion. When it conducts staff seminars, the school motivates teachers by challenging them, helping them set high expectations for their own classroom performance.

To show others how to adapt this model, Ron Clark developed the following metaphor: imagine a bus in a Flintstones cartoon. There’s no engine, so your team has to push the bus to get it to move. The bus stands for your goals: you’ll only be able to move the bus (i.e., reach your goals) if everyone performs together at a high level.

The “everyone” part is really crucial: each member of the team – no matter what their role – has a contribution to make. And in the end, you’ll only succeed by working together.