Guiding Your Team To Act Through Uncertain Times

At Persimmon, we talk and write often about leading with outcomes over directives, and teaching your team members “judgment” so they can make good decisions without you.

One of the ways we do that in practice is our “TPG Guidance.” This 1-page document is a set of considerations and principles that we ask our team to consider as they make decisions—decisions about how to interact with customers, how to manage their time, and how to work with each other.

In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, our leadership added a supplemental section to guide our team through this period of uncertainty. You can read the full document here.

Here are some of the principles we are asking our team members to operate by during this time:

1. We want our team and community to be safe. Safety should come first in all decision-making. Please consider how you can improve our team and community through this outbreak.

2. Communicating remotely is not just about technology—it is about new patterns of interaction. Directness, openness, trust, immediacy, innovation.

3. Be our eyes and ears. Share information, intelligence, and issues (escalation) as you get it for key insights such as client challenges in response to COVID, service opportunities in the community, business risks, or personal needs/health updates.

4. Stay awesome, stay weird. It’s still really important that we connect with each other on a human and FUN level during this time. Text each other, call each other, use video chat whenever possible, send each other ridiculous memes…our culture is strong, and it isn’t constrained to a building.

In times of uncertainty, guidance must shift to adapt to conditions. Prepare your team to act without you. Establish guidance. Support their decisions when tied to the guidance. Provide feedback. Build judgment.