How to Avoid Pocket Veto's - The Secret Way Teams Refuse

 

How to Avoid Pocket Veto’s – The Secret Way Teams Refuse

You’re cruising along through your meeting.  You’ve got great content and ideas on how to move your business or team forward.  You’ve got a list of goals and behaviors that need to be executed to get you where you’re going.  Everyone loves the new ideas and agrees about the execution.  You leave the meeting feeling pretty high, but as the days and weeks go by, the goals are being missed and the behaviors aren’t happening.  You’re totally confused and you don’t know what’s gone wrong.  You’ve been the victim of the pocket veto. 

What is a pocket veto? 

Usually this is a term in politics whereby a legislator or president with veto power exercises that power by taking no action on a bill.  They could overtly vote against it but for political or public relations reasons they instead choose to do nothing.  The effect is the same, however.  The bill doesn’t pass and become law.  This exists in business as well.  In our Business Consulting practice we’ve seen a lot of this. Everyone in a room agrees to new direction or goals while in the meeting.  After the meeting some or all of the attendees decide that they aren’t going to follow that direction and do something different instead.  

Why do People Pocket Veto?

Why would someone agree in a meeting and then “pocket veto” after the meeting?  They’re afraid to speak their mind, they are overcome by peer pressure, or maybe they lack a fear of consequences for not participating. Regardless of the reason, as a manager it’s your job to make sure that this doesn’t happen. How can you ensure that this doesn’t happen in your team or organization?

The Solution

We wrote a book called The Success System: How To Manage Like a Boss! Get the physical version on Amazon. We also published an excerpt in a previous post called How to Performance Manage Like a Boss!.  Check them both out.  Here’s the cliff notes version.

Number 1 – Align on Expectations

Work with your team on what the outcomes will be.  What goal will you hit, what customers will you target etc.  As often as possible you should make this a collaborate process.  Sometimes you will have goals set for you and your team and they’re non-negotiable.  It’s important that you tell your team that you have a big goal and lead them toward or beyond that target for their commitment.

Number 2 – Empower Your Team

Don’t be the leader that micro manages their team.  This is like being nagged in a relationship.  It’s complete poison.  While the leader thinks they’re helping their team or “protecting them from themselves”, they’re actually stifling the individual and moving accountability away from the employee to the manager.  Ensure your team understands the expectation and has the training and tools they need.  Then get out of the way and watch them succeed!

Number 3 – Account For What You Said You Would Do 

This is missed so much more often than you would think.  In our Business Management Consulting practice, we’ve worked with a lot of teams and found that there is no accounting for results.  By accountability we don’t necessarily mean punishment.  We mean simply reviewing performance and comparing it to what expectations the team aligned on. Whenever you have alignment on a new goal, process, behavior etc. setup a cadence of regular reporting, accounting, reflecting on those results.  Sit down with the team or employees individually or publicly and then have THEM tell you about their performance to target.  Flipping the paradigm so that the employee does all of the talking causes them to realize that they will have to explain their performance.  If they’re not doing well, it will cause them to experience a bit of anxiety, but don’t worry that’s a good thing!  They’ll want to always show up performing as expected from then on.  Your employees that are performing well, however will feel pride and be happy to talk about their results.  Their good behaviors and results will be reinforced and their intrinsic motivation will keep them performing at a high level.

How do you deal with pocket vetos?  Tell us in the comments.