The Missing Piece in Managing for Results: Know Your CRABs (no, not that kind!)
We all know people work to produce results, right? Produce a sale, a widget, a TV show – there are lots of kinds of results. It’s great if producing the result also produces a paycheck or some other reward. Either way, the purpose of work is for the results.
That’s why a good manager knows it’s important to be clear about the results people should produce. And equally important, be clear about the goals – the reasons for producing those results. But… many managers, even the best ones, leave out something important (besides giving deadlines, which I wrote about earlier this month). They leave out the “CRABs”.
We forget to tell people that for every goal, and every result, there are people we should consult, i.e., people who have resources we want, people who need to approve some part of what we’re doing, and probably a user-customer at the end of the line who has a preference or opinion you should know about. Here’s how to remember who those people are:
- Collaborators – the people who have information we need, such as scope, constraints, and other professional perspectives;
- Resource providers – those with money, people, and know-how that could be critical to what we want to produce;
- Authorities – the people who will sign off, or reward (and punish, if necessary) some of the details of our work; and
- Beneficiaries – the people who are going to use and appreciate (or complain about) the results of our work.
These are the CRABs associated with every goal and every work assignment. They need to be our partners in performance, but they are too often invisible to us. Sometimes we forget they’re there until it’s too late! CRABs are a key part of your “performance circle” to produce results.
You can see the sketch of a CRAB network in the picture accompanying this blogpost. I drew it up as part of a project with people who were working at nuclear power plants. Note: I was a management consultant for a long time and have lots of these diagrams.
Identifying CRABs is a worthwhile exercise for anyone who has a goal and a result to produce. Find out about the individuals and groups who will likely have (or want to have) something to say about what you are doing or producing. Maybe get in touch with them early on, to let them know what you’re up to and to learn about their perspective on the matter.
But don’t get crabby, even if they say something negative. Those CRABs could be around for a long time.
PS – You don’t need to mention that you call them CRABs. ?
