If our organizations are inhuman, it’s because we designed them to be so—whether consciously or not. Every institution is an assemblage of choices about how best to organize human beings in light of some particular goal. The premise of this book is that most of these choices can and must be revisited.

Here are seven suggestions, based on what we’ve learned from Nucor and Southwest:

1. Recraft the mission statement for your unit or, if possible, the entire organization, in a way that makes it emotionally resonant for every team member and gives people a common cause.

1. Do whatever you can to provide team members with the skills and information they need to collaborate and exercise their collective judgment. Help them become less reliant on their managers.

1. In interpersonal encounters, look for opportunities to reveal something of yourself, and encourage others to do the same. Have a tender heart for those who are struggling with issues outside of work.

1. Ask your team to identify areas where greater autonomy would help 38 them deliver a better customer experience or improve operations, and then carefully expand their decision-making prerogatives.

1. Institute team-based goals and rewards as a way of encouraging mutual accountability.

1. Cultivate mutual respect by creating opportunities for individuals to shadow other jobs, and work to reduce distinctions of rank and hierarchy wherever possible.

1. Hire for compassion, follow the golden rule, and celebrate acts of kindness.

There are many ways you can begin syndicating the work of managing to your team. Here are a few.

Setting Direction

1. Ask your team to define its shared mission. Give them time to brainstorm answers to questions like, “What’s our value proposition?” “How should we measure the success of our team?” and “What are the most important things we could do to increase our impact?”

1. Hold a monthly half-day session to discuss business unit or corporate-level strategy. Ask your colleagues to identify what they could do to support the overall mission.

1. If your company has a formal planning process, ask your team to take the lead in defining priorities, setting milestones, and developing budgets.

A useful exercise to go through at the beginning of your transition is to sit down and make a list of all the things that are awesome about the current state of the world. Does everyone get along? Are your processes efficient? Is your team known for rigorous and high-quality work?

Now, next to that, create a list of all the things that could be better. Is your team cagey about deadlines? Does it seem like priorities are always shifting? Is there that one really long weekly meeting nobody wants to attend?

These two lists give you the start of a plan for what you should and shouldn’t change. You don’t need to fix what isn’t broken, but neither should you feel like you’re stuck in a time machine of this is how it was always done. After all, that’s why you got the job! Taking the time to reflect on the biggest opportunities for improvement helps you understand how to best act as a multiplier for your team.

Successful delegation requires four components, assuming you have delegated a job to the right person or team:

1. Pinpoint what the person or team needs to accomplish (Priorities — One-Page Strategic Plan).

1. Create a measurement system for monitoring progress (Data — qualitative and quantitative key performance indicators).

1. Provide feedback to the team or person (Meeting Rhythm).

1. Give appropriately timed recognition and reward (because we’re dealing with people, not machines).