Should IT leaders be prescriptive in messaging to their teams?

I think with most things, it's about how it's executed. For instance, I'm a big proponent of one-on-ones, but every time another leader or a mentee asks me about one-on-ones, I do become fairly prescriptive about what I don't think a one-on-one should be used for.

If I report to someone and my responsibility was to do X, Y and Z, and in our one-on-one I just tell him that I got those done, I could have done that in an email. There's no reason for a one-on-one. 

The value of the one-on-one from my perspective is that that's a chance for me to get to know them better and vice versa. And to figure out where there's an opportunity for creativity or innovation with this employee. Maybe they're seeing something in the department that they're not comfortable talking to me about because they only see me in the hallway, or when I'm in trouble. If they only see you when you have a specific expectation of them, that doesn't lend itself to exposing communication.

Creativity is an enabler and when you're very prescriptive, that creativity is lost—that's not how great ideas blossom. When your messaging is super specific and defined, you're also putting guardrails on yourself. So the way I think about metrics is to first start off on a more inspirational note about what the company does or wants to be. I worked at a transportation company that wanted everything to be as reliable as running water. So with that general idea, how are you enabling that? From there, that's when the teams break out and understand that if this is our north star, they need to figure out how to support it.

There are controversial components to reviews but I still believe that people need to be measured in some form or fashion. And it can't be based on your own feelings. You need some type of metric because if you don't, then you won't move forward. That's where I draw the line on explaining why the work is important and what we're trying to accomplish - our north star. You have to measure how they're contributing to that. And you need to be smart about who to hire and who to fire—the two are in constant tension and you can't let one pull over the other. You need to be inspirational but also have some metrics to go against that.