​Rules of Engagement

Studies suggest autonomy is the single greatest predictor of employee engagement within a company. But how do we, as leaders, balance our employees’ desire for freedom with our need for predictable, measured results? Lynn Jurich, CEO and co-founder of SunRun, the nation’s largest provider of residential solar energy services, knows something about this struggle. Having founded SunRun in 2007 with business school classmate Edward Fenster, Jurich made most of the managerial decisions herself. However, when SunRun doubled, then tripled in size, Jurich quickly realized she needed a method that allowed her to pass these decisions off to others without sacrificing the outcome. Today, Jurich follows a tried-and-true, four step plan we can all learn from: “Hire very good people, always hold them to a high standard, provide them a lot of context, and make sure they have what they need to succeed.”

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Hire very good people – With a customer growth rate of close to 30% during the past year, no one would be surprised that SunRun has increased its hiring by more than 78%. What might surprise some is that Jurich, as a practice, chooses to leave holes in her employee roster rather than hire anyone who isn’t a great fit for her company—even under pressure. 

​When you have a big gap on your team and a lot of work that needs to be done, it’s tempting to rationalize hiring someone who has a certain set of skills but isn’t a true cultural fit. Yet I’ve found it’s so important to cue into whether I’m having a “whole body yes.” If I pay attention to that physical reaction, I usually make the right call. Either I’ll explore what’s preventing a positive response and resolve it, or I’ll discover the person really doesn’t share our values, and then I’ll move on. By consistently hiring managers who are aligned with the company’s values and mission, and coaching those leaders to do the same with their hires, Jurich has created a workforce that needs very little oversight to ensure its decisions keep SunRun’s interests at the forefront.

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Hold everyone to a high standard – Jurich uses a management concept called “Impeccable Agreements,” which she learned through leadership coaching and a book called, The Fifteen Commitments of Conscious Leadership. Essentially, all employees at SunRun (including herself) begin each new project with detailed agreements, delineating their commitment and timeline. Any inability to follow through must be explicitly renegotiated. “When you say something, either you follow through with it, or you come back and renegotiate it… You can run so much faster as a business because you're not checking on what everybody else is doing.” As a result of this practice, Jurich says, not only does SunRun save time, but she and her employees are much more deliberate about what they commit to doing and are much more likely to keep those commitments.

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Provide context for decision making

​“You really want to find that balance between providing a real, single and unified vision for the company, but also giving enough decision-making push down and control down at the lower levels of the organization where people are really making the day-to-day decisions… What it means is that everybody is very clear on what the big strategic goals are… They don’t have to go check in with eight other different people…They can just feel empowered that, ‘OK, I know what the right decision is for the company, so I’m just going for it.’ ”

According to Jurich, communication is the key to making this happen. To create clarity and strong alignment throughout SunRun, she not only meets weekly with each of her department heads and quarterly with all SunRun employees, but also provides concise, plainly written goals for each department, then makes these documents easily accessible to every employee on the company server.

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Equip your people to succeed – In addition to providing job training and helping to establish mentor/mentee relationships throughout the different SunRun departments, Jurich takes a personal approach to ensuring her leadership teams have everything they need to succeed in their jobs. In all but rare occasions, Jurich walks to work - a journey that takes nearly an hour - and uses that time to mentor any up-and-coming employees. Meeting at her home, Jurich and her mentee walk to work together each morning until the new leader feels confident for the tasks ahead. Establishing this as the standard, Jurich then encourages each person she mentors to provide the same level of help and attention to the people on his or her team.

​As leaders, we have the power to inspire our teams to take more responsibility, and the ability to help them succeed. By filling our teams with carefully chosen candidates, expecting high performance, and providing our people with the information and support they need, we can develop a workforce that’s nimble, accurate and successful, without the micromanagement so prevalent in older business models. The post-quarantine workspace is changing, but we, as leaders, have everything we need to stay in front and continue forward with confidence.

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​Are you an empowering leader? Are you looking for ways to inspire your teams toward greater autonomy? Let us share more leadership lessons from empowering leaders in an online workshop. You bring the team members, and we’ll create an immersive learning program, linking real-life examples with your individual workplace issues.

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