Back on Track!
Effectively and Efficiently Getting Your Team Out of the Mud and Moving!!
Trains are useless off roading! All of that power delivered by electric traction motors is useless without… traction.
On the tracks they can effectively and efficiently move tonnes of goods or hundreds of people. Off the tracks they sink, there tiny steel wheels do not provide the floatation they need to stay above the crushed rock (or mud, depending on how far they have come off the tracks) or the traction they need to get back to high ground.
They tip over.
Stuff get’s broken.
People get hurt.
Your team needs things to operate most effectively.
And perhaps the easiest way to think about what your team needs is to imagine them not having it. Recently I visited an office on Day 4. And not Day 4 of moving into a brand new purpose build building. Day 4 of shoveling out decades of clutter and refuse from what looked like a slow but determined bankruptcy. Day 4 of trying to figure out why the bathrooms were not working, and then get them to start.
The lights which are working are flickering, the air filters are not filtering the air. The heat has not been on in years. The water was undrinkable. There are offices without desks, elevators without power, shrapnel and broken glass everywhere…
Not to mention a thick film of grime just everywhere. The walls the floors, the ceiling, the doors and windows all under a slather of mystery sludge which was once smeared on and has now dried crusty.
There was not even any wifi!
They started a triage of priorities, grabbed a shovel (Figuratively AND Literally) and started putting the place back together again. It took time, it took effort and determination, but after detoxifying the space they completed a renovation which turned that place into a fully functional office space where people can be proud to work! And having a space you can be proud of is as important to working effectively as working effectively is to having space you can be proud of.
Before I became a Leader Development & Team Building Coach I was an Electrical Contractor, and I’ve worked cleaner and more organized construction sites! So
I have also seen a space go from dusty construction site to a fully sterilized state of the art operating room kitted out with everything a modern surgical team needs.
We could let it go the other way. We could let the office be slowly overrun by the decisions we are putting off. We could allow the surgical suite to slowly find its way back to rust and dust.
We don’t though. Without even giving it much thought we know on an instinctive level that offices are more productive when not cluttered, surgeries are more successful when we clean our space and our tools to the highest standards.
We organize ourselves so we know where each thing is before we need it!
Railway tracks have one supporting wood or concrete cross piece each step. People also need something supporting them every step of the way. The good news is if you get ahead of it, your organization can support your team every step of the way without needing you to physically hold them up every step of the way.
When something slips though, or when your business is building out a new area where not everything has been systematized yet, How do we get the train back onto the tracks?
Everything you do as a Leader and a Team Builder needs to be in answer to these questions. They always the same, even when the answers vary a little from one industry to the next.
Which people does your team need?
Which tools do your people need?
What trainings do your people need?
What work environment does your team need to do their best work?
We know these things, and then we get dirt in our eyes or too many things on our desk and lose sight of them. Especially those of us in industries where we start with mud, then we dig a hole and climb into it for weeks or months before we have built out the basement or parkade1 and we are finally working above ground again. Doing these types of work takes a certain toughness, a bit of gravel in your guts Johnny Cash unflinching determination! To start below ground we make ourselves drudgery resistant.
When the chances come along to get your team above ground though, to get your train back on the track, to increase traction and lessen rolling resistance, take them!
Once you made enough shifts from grinding it out to flowing, you develop a sense of it and you can start to create the conditions your team needs to find more flow. And creating conditions for flow is all we really need to take your project from the big engine with wheels stuck in the mud to the little engine that could!
Terry Barkman works as a coach and consultant with
Leaders to Develop
Teams who work together
so that your organization can sustainably
grow without burning you out!
He is Thought Leader, Speaker,
Author, and connoisseur of run on sentences. His upcoming book
Terry-Fied goes deeper into how to get relational leadership working
for your team!
Terry Speaks ~ Photo Credit Anita Alberto
