I recently realised I’d made a mistake. Something didn’t feel right. I’d committed to doing something which I know would have worked but I felt I was being drawn into a cul-de-sac. But it was just a feeling until I realised what I was doing and could name it, and therefore could state the solution.
I’ve been working on ‘productivity’ and specifically not just how I can explain to others how I get stuff done, but how I can meet them where they are at in order to move them to where they want to be. This has been very useful work in creating a foundation for extremely impactful work across our organisation.
I have learnt many things; how to unpack, codify and explain to others very abstract concepts which helps their practice and mine, how that no matter how clever and effective your solutions are, they will not have any impact unless you can sit beside someone and meet them where they are, and that productivity is all about managing our anxieties and sits firmly within wellbeing.
We have worked with teams and people who needed it, staff who would benefit from it the most, and we have seen some gains.
But I have not felt the big gains I was expecting, nor the sustainable cascade. Instead, I felt a spurt… when I and others injected energy into our staff, there was a momentary gain, like a liquid nitrogen turbo boost… BOOM!
But then, after this, I have felt entropy, and the same behaviours coming back and repeating. And I have wondered why.
I had set up sessions to repeat the work that had given us the gains, but I felt something wrong about it. I felt I was creating a black hole for myself - a situation where I would be spending my energy and only getting stuff out when I am putting it in, and we need to create supernovas.
And I realised my mistake. I was throwing seeds on stony ground. Instead of identifying staff who needed my help the most, I should have done the opposite; identify staff who already do it well, and work with them.
I realised I need to build success on success.
I have done this many times and it always works, and it is a strategy I use really well, but I fell into the conventional thinking trap of, “who needs my help the most? Ok… I’ll help them…”
My negative feelings were one of, “Why is all this coming from me? Why am I creating a dependence on my time? Why is it that I’m being seen as the expert, and therefore the gatekeeper?” - negative thoughts which seem to be around ego.
Fear and ego, hubris and entropy are our enemies which we need to smash. I need to get better at spotting these things within myself.
So I failed faster. I cancelled all my plans for this grand ‘roll out’ of productivity.
Instead, we are identifying our productivity champions, working with them so that they will create a development programme collaboratively, and for them to identify others who they believe will have success. And we create a supernova.
Those that struggle the most will be surrounded by those that are being successful and will inevitably adapt and slowly grow, or they will choose to bloom somewhere else. Either way, the organisation will strengthen.
With this thinking, I have identified a different area of development where we are making the same mistake - expecting everyone to do the same thing, before we have created a successful model. Success is achieved more easily through showing others your success, not trying to convince others that they may be successful.
This isn’t ‘piloting’, this is ‘modelling’. Just like we do with our kids. Trying to explain a concept and then expecting them to create the concept is much less successful than showing them a model and how it works and then asking them to recreate it. So we do the project first ourselves, and share the model for critique.
And what’s good enough for our kids is good enough for us.