Today I’m in beautiful Annapolis, Maryland for a client company off-site.
As I watch the boats bob in the bay by the Naval Academy, I’m reminded of the lesson I learned recently about unnecessarily hard work we often do to ensure alignment in our organizations.
…It was a few weeks ago, as I was at home preparing for a workshop on Predictable Success Alignment. In the town where I live, Marblehead, just outside Boston, I walk our dogs each morning by the boat moorings provided by the natural bay.
As the spring turns to summer, I love to watch the number of boats anchored there steadily increase from zero to the point where the bay is completely dotted with boats.
This particular morning, I happened to notice at some subconscious level how each and every boat was always pointed in the same direction.
No struggle. No effort. Certainly no-one responsible for going from boat to boat to point each one individually in the same direction. All achieved effortlessly by the current…
…Which got me to wondering: What’s the ‘current’ in your organization? What do you surround your people with, all day, every day? Is it a fragmented, swirling ‘gloop’ of tides and eddy’s – confusing to all and resulting in non-alignment?
Or is it a steady, single, consistent current – the repetition of your personal, team, department., division or organizational mantra, over and over, subtly and overtly, quietly and loudly, on good days and bad, at the beginning and end, daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly, annually…?
Build a ‘current’ in your business that aligns your people effortlessly – and get yourself off the hook of jumping from boat to boat, trying to get them all to point in the same direction