Lose The Baggage!
Driving is my therapy. Give me clear skies, money for gas, and some good music on the radio and I will drive to Australia and back. This is why I didn't flinch that time when I had to make a run to pick up some cargo that was 9hrs from home (as per Google maps).
Stryker (my baby on wheels) and I left our driveway at the crack of dawn and took the road by storm. Over hills and valleys, through some rain and around some mountain goats, we covered the distance in 8.5hrs, used only 3/4 tank of gas, and got up to 23mpg along the way. That is impressive on any day, but even more so with a truck.
Once we got to our destination, I collected a Uhaul trailer, loaded it to capacity, and packed the truck so much that the only vacant spaces were the driver's seat and the dashboard.
The return trip was not so magical.
It took 11.5hrs to retrace our steps, I had to refuel midway, and I only got 15mpg!
The same distance, the same truck, the same driver.
All that was different was the load on the truck.
We tend to underestimate the impact that baggage can have, and the odd time that we do recognize its effect, it is usually in relation to our personal lives. But institutions can have baggage too. Organizations are made of people, and people have a strange affinity for the familiar. In a place of business, change – real change – is difficult on any day of the week. I have seen on too many occasions where departments celebrate “successful change initiatives” that were just new ways of doing the same old things.
Take for example a group of people who are walking in the direction of the sun. Someone comes up with the idea that walking in that direction is no longer in the best interest of the group, and that if they continue to do what they have been doing, then calamity is certain. So, after much deliberation, they collectively decide to get down and crawl on all fours…….in the direction of the sun.
That may be an idiotic oversimplification (sue me!), but my point is that it is possible to do things differently and still change nothing. As a team leader, if you keep dragging around bad business practices, poor system designs, and mediocre team morale from change project to change project then your team will never realize any gains. Identifying “what needs to be changed” is a critical component of successful change, but is often more difficult than coming up with “ways that we could change”. In other words, a unilateral change in methodology is not always the change that is necessary. More often, the change that is needed goes much deeper.
If you (or your team) ever find yourself trying more and pushing harder to reach milestones that used to be more easily achieved, check how much baggage you're pulling around. It might be your own (cargo), or it could be that of the people you lead (loaded trailer). Either way, you can rely on your own productivity as a great indicator of how much you are hauling within and/or with you.
-Sheldon B.