Like children, you don’t really have favorites on a Team … or shouldn’t. It is where the Pooh analogy may break down, since he is Christopher Robin’s best friend and confidant, and the center of the story. And like Piglet, the name can sound a bit harsh … except the people it fits don’t notice, or care 😉 Our Pooh was naive, absent-minded, friendly, thoughtful, insightful, and always willing to help his friends. He also made a lot of mistakes … which in Ops was not helpful … and made me nervous answering the call from HR…
… now what? Walking down to meet our HR business partner, my mind raced on “what has he done now?” With good cause. I had stepped in many times, and in 1 case, he told me years later, he was sure I was going to fire him. But how could I? He reminded me so much of … me … at my best and my worst. I was slightly ahead of him on growing up, and while I didn’t have favorites, this one, like Pooh, always brought a smile to my face. As I sat down, the HR person simply wanted to know … what I was doing to develop his career, because they were tracking him as a diverse candidate. The fact I didn’t KNOW that … yea, I bluffed through it, and walked out with an even bigger smile. I had absolutely no idea about his “diversity” … at least THAT kind of diversity 😉
Seth is the youngest Avett, and in most family systems the youngest is the “fun” kid, which was certainly the case with him. Like a lot of the musicians we have looked at, he started early, got into bands in high school, and had some success. When there was not much acceptance for their rock music, he fell into playing with his brother. It is hard to tell which brother takes the lead on what, since both bring songs to the table and jointly edit them into a blended voice. There was a “looking up to the older brother” phase, but now it feels like a real partnership across the whole band family. The band bio he wrote shows his creativity with words, and I can easily imagine he is the Pooh who brings those thoughts to the table to start the process…
Like Pooh, our teammate was always cooking up new and crazy ideas. He even had the hair of a “mad scientist” … as I was losing mine, partly because of him. But that creative energy made the big leaps that rocketed us forward. He would sit in a meeting and suddenly say “I know!” … and we would all go quiet and listen. What we had been observing would shift … to a new Promise … and each of us would bring our own talents to it, as you will hear over the next few days. One was making a mission-critical NeXTSTEP application portable, when laptops were expensive and NeXT didn’t really support them … and he stuck with it … mostly.
He got 1 to work. Check. Could we write directions so the desktop team could do 70? Sorta. It was lucky he fell in love, because that gave me a deadline … you can’t leave to drive 12 hours to see her … until I get the directions. So, on the back of a piece of a cardboard box (he reached for something and tore off the end of a box), in purple flair. I WISH I had saved it, because people don’t believe 1) that was what it was, and 2) I accepted it. It was, and I did, because I knew it was going to work, and it was the best effort he could do. Turning that scrawl into something better was a bridge too far for him, and I had teammates who thrived on that part. We built many, and because it took more than “his” work, it was a team accomplishment…
The work world doesn’t tolerate Poohs well. I have had multiple senior leaders tell me “our team doesn’t make mistakes.” Yea … and guess where the new ideas come from? Who around you has the blinding flash of “wow, we could…”? They are not easy to find, nurture, and reward in a task-oriented, deadline-driven world. And yet, observe around you carefully. Everything, including the phone or tablet you are reading this on, was exactly that once:
An idea … that a Pooh had … that someone nurtured, and now we take it for granted. Then handed to other team members, breeding the cooperation everyone TALKS about needing. Unless YOU observe how to construct work this way, it slips into yet another “individual achievement.” Which is why so many leaders have no idea how to work together … it is not taught, modeled, or rewarded.
This song harkens back to accepting what people are, versus what you want or need them to be. This season and these teammates taught me: well-formed teams don’t have a lot of perfect people … they have a perfect combination of … differences. Blending those talents is not only more productive, it is more fun. And given the way the times keep presenting “opportunities” we can NEVER plan for, I Promise you had better start building that team … now.
Your “Simple… Not Easy” move: the next time someone hands you a cardboard-box version of a good idea, accept it. Then hand the polish to the teammate who loves that part.
Think about Christopher Robin and his merry band. Individually they are characters … but together, they are skipping and bouncing, twirling and swirling. And the quicker you observe your role and your players and start to lead that way, the better your teams will be, and the more you will be able to smile as you … Live and Die.
