If there is one place I absolutely hate, it’s when a team arrives at a place of confusion, indecision and inertia. Maybe it’s when one person seems gung ho, but the others are distracted or burned out. Then, when the burned-out people are revitalized and ready to go, the first person is on to something else. Or, for whatever reason, you just can’t get the team on the same page with the same energy levels and focus. You are stuck in indecision, distraction and confusion. It’s horrible. Not only are you not moving forward, but you are actually starting to disintegrate. Anything that sits still too long starts to move backward or deteriorate, like a puddle of water that becomes murky.
But how can you remedy this? It seems exhausting to get everyone focused and fired up, much less to get clarity on decisions and agreement to move forward. In fact, often the person trying to pull everyone together ends up getting burned out and disenfranchised in doing so.
No growth plans are created and no decisions are made ? or if they are, they aren’t fully endorsed by the team.
There are several ways to move yourself from this place. But one approach that is blazingly effective and will get you and your team moving together quickly in a plan of growth is to power away from the day-to-day of your business AS A TEAM.
We are used to doing meetings together, even all-day planning sessions. We have seen “the boss” or one partner return from a conference and download to everyone else. Each of those approaches has its place, but they won’t necessarily move you out of inertia into focused action.
I’m writing this on my way back from a two-day conference Molly and I attended, and I realized a few keys that allowed it to move us from status quo to blazing focus:
- It needs to be out of the office. To truly step away from the confusion or status quo, you have to literally step away. Even if you can’t leave your city, leave the office ? the entire team. In our case, we even had a key vendor attend so she could be plugged in and on board. That’s one more key person’s input and one fewer person to talk to before you make decisions.
- The conference was not industry-specific. A conference to learn more skills in your industry isn’t the best choice for this purpose. Again, those are useful, but not for growth-plan creation.
- The conference was led by someone else. Internal planning days or retreats where members of your team, or the boss, lead the day don’t have this drastic effect of removing confusion and inertia, because one person ON your team is enrolling the rest of the team into ideas and plans. Again, that might be very useful for project planning, etc., but not to pull you out of confusion and into action.
- We allowed time after the conference to create our plan and commit to it. Rather than flying out right after the conference, we planned to stay an extra day to create a plan and take action. It wasn’t just a plan that we wrote down; we committed to it by writing checks, booking vendors, etc. It was IN motion before we left.
From that, we developed a burning desire to keep moving and not just achieve our plan, but crush it! The decisions were made, everyone bought in, and all the questions were answered. Is there still work to do? You bet. But are we crystal clear, confident and in motion? You bet.
To read our next post on what to do when you hit the office the day after, stay tuned.
If you aren’t sure what to do to plan such a day, let us help you with our VIP Strategy Day. We can lead you, in person or virtually, in planning the next step in growing your business, committing you and your team to the plan and putting it in motion before we are done. To learn more click here: https://hiringandempowering.com/we-speak/
