Is Your Team Running on Empty?
Have you and your team started your spring cleaning? You don’t need dusters or brooms, other than metaphorical ones, but it is likely that your team has some things that are no longer useful, are weighing your team down or are just collecting dust but you have simply been ignoring them.
Here are a few places to look for them:
- Items that have been sitting for several weeks on to-do lists. If they have been sitting there for some time it is likely that they are not very important; they are simply making the list longer and more onerous. If you want to think twice before sweeping them away, ask to what extent completing them will contribute to your meeting your goals or targets. If the number you come up with is a low one, delete them. If you decide to hang onto them move them up to number one. Either way, get rid of them.
- Practices that perhaps were once valuable, but now not so much. E.g. Frequent update meetings, the benefits of which could be achieved in quicker and more flexible ways or perhaps the meetings could be held less frequently. Before eliminating any practice, however, check whether it perhaps just needs to be adjusted a little to match current needs and situations.
- Valuable practices or traditions that have been forgotten or have been put aside because everyone is too busy. Dust them off and start using them.
- Negative behaviours. Leaders often ignore negative behaviours in the hope that they will eventually just go away. Ignoring, however, is seen as accepting, and the longer the behaviours linger the more they become imbedded in the team and pull the team down. Negative behaviours directly affect team outcomes.
Get your spring cleaning done now and move into the second half of the year, streamlined, more energized and ready to move to the next level of performance.
Use this team exercise to engage your team in Spring Cleaning.
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