I was meeting with a team last week that had been charged by their company president to develop the organization’s leadership development program.
The team had spent the last 9 months developing a leadership model, creating training modules, and building a coaching approach that would be state of the art for their firm.
They were ready to roll out the program when the big stop sign shot up in front of them. Budget constraints, timing and the readiness of the firm to take on this new project were all impediments that were stated…along with “we’re still excited about it.”
Hurry up and wait is a mainstay in today’s workplace. There is always of sense of urgency but the volume of projects that need to get done is oftentimes more than can get done. As a result there is a traffic jam at the intersection of “what we want to do” and “what we can do.”
There is no easy fix for hurry up and wait but using three of these Resilience Advantage skills will help to mitigate some of the frustration and more importantly, get your important work done:
- Clarify Value: Businesses grow because key stakeholders see value in what is being done. No doubt, leadership development is important but it is obviously not as important as other items on the leadership team’s agenda. Could this team have created more value for their project?
- Protect the Plan: Once you’ve got a plan prepared for a workplace initiative, consider what can go wrong and address those issues. For this team, building in a review and time expectation process could have helped move the project along faster.
- Enlist champions: While everyone on this leadership team was behind the project, this team could have benefited from having 2-3 advocates who were kept up to speed on what was being done and who could create excitement about the project for other leaders.
© Richard Citrin, All rights reserved, 2018
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