The big picture

Maintaining your operational overview in rapidly changing times

Rob Clarke

Rob Clarke, CEO of Learning Architects

As I sit and consider this article, Omicron is rushing through the country like a train. And while it’s Covid that’s currently causing chaos, the importance of maintaining perspective while managing your business when under pressure can never be overstated.

It’s very easy to quickly lose your sense of perspective in challenging times, so it’s important that as you and your team respond and adapt to the continually changing needs of your customers and your business, you all remain focused on your core purpose. So what can you do to help your team ensure they manage the urgent, while keeping an eye on the bigger picture?

Connection is the foundation for a healthy team

While ‘water cooler conversations’ have borne the brunt of many a joke over the years, these ad hoc conversations, about everything and nothing, can actually be really helpful to building your organisational culture and a healthy team. So now that we know we can suddenly be faced with working virtually for any amount of time, how do you keep people connected?

Explore different ways to form and strengthen connections

Look at your patterns and purposes for the meetings that happen in your business. Are there any that include time for individuals to connect, chat, get to know one another and give them a chance to problem-solve together? • If you are having a longer meeting, pair people up with a ‘connection buddy’ and ask them to step away from their desk and get on the phone with their ‘buddy’ for 10 minutes and have a chat. If you can encourage them to go for a quick walk as they do so, even better.

And, if you think it necessary, you can always provide a few prompts or suggest a couple of topics people can choose to talk about • Consider an ‘agenda-less’ meeting to provide a forum where people can ask questions to get support, answers, solutions or clarification. This is also a useful way for your leaders to identify any trends or issues that are affecting the team, and can be great for generating new ideas • Have fun by mixing up the delivery of your online meetings. For example, ask a team member to run an online game or quiz • And don’t forget the importance of social connections. Having virtual drinks is a great way for people to unwind at the end of the week and chat about non-work-related issues. Devise some questions with your team that they can ask one another to help hold themselves true to your values. This is useful for creating a bit of shared accountability.”

Reconnect with what drives you

Keeping your team focussed on the core purpose, or mission, of your business is at the heart of strong leadership. When done well, it can instil confidence, clarity and develop a shared sense of ownership for why you exist as a team. Here are some ways to help strengthen your sense of purpose: Keep your company mission or vision visible to the team in as many places as possible, and refer to it in daily interactions. Sometimes it’s the informal discussions that can yield the most creative opportunities for how to bring that mission or vision to life. In one on ones, help team members connect with the big picture simply by asking ‘How does this support us to achieve our vision/mission?’ Highlight how the work that your team is doing with and/or for your customers reflects your mission or vision, perhaps by highlighting the results they get and how this relates to it. Enabling people to connect their work to the greater purpose of the organisation is an effective way to increase employee engagement. It can generate or renew their own individual sense of purpose, and you may find it has benefits that support wellbeing too.

Find ways to explore and bring your values to life

If your mission or vision is the ‘end game’ for your business, your values are what drive you toward this. In this way, they are the fuel that support your motivation, drive your behaviour and influence the choices you make on a dayto-day basis. If your organisation doesn’t have a set of values then see if you can identify some words that articulate what is important to you and your team, and use these. Finding ways for your team to explore their own connections to your organisation’s values can have real benefits. For example, you may find that team members identify new ways of living your values by discussing how they look in action. Have a discussion about what your organisational values mean to them. Encourage them to identify verbs that relate to these and look for connections between your overall view and their personal ideas. Devise some questions with your team that they can ask one another to help hold themselves true to your values. This is useful for creating a bit of shared accountability.

Keeping it real will keep you moving

If you’re unused to talking about your values openly and honestly, these activities and discussions can feel a bit woolly or challenging to begin with. However, the more you do so, the more authentic and lived the values become. And when your team know what you stand for and how they contribute to your purpose, it can motivate them – and most importantly, you – to stay focussed and true to what you are about, and particularly in difficult circumstances, help drive your organisation forward. CT

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