Can you drive a car without a steering wheel?
Can you drive a business without a strategic planning?
Piper Abodeely
Imagine driving a car without a steering wheel. Didn’t get very far
did you?
An executive team had been stuck
figuring out an operational issue for
more than half of
its weekly meeting
.
It was one of those
meetings where no resolution was in sight. Sound familiar? People were frustrated, defensive,
and tired
.
Unfortunately this had become a regular routine for the weekly meetings: unproductive and ineffective.
In scanning the room, there was an apparent lack of team alignment, which in this case was inhibiting
open dialogue that was sorely missing.
The team had become so focused on individual
needs that the
critical mission of the team had become overlooked and forgotten. Each team member had lost sight as to how
they fit and why they matter to the team and the entire organization.
Ah-ha—a team coaching (http://www.cmoe.com/coaching.htm
)
opportunity! Only this time, we moved outside of the familiar common language. It was time to talk Cars.
I invited the team to look at their organization as a car and what part they might identify as symbolic of their role. For the first few moments there was silence, which quickly moved to chuckles and then progressed to laughter. What were they laughing at? How remarkably similar their role
resembled a particular part of a car.
We heard everything from the wheels, gasoline, and spark plugs to the engine and driver of the car. People were not only naming their own parts of the car, but started to recognize how other people on the team filled a certain function of the car: “without the gasoline in the HR department, we would lack personnel,” “If we were missing the control panel, we would have no streamlined operational measurements from the finance team.”
As the team engaged in
this spirited
d
iscussion , the
members identified
a missing part of the car the steering wheel. What happens to a car without a steering wheel? What happens to a team and organization without a leader who has a clear direction in strategic planning(
www.cmoe.com/strategic-planning.htm
)? This simple “ah-ha” began to address the lack of clarity and alignment among the team. Not only did the team begin to experience a paradigm shift, but the simple metaphor created the “space” for the team to re-examine themselves as a working system, and to recognize how each role is an integral component to creating a sustainable, high performing team.
The exercise gave birth to a long-term training initiative focused on answering the question:
how can we guide and steer this organization so that it moves in the right direction and how can we make the changes we need, and do it in a way that creates high energy and yields extraordinary, sustainable results? The team recognized a need create a course based on two powerful foundations: high involvement and a systemic approach to improvement. The course design utilized several methodologies related to defining roles and responsibilities, identifying group norms and leadership styles,
coaching skills (
www.cmoe.com/coaching-skills.htm
)
, creating breakthrough
innovations, and implementing action steps
that will help the organization move ahead of the curve (
www.cmoe.com/ahead-of-the-curve.htm
).
By using these high leverage change methods, people began to see the possibility of contributing to something larger than themselves. The emphasis shifted from focusing on why something can’t be done to “how can we make this happen?” As the team began to understand their
team and individual roles at a deeper level, they recognized
the need for and value of interconnections among departments, processes, and
people. As Rosabeth Kanter
once observed, “change is disturbing when it is done to us, exhilarating when it is done by us.”
The car exercise was the catalyst for implementing a highly effective and sustainable
organizational change effort-- ironically, it is often the simple and subtle opportunities
that help people recognize a problem and discover the need for strategic planning (
www.cmoe.com/strategic-planning.htm
)
to sustain organizational success.
Piper Abodeely is a hands on consultant and facilitator who specializes in coaching, leadership development and strategic thinking for team members.
She has worked with organizations such as Tullys Coffee, Cargill, Hudson Institute and many others.
For more information about training services or your upcoming events, please contact CMOE at 888-262-2499 or go to http://
www.cmoe.com
for more information.
