Drift

The Antagonist of Team Culture

Push... Push... Push...

It may sound like the final stages of child birth. But it is also the incessant unrelenting mentality of sales. In my years of sales and sales management the mentality to push for every sale you can get was relentless.  As I graduated through the ranks of business I realised this is not unique to a sales environment. Project Managers need to push to hit seemingly endless deadlines. I remember bumping into an old friend that became a graphic designer. He said "you have no idea how hard it is to push out creativity for someone every single day". It was easy to empathise. Business owners will also understand as they are required to push on all fronts day-in day out with little security or certainty. The push is always on to survive, grow, maximise or influence. But why does 'the push' never go away? And, why should our people always feel like they are under pressure to keep pushing?

The sales situation was once described to me by a very wise friend in terms of pushing a boulder up a hill for a month. Win, lose or draw they'll start at the bottom of the next hill for the next month, and so on. If they successfully do this for long enough they are rewarded at the end of the year with a bigger bolder which needs to be pushed up a bigger hill. In the years ahead, not much will change. Many of us across all sorts of disciplines can feel the same. The perpetual cycle of 'do-rinse-repeat' can become fatiguing and meaningless.

Teachers will get a new group of children each year (with more reporting and more legislation). The land prices and material costs become bigger and bigger for property developers. The government contracts become more complex with tougher tendering processes each and every year for vendors of all types.

It has become apparent that this harsh reality is one leaders must embrace. The meaninglessness felt in the day-to-day grind by our team players can undermine our collective efforts much like diluting cordial in too much water can make it tasteless. The process towards losing meaning in our work may look like this:

1. I'm grinding to hit a goal

2. If I hit it, I'll just get more of the same with a bit of mayo thrown on top

3. All I'm doing is lining the pockets of the boss/board/shareholders/clients

4. It's pointless

5. I'll just do what I think is important or best for me

If we have two, three, five, or ten people in our team covertly thinking like this, we can expect work to drift. People drift in their own directions. People drift away from agreed processes. People drift away from the directives, instructions and agreements often given by you! When a team drifts for a day, week or month significant losses of time and opportunity can be experienced. An air of uncomfortability can be felt and even cultural harm is at risk if not acted upon. Simon Sinek describes a version of this called Ethical Fading in his book The Infinite Game:

"Ethical Fading is a condition in a culture that allows people to act in unethical ways in order to advance their own interests, often at the expense of others, while falsely believing that they have not compromised their own moral principles. Ethical Fading often starts with small, seemingly innocuous transgressions that, when left unchecked, continue to grow and compound." 

Not all drift includes ethics, but there is always an erosion of some sort where actions move away from the agreed plan. The key statement to highlight from the above passage is the last section, "when left unchecked, continue to grow and compound". Drift is fed when a leader (or peers) do not check behaviour (i.e. keep people accountable). If left for enough time it will grow exponentially under the surface like damp rising through a house. When team members do not know (or have forgotten) why their work is important, they drift. Understanding that their work is more than simply rolling a boulder up a hill. Knowing why the agreed plan and execution is important and how it relates to the bigger picture is critical.

By introducing, speaking-to and repeating the meaning of the team's work whenever possible, a leader can halt people drifting off on tangents. By relentlessly drawing this meaning back to the tangible tasks and tactics of the day a leader can garner belonging and clarity for team alignment and solidarity. Here are some novel methods Chip Conley uses in his Hotel Empire Joie de Vivre Hospitality:

• What's the best experience you've had in the past month here at work?

• We provide hotel services for travellers. Why is that important?

• If you did your job badly, how would that affect your coworkers and our customers?

• Forget about your current job title. What would our customers call your job title if they described it by the impact you have on their lives?

• Most of us think of our job in terms of "what am I getting?" Ask yourself instead "what am I becoming as a result of this job?"

There are some wonderful opportunities in these questions. Retro fit them for your context and see what emerges. Or, find your own ways to communicate the meaning of people's work in a way to fit your context. It beats the monotony of 'push push push' and tends to be a lot more fun.