What’s your egg’n’spoon?

Shaking up routine for engagement

No matter where you look these days, there is another good-news-story about women’s sport. One of my favourite humans in the world, Ash Barty, has completed a monumental year on the professional tennis circuit. The FFA have just announced that the Matilda’s (the Australian women’s national soccer team) will be on an equal pay model with their male counterparts (a first in the world I believe). But there was one story that really caught my eye.

In my world I encourage leaders and teams to break rules in many different ways to obtain high performance. This can be difficult to understand and implement as there is risk in the interpretation of this concept.

So, when I saw a short clip of a women’s Big Bash cricket team doing a more-than-unique warm up, it struck me that this was a great example of Breaking The Rules. The Sydney Sixers is a very good side. They have two of the world’s best players in Alyssa Healy and Ellyse Perry, who have both had personal and professional opportunities to play for other teams but have both stated how much they love playing for the Sixers.

The team cohesion seems to be very strong, and a recent warm up gave us a peak inside their team culture.

A usual warm up for a cricket side may involve a jog up and down the field, a few sprints, some stretching, and a few catching drills. It’s boring and predictable. It can breed complacency and disengage players. This happens in our workplaces also. The same old chats in our morning huddles, the same old meeting formats, the same old timings. Instead, I saw this clip of the Sixers warming up playing an egg’n’spoon race. It is visible how much fun they are having and how ‘in the moment’ they are. We cannot underestimate how powerful this can be.

Something that seems so silly can be evolutionary for the way people think in a team. It can rejuvenate the way people think about the challenges they are facing and create memorable moments that bond a team closer.

What is your equivalent of an egg’n’spoon race? And, more importantly, what is the worst thing that could happen if you tried a new meeting format, or start to the day, or changed the environment for a repetitious part of your team’s role?

Throw the shackles off and shake up the monotony. It’s a great way to break the rules of your game.

Learn more: paulfarina.com.au