Missing the Small Stuff

After months of going back and forth with my parents, I finally won a "sort of" victory. My parents live in a ranch-style home with everything in their house on one level, allowing them to remain independent as they age. My victory? I convinced my parents to put in a ramp because people must climb four steps to enter their ranch-style house. The "sort of" is because I installed most of the ramp. The longest run on the ramp measured twelve feet and required me to install twenty-four slats. Installing the final four slats taught me an invaluable lesson about alignment.

I encountered an alignment problem. Defying my efforts to work with accurate measurements and to remain square, I found that it required extra effort to squeeze one side of the last four slats into place. Over the twelve-foot run, the angle of the slat was tighter by the width of a postcard on one side. A small deviation over distance or time can mess up alignment. The same can be true with our teams and organizations. We lead teams of people with different strengths, histories, and life goals. If those we lead deviate slightly from the mission, a small miss may present as disunity and ineffectiveness. Individual alignment with the collective values and mission is essential for team unity and effectiveness.

Small misses can be hard to catch and might not seem worth worrying about at the time. A team member who doesn't participate in staff meetings, who seeks the support of others while never offering support, misses deadlines, has poor communication, pursues personal goals while ignoring team goals, or fails to resolve minor conflicts are small misses. One small miss isn't a game-changer. Yet one small miss, plus one small miss, plus another small miss, and your team loses alignment and unity. Enough misses, and you get to the end of the year, the end of a project, or the end of a twelve-foot ramp, and a small miss becomes an obstacle you must overcome to finish well.

You can catch small misses before it's too late by reflecting them in the mirror of your values and mission. I can hear the staff meeting groaning, "Didn't we just go over our values two weeks ago?" Small misses will happen. Small misses do not need to go unchecked or repeated. As leaders, we intentionally (re)call our teams to our values and mission to catch or avoid small misses. Values and mission are simple, it's alignment 101. When leading teams, alignment reigns.

My son was in his high school musical; as a proud parent, I purchased a shirt and saw three performances- the same songs over and over and over. Now, I only need to see the title of the musical to get the main tune stuck in my head. My wife wore her shirt the other day, and as I recall seeing the shirt, the main theme song from the musical begins playing in my head. As leaders, we intentionally (re)call our teams to our values and mission to catch or avoid small misses. We must recall our values and mission so often that our teams only need to consider the organization, project, or other team members and the song of our values and mission pops into their heads. Alignment to the values and mission helps catch and avoid small misses today and larger problems tomorrow. Aligning our team members to the collective values and mission is essential if we are going to lead productive and united teams.

Can you recite your organizational values and mission? Have you communicated your values and mission so they are memorable?

What can you do this week to recall your team(s) to your organizational values and mission?