Note from Art: some lighter thoughts connecting the world of good old-fashioned (and cathartic) physical labor to the world of projects and work. And some bonus advice for getting along, especially with your spouse or significant other!
Spend enough time writing, speaking and thinking about management and performance, and you’re likely to find yourself looking for lessons in all of your dealings. This certainly held true for me this past weekend, as I engaged in the annual fall ritual of cleaning up the leaves at the northwoods home.
While the management guidance here might not make the next issue of HBR, if you ever face several hilly acres of ankle deep leaves, this might just save your back from breaking and your relationships from crumbling!
1. First and foremost, never rake leaves uphill. Ditto for against the wind! Gravity and other forces of nature are your friends here. Don’t fight them. Leaves tend to fall downhill, blow downhill and generally migrate towards their friends at low points in the land.
Adding a little science (very little!), you might reasonably conclude that the energy consumed per unit of leaf raked is pretty high when you push the little buggers up hill one at a time. Your goal here is minimal energy consumption on this task. Remember, after the leaves are gone, you’ve probably got to split a cord of wood.
In the Workplace: Too many projects feel a lot like raking leaves uphill. Poor project design and improper training result in a lot of commotion and little forward progress. And small obstacles easily become gigantic bottlenecks that soak up valuable management time and impact schedules and performance. If you feel like you are “raking uphill and against the wind,” stop, assess and address the challenge from a new perspective.
On a personal note, it is your wife that is raking uphill, use your best tact and diplomacy to encourage her to rethink her approach. Trust me, I learned this one the hard way.
2. Proper planning and flawless execution are required to effectively land a tarpaulin so that you can cover it in leaves on a windy day.
In the Workplace: anyone that has ever been involved in a complex project with multiple coworkers, understands the benefits of great teamwork and great team members operating in synchronicity towards a common goal. It’s easy to misfire and quickly become aggravated with poor performing or poorly trained team members, and then it’s only a short step away from complete team meltdown. Take the time to clarify tasks, practice the execution and then provide team members with effective, real-time feedback.
Another personal note: if it’s your wife or spouse that is misfiring on the tarp job, use your best tact and diplomacy to teach and encourage improved performance. Trust me, again!
3. Know your own limit of incompetence when it comes to team safety. Don’t ever plan on flying an airplane if you cannot consistently remember to raise the wheel on the brush trailer before heading up your driveway digging a new ditch and wrecking yet another wheel.
In the Workplace: risk management is a critical issue to be managed in real-time. Teach your team and yourself to constantly assess risks and build systems to identify and mitigate or eliminate those risks. Also, learn your limits. Some people and some teams just shouldn’t fly airplanes or run nuclear power plants.
4. Choose the right leader for the job at hand, and shift leaders as the jobs change. Put two corporate executives used to leading teams on the same task to conquer the clean-up, and you might not find it shocking that both individuals have a very strong opinion on how things should be handled. My Dad and I learned long ago to swap roles. For example, I’m a master laborer and he’s a master engineer. If the task calls for bulk, brawn and speed, I’m in charge. If it’s the redesign of the in-ground sprinkling system or rewiring of 2 acres of ground lights, it’s all Dad!
In the Workplace: learn to lead and to follow and learn to make the transition gracefully and your project and execution performance will improve tremendously.
The Bottom-Line for Now:
May all of your fall projects be as filled with management and relationship lessons as mine!
Art,
It is a good inspiration to use the natural environment to give us advise in our workplace. It is so important to have a good leader because it will be easy for other team members. But I think when there is a conflict/ problem in the team, we need to try to solve it. I think to face the problem and help us to learn more. And also we can improve our skills with solving issues and how to get along with others.
I enjoyed reading this, since you’ve linked yard work to management lessons. It’s amazing how many lessons we can find by looking around at things that seem unrelated to management. I especially like point 3 about knowing our limits. There are so many instances when I’ve seen people take on too many projects and push themselves past their endurance and expertise level. They often exhaust themselves, run down their efforts, and take their group down too. When it comes to every day activities, such as eating, we don’t try to over exert ourselves and eat till our stomachs hurt. If we just take a step back, we can apply everyday occurrences to management.
The moral of the story is to cut bait. Learn not to get emotionally involved in outcomes and try to remain detached and objective. Let things ride so to speak and develop interests outside your job that gratify your ego and bring self satisfaction. Some things are just meant to be and you just got to go with the flow. It is really about developing a spiritual perspective towards life in general.
And just like a good employee, there are just some things you apparently blow off – such must have been the case of your spouse (my sister) as she never spoke an ill word from the weekend – HA! On the other hand, perhaps it was your astute tact and diplomacy at work!
After being on the same team going on 33 years (sounds like we should be in retirement – ha!), and with Bob and I both being team leaders, has always presented a challenge – both of us always wanting to take control of the reins. After all these years we are finally learning to be more complimentary – drawing on each other’s strong points and knowing when to yield. Knowing yourself very well, you are then able to objectively know where your strong and yielding points are located. Viola! The work gets done in exemplary fashion! The Bottom Line: Get to know thyself well and get the ego the “heck” out of the way!
Art,
Thanks for the post! There are so many lessons that can be learned from real life events. Something as simple as raking leaves can have vast implications in the workplace. There’s a right way to do things in and out of the workplace and these actions have a lot of similarities.
I think more managers need to make these connections. If a manager is proficient with an action outside of the workplace, they should reflect and apply this lesson on their employees. This oversight and review of oneself can be helpful for all aspects of a manager’s duties.
Thanks, Oren! To some it might have seemed like a stretch to connect my clean up chores with management tasks, but spend enough time writing blog posts and you see content in everything! Thanks for reading and commenting. -Art
Art, Point #1 really spoke to me. My last job included many projects that I was raking into the wind on; not only were the scope and work required poorly defined, but the internal political winds kept shifting, scattering any progress that was made over those precious few days. As such, many piles of half-finished projects were scattered around my company’s yard when I left. At least I left them instructions on how to use the rake!
Jonathan, you win on the best tie-in to my blog post! Great for you for leaving the instructions. Best, -Art
I have been thinking about writing a similar article on sewing. I get philosophical and think of the lessons I am learning as I go along. My most poignant is how long it takes to fix a mistake. I can be sewing along and get off seam width ever so slightly I have to stop and undo the seam and resew. Every time I think how hard it is to undo a mistake and the cover up or redo is never perfect.
Marian, I love your line of thinking. My example might be putting in a ceramic tile floor. A small error at the beginning becomes a major issue by the time you reach the far end of the room. Please, write the post! -Art
I too learn a great deal of lessons from the outdoors from hiking to planting a garden. Love the analogies here and very good business insight. Would love to republish this on my blog and tweeting it out today.
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Thanks, Joanne! Glad I’m not alone in seeing the analogies! And thanks for reposting. Best, -Art
There’s 3.8 billion years of intelligence available to us in the natural world, if only we would pay attention, as you did! Have you heard of biomimicry – using nature as inspiration to solve human problems? Velcro, for example, was invented as a result of a Swiss mountaineer who had taken his dog for a hike. They were both covered in cockleburs and upon returning home he examined one under the microscope and discovered small hooks that enabled the burr to cling to the tiny loops in the fabric of his pants. Within 4 years George de Mestral would finish the design and patent Velcro.
For nature inspired ideas on how we can improve the way we run and manage our businesses check out http://www.businesslessonsfromnature.com. Who would have guessed that managers can increase productivity by up to 12% by simply adding live plants into the work environment?
Tom, thanks. Still contemplating that 3.8 billion number that it took me to figure out not to rake uphill against the wind! Cheers, -Art
Great article and an interesting way of relating to the day-to-day operations of an organization through raking leaves. Thanks for sharing.
Thanks, Yonica!