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Is Your Team Flying in Formation?

February 28, 2023 Joe Mechlinski

No, I don't mean marching like this...

team-marching

But rather soaring like this...

starlings-in-formation

How do you keep your team aligned?

This is the million-dollar question.

Sometimes We Fall Down When Plans Crumble

On January 5th of 2021, we experienced a massive blow to our business.

After helping a company go from $3B to $10B over 7 years, having an incredibly good relationship with the CEO, and a multi-7-figure annual retainer, their business shifted, and so they needed to pull back and abruptly let us go.

I get that everyone has a story like this, but stick with me, it gets better.

That client account represented 70% of our business at the time.

You can give me the talk about not having all your eggs in one basket, but sometimes this is how business unfolds.

Good work begets good work.

They grew and we grew with them.

And if you were offered to jump on a private plane to help them buy a company from Disney, it might be harder than you think to say no.

It was the first time a company paid us $250K/month for advising, guiding, and helping them transform the culture of a 10,000-person organization.

In retrospect, I can see now that the relationship was a bit co-dependent.

Unfortunately, this was not the only hit we took at the beginning of 2021.

We were also about to make an acquisition of a tech platform that at one time right before the pandemic had 65,000 users and  the company raised a significant series A.

What might not be obvious is that while we have been in business for 20+ years… the fact of the matter is that SHIFT has many different layers, chapters, twists, and turns.

Right as the pandemic got going, we decided to put our shoulders behind the community and started doing free remote work for companies who were trying to figure it out. 

We had more than 30,000 employees take us up on our offer and the results were astonishing. 

Three things were clear: 

  1. History was happening.
  2. Work was not working.
  3. The future felt more uncertain than before.

With this in mind, I could feel we needed to evolve our business model and see if we could leverage technology to help make hybrid work better. 

We also decided this was the right moment to cast a new vision for SHIFT. We imagined what was possible in 2050 in the workplace if we were successful and stayed true to our vision and mission. Check it out here.

the-future-workplace-vision-of-shift-in-2050

Later that year, as fate would have, we stumbled upon the opportunity to acquire Avanoo and closed on the transaction on Feb 1st, 2021.

Yep, 3 weeks after losing 70% of our business.

Super dicey and very scary.

At that moment, our team was all in and ready to fight… but we were not able to move like the starlings… in formation while moving and grooving with the VUCA (Volatility, Uncertainty, Complexity, and Ambiguity) in the marketplace.

We called a lot of meetings (maybe even 252% more meetings like the data says).

We would have these amazingly deep and authentic conversations, but we lacked the feeling of flowing with the work.

The feeling where time slows down, things feel like less effort, and the team soars as one. For more on this idea, check out my very good friends Steven Kotler and Rian Doris at the Flow Research Collective.

We tried better planning.

More surveys. 

Resetting our OKRs.

Brought in outside consultants and coaches (yes, even consultants sometimes hire consultants).

There is more that we tried, but the one thing we couldn’t achieve was feeling like we were NSYNC – singing from the same sheet of music and moving in the same direction.

Opportunity Lies Within the Unknown


I had to acknowledge and admit a few things:

  • The terrain was so very different and we needed to evolve our approach. 

  • Everyone was doing their very best to navigate but sometimes this still isn’t enough.

  • The old playbook of scheduling more meetings was not the solution. 

  • The role of the CEO was changing and I needed to grow my skills. 

  • We were back at the beginning and embarking on our next journey as a company.

Starting over at 45 was not how I thought this story would go. Then I realized the irony that we set a vision a year prior to totally transform the business into a tech-enabled solution to build work around being human (not the other way around). 

It was time for me to start by recognizing the things that I don’t know. 

As leaders aren’t we all making it up as we go?

Who says it’s a bad thing to be building the plane as you’re flying it?

It all reminds me of a time with my daughter when she was in 2nd grade. She was asking me a question about being a Dad… and I have committed to being honest with her.

So I said, “Ellie, I am not exactly sure how to be a great Dad, there isn’t a school or book for this, I am making this up as I go along.”

Coming from a place of not knowing can be the most liberating and vulnerable place to be.

It requires faith and trust. It means having an unwavering belief in your vision and end state – even if you don’t know where your next moves will land you.

Be willing to ask questions and try new things until you do know.

So we did a purge.

We cleansed the deck of existing assumptions and started with a simple question:

What do we want everyone in the organization to understand this week?

This one question sounds basic but try it.

What is the gameplay you are calling as the quarterback this week?

In 20+ years, I have never met a CEO or leader who doesn’t have a running list of things that they wished were different in their business.

Well, this was the opportunity to run the play.

We built Latch for this play.

The first tool for CEOs and leaders to get their teams on the same page without scheduling more meetings.

The experience is simple yet impactful. 

  • The CEO schedules 30 minutes a week to reflect on the energy, focus, and attention of the business – and steer the ship accordingly.

  • They think about a key question they are curious about.

  • They record a 3-minute video to share what they see and what they hope everyone else can too… and then most importantly, they invite everyone to take action.

We have been running this play… and it’s working.

We’re able to do more than catch up and keep up. We’re now able to move and groove with the market.

And let’s face it, the world is not getting any easier to navigate.

It’s not just the companies that can adapt the fastest that will survive. The organizations that will stand the test of time are the ones that can keep their team in formation – regardless of the circumstances and moving forward.

With our Latch platform, we help our clients measure… yes actually measure the tone, temperature, and tenure of their culture. Beyond that, we measure the progress of their team’s actions against the play leaders are calling. 

Flying in formation, regardless of what the world throws your way, is the one true path forward.

LFG!

TOPICS: Employee Engagement, Workplace Innovation, Leadership Development, leadership, Remote Work, Company Culture