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Why People Do Things

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  • Some people do things because they enjoy them.
  • Some people do things because they work.
  • Some people do things because everyone else is doing them.
  • And some people are satisfied/scared/shy/lazy/fearful and don’t do anything.

If we are to help communities and the individuals who live in them to become more enterprising then we need to understand the reasons why they do the things that they do and help them to find powerful reasons to do different (more enterprising?) things.

This process of reflection, developing insight, options and choosing to change behaviours is at the heart of helping people and therefore communities become enterprising.  It is not easy work either for the client or for the service provider – yet it is at the heart of transforming and enterprise culture.

It implies much more than just flooding the supply side with workshops and advice.  It means a serious engagement with individuals in communities – with their hopes, fears and dreams.

It requires trust, influence, education, development and, perhaps more than anything, respect.  It requires enterprise coaching.

Delegation and Flow – Csikszentmihalyi for Managers

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Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi has spent much of his life researching ‘flow’ –  that state of being when you become fully immersed in a task and time flies by.  This flow state can only occur when  the level of challenge is carefully matched to your level of skills and confidence.  Flow is most likely to occur when you are faced by a demanding but achieveable task.  Flow matters for managers because it a state that is associated with optimal performance.  It is also closely associated with learning and self improvement.

It strikes me that delegation used in conjunction with feedback (another pre-requisite for the flow state) and coaching provides managers with the perfect tools to ensure that team members get a balance of skill and challenge that will enable them to enter the optimum state of flow at work.

Employees who are operating outside of the flow channel – either bored or overly anxious are likely to be performing well below their potential.

The thing about the flow channel is that you cannot remain stationery.  Unless you are confronted with new challenges it is likely that boredom will become an issue and performance will dip.

Building a High Performing Team – Part 1 – The Same Page

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The first stage in building a high performing team is to get everyone on the same page.

Every team member must master the basics of organisational performance:

  • What are we here to achieve and how do we recognise success?
  • What are our markets and how do we segment them?
  • Who are our customers and what are their buying patterns?
  • Who would we like our customers to be – and why aren’t they buying from us now?
  • Who is our competition and what are they doing?
  • What drives or inhibits our ability to deliver on the mission?

In high performing teams each team member is able to answer these questions – not just from their own perspective but from a collective team perspective. There is a shared analysis that provides a platform for coherent action.

In mediocre teams the members can usually answer these questions from their own siloed perspective. However there is little or no shared analysis and the actions that flow from each silo at best lack coherence and at worst compete with each other for resources and prestige.

Getting everyone on the same page is best done through a group session that has sufficient openness, candour and respect to ensure that the all of the ‘elephants in the room’ are recognised and addressed.