Team Work Excellence
  • Start Here
  • Sweet on Leadership
  • Services
    • Executive Coaching
    • Employee Development >
      • leadershippassport
    • Leadership Off-Sites
    • Performance Improvement
    • Keynote Speaker
  • About TWE
    • About TWE
    • References
    • Contact
    • Awesome Referral Page
    • TWE Polls For Leaders >
      • Career Leadership - The Bobs
      • The Desert Island Challenge
      • Alberta Leadership Experience
    • Our Privacy Policy
  • TWE Community
    • Opt-in to TWE Tribe
    • TWE FaceBook Page
  • Champion
    • Champion Athlete
    • Champion Business
    • Richard Young : Crafting Champions
    • Tim Sweet : Crafting Champions
  • New Page

Skills, Tools, and More to Improve Career, Team and Culture

​SWEET ON LEADERSHIP


The Official Blog of  
​

TEAM WORK EXCELLENCE

(and it's tribe of Leadership Geeks)

 Leadership Development Articles For You To Share With Your Employees and Boss.  Innovative Ideas for Growing Your Business. Performance Moments Begin Meetings With and Incorporate Into Employee Coaching and Training.  Leadership Skills and Business Learning and Development Material Focused on Performance.

What leaders can learn from my blender.

1/30/2018

 
Picture
Insight can come from the most mundane tasks.  

As photographer and author Chris Orwig said in his TEDx Talk, Finding the Magnificent in the Mundane, “beauty can be found in unexpected places… by savoring the moments in life.”  The other day I paused while cleaning my blender and found meaning in a simple act - a metaphor which crystallized my thinking on an aspect of sustaining dramatic improvements in performance.  

It’s always more efficient to "clean-as-you-go." ​
​My family loves smoothies.  So much so, we own a Vitamix blender.  It’s central to our kitchen and even accompanies us on vacations.  It is one of those workhorse appliances that nothing else can replace, and it has justified our initial investment a thousand times over.  Its brought joy and health to our family.

The Vitamix has this cool feature: You don’t have to disassemble the jug, and when you finished blending, you just rinse, add hot water and a squirt of soap, close the lid, firing it up full blast, rinse, tip over and let dry.  Because it's so easy, the clean-up experience eclipses that of any blender I’ve used in the past.

But, if you wait too long for clean-up, watch out.  Let sit, old smoothie forms a tenacious coating 3M could patent, and it creates a breeding ground for bacteria.

The business end of a Vitamix (the jug), with its tight conical shape (providing the supersonic torque needed to liquefy any fruit or veg), contains a viciously sharp set of what I can only assume are indestructible adamantium blades.  Cleaning out dried-on crud takes time I don’t have, poses a threat to my fingers I don’t need, and is entirely no fun at all.

I’ve learned it’s always more efficient to "clean-as-you-go," rinsing away the remnants of the last great mix-up, leaving the vessel clean to go to work again in an instant.  Clean-as-you-go is a fundamental commandment in commercial kitchens, and for a good reason;  It saves time, confusion, injury, and cost.
As a transformational leader, do you clean-as-you-go?
After investing time, money and effort to shift your business (perhaps a new product, market, process, technology, strategy, or value) have you forgotten to rinse right away?

Many businesses aim for higher performance.  They seek to focus staff on the good stuff; a new way of working, and the achievement of a big hairy audacious goal.  But they don't clear out the old policies, behaviors, and processes.  These then plague leaders by keeping teams tethered to past ways of working.  They form an insidious counter current that confuses staff when they have to choose between supporting the new or old, the right-now or future.  When the tethers to the past aren't cut, staff and leaders pulling against them eventually frustrate and fatigue.  They return to old ways of working, growing incompatible with the companies vision for growth
Make a habit of not only defining what the new state is, ​define what it is not.
-Tim Sweet
Don’t mix things up, dispense all that delicious goodness of change, and then neglect the business end of the transformation (the people and culture).  If, after making a performance shift, you don’t rinse the crud off right away it will dry where it sits. That sludge will create risk and confusion you don’t need.  It’s the breeding ground for dissent and conflict.  When you finally have to deal with it, it will resist - taking substantially more effort to remedy than it would have if dealt with immediately.

Part of making a silky smooth transformation and being ready for the next one has to be the clean-up. Make a habit of not only defining what the new state is - define what it is not! Proactively help those around you rinse off outmoded assumptions, legacy processes, defunct values and out-flanked strategies.

Keep on mixing it up, bring Joy and Health to your company and clean-as-you-go.
​
Best, 
​Tim

Comments are closed.

    Business Performance Articles for the Progressive Executive and Emerging Leader

    Leadership Development Articles For You To Share With Your Employees and Boss.  Innovative Ideas for Growing Your Business. Picture

    SET UP FOR SUCCESS?
    Sign Up For
    Free Tools,
    Office Hours,
    Courses, and More.


    About Tim and TWE:

    If your are a leader that wants to find their groove, help others perform, deliver outstanding value and create teams that thrive, then this site is for you.

    I coach, consult, write and speak full-time, building Leadership Effectiveness, and High-Performance Cultures for my clients. 

    My research and techniques have been required reading in business schools since 2003. 

    I have a busy family of five in the foothills of the Canadian Rocky Mountains 

    That's me in a nutshell!. Now, join the TWE community! I look forward to getting to know you! 

    - Tim Sweet

    Want Stronger Relationships With Staff?

    Subscribe and Download TWE's Quick Reference Poster:

    Six Killer Hacks for

    Powerful 1:1 Meetings

    Success! Now check your email to confirm your subscription. (FYI: This helps us make sure we have no robots posing as humans in the TWE Tribe.)

    There was an error submitting your subscription. Please try again.

    We are good people - we won't send you spam. Unsubscribe at any time. Powered by ConvertKit

    Archives

    October 2019
    July 2019
    April 2019
    January 2019
    November 2018
    September 2018
    June 2018
    May 2018
    April 2018
    March 2018
    January 2018
    December 2017
    November 2017
    October 2017
    October 2016

    Categories

    All
    Alignment
    Analysis
    Career
    Clarity
    Communication
    Consistency
    Data
    Experience
    Failure
    Generational
    Halloween
    Images
    Innovation
    Leadership
    Lean
    Listening
    Performance
    Performance Culture
    Poster
    Presentations
    Reality
    Sexism
    Success
    The Bobs
    Transformation
    Vision
    Visualization
    Waste
    Youth

    RSS Feed

    Picture

    Gallery: Halloween Images

Services

Executive Coaching
Employee Development
Performance Improvement 
Leadership Offsite Facilitation
​Keynote Speaker

TWE

Start Here
SWEET ON LEADERSHIP
About TWE
​Contact
​Withdrawal Policy
TWE Polls For Leaders
Picture



© TeamWorkExcellence 2019. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
  • Start Here
  • Sweet on Leadership
  • Services
    • Executive Coaching
    • Employee Development >
      • leadershippassport
    • Leadership Off-Sites
    • Performance Improvement
    • Keynote Speaker
  • About TWE
    • About TWE
    • References
    • Contact
    • Awesome Referral Page
    • TWE Polls For Leaders >
      • Career Leadership - The Bobs
      • The Desert Island Challenge
      • Alberta Leadership Experience
    • Our Privacy Policy
  • TWE Community
    • Opt-in to TWE Tribe
    • TWE FaceBook Page
  • Champion
    • Champion Athlete
    • Champion Business
    • Richard Young : Crafting Champions
    • Tim Sweet : Crafting Champions
  • New Page