Are growing and supporting the same?

Colleagues,

MVP: We can grow people and we can create support by improving the organization.

Note: This week’s messages are about leading in highly stressed organizations. I will be breaking my 300-word limit this week. Don’t feel compelled to read this week’s messages if they don’t apply to you. Look at the MVP and decide, and don’t feel guilty for not reading. Priorities, right?

We are now in stage three of managing chaos. One of the primary roles of leadership is to help people be able to do their jobs better. We do this in two ways:

1. Growth, which refers to improving their knowledge, skills, dispositions, and health.
2. Support, which refers to increasing alignment of purpose, structures, and resources to make it easier for people to do their work.

Growth is focused on the person, while support is focused on the system.

As we take care of ourselves and are better able to be present, we will gain insight from others as to where the biggest friction points are. Using the principles of leverage (see tomorrow), we can chip away at the friction.

Again, we aren’t going to make everything great, but we can ease the pain, which should lead to a situation that is more sustainable (from extreme down to severe turbulence).

We can grow people by:

• Teaching them to use a tech tool to cut down the time it takes to complete repetitive tasks.
• Providing them with new knowledge that will help them better tackle a critical problem.
• Helping them gain some different experiences that help them to view the people they serve through a different perspective.
• Using coaching techniques to help them become more reflective.

We can support people by:

• Using language and emphasizing work that is aligned to people’s reasons for joining the organization (purpose).
• Eliminating tedious tasks that serve little purpose (structures and resources).
• Implementing times to celebrate and acknowledge small wins (structure).
• Decreasing the number of meetings (resources).

Tomorrow we’ll look at a framework for how to lead change in an organization whose extreme turbulence can make change catastrophic.

Today’s intention: Growth is about people, support is about systems. If you could learn one thing to improve your own situation, what would it be? If you could make one change in the purpose, structures, or resources in your organization, what would it be?

Cheers,

Frederick
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