When attempting to make great accomplishments, we tend to look at issues in the workplace, or in everyday life as opportunities to be resolved. This may distract from solutions that are very obvious and perhaps more urgent or easy to resolve. You may have heard of the expression “low hanging fruit.” Typically you would hear this when tackling a new opportunity, or when there’s a clear advantage to achieving a milestone or accomplishment.
Where is Your Company Placing Importance in Their Culture?
Keeping your sights on what the top priorities are, will likely keep things lean and mean. But outside the obvious, we are also referring to what is not obvious. Circular discussions in meetings, persistent and unattainable targets that never get met, can definitely be a drain on time, resources and motivation. Some companies tend to place importance on resolving issues that can’t be resolved as the next step to a break-through. This could be fine if there’s nothing else to do, but as we may all realize, time and resources are usually restricted. In a few words, why concentrate on what you can’t do, when you can concentrate on what you can do? So much time gets wasted on the “can’t do” mentality, when it’s just a matter of approach that needs a switch or refinement. Yes, this may seem a little philosophical at the moment, but being agile does really place importance on what is being done and how to adapt new ideas and processes to what was previously done.
When a team gets stuck in anti-patterns like analysis paralysis, a stagnant state that is usually caused by concentrating on what can’t be done at the moment, is a direct result to over-analyzing beyond the knowledge, developments, or tools available today. So if your team collectively doesn’t have the knowledge or tools, the low hanging fruit may just be to concentrate on obtaining the very knowledge or tools that will get you to the next step.
Getting out of Anti-Pattern cycles
A common cause of what may create a stagnant environment is the thought that all members of a team have all the knowledge needed to resolve an issue. But again, this is more of a pretentious approach whereby everyone avoids the realization that some learning is required. The problem is, nobody tends to want to step up and be the one to say that they don’t know. This kind of attitude is usually shunned upon and seen as weakness in many companies. But what does it really mean to be “weak?” Is it admitting that you need to do some learning and getting right to learning? Or admitting that you know it all and that you can waste everyone’s time pretending that it can be done?
Learning is Not a Weakness
Ultimately, what we can observe in the situation above, is that company culture can affect the decisions and approaches that employees will take. It’s not about always taking the safe route, but allowing for mistakes to be made, and also not to perceive those who admit to needing more to learn as being the weak ones in the room. In fact, this is probably the reverse, those that need the most learning and admit to it, will actually be your strongest employees. These are your true pioneers, as they have the approach needed to admit failure in times when it’s necessary to take a bold new step to a break-through process, or discovery. The company culture will guide that behavior, so it is best to re-evaluate and adjust accordingly.
[Image courtesy of stockimages at FreeDigitalPhotos.net]
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