It’s hard to read the label from inside the jar!
I thought I had to be able to sort it out myself, and it was killing me!
I was in my first senior management role and had taken on an area of business I knew very little about – production parts supply. Which, as you may imagine, is quite stressful at the best of times and was made worse by a new product launch that hadn’t been well planned. I spent my entire day dealing with irate customers, haggling with my production colleagues and trying to resolve a myriad of tiny issues, one part at a time.
As the team manager, I felt that it was my job to sort it all out. Surely I’d be labelled a failure if I didn’t? And yet – to be honest – I hadn’t a clue what to do! So I was completely stuck and on a downhill spiral towards burnout and breakdown.
Fortunately, others could see what I couldn’t admit to myself – that I needed help, and I was soon assigned a mentor to help me through. He showed me that I was focussing on the wrong things – dealing with symptoms rather than the underlying issues. He taught me some great principles that still underpin much of my work to this day. By applying these principles, we began to turn things around. Over the course of several months, we moved from being the worst to the best performing team. Even better, I had time to work with my mentor to see how we could capture what we had learned so that it could help other teams and future projects.
The whole episode helped me realise the importance of seeking an external perspective:
Those outside the organisation can see what we can’t: we can get so bogged down in our own thinking that we can’t see clearly what’s really going on. We have blind spots or unconscious bias, so we fail to recognise limitations and threats. That’s why I have a coach and peer group who regularly challenge me.
We don’t need to do it all ourselves: no–one has all the knowledge and skills they need to accomplish the task and, even if we did, that may not be the best use of our time. That’s why I work with others who can do certain things better than I can, or to free up my time to work in areas where I can add most value.
Outside experience can bring fresh ideas: we can get stuck in familiar ways of doing things, and may not recognise that there are others, better ways out there. That’s why I’m always looking to learn by spending time with others who have different perspectives to mine – seeing that as an opportunity and not a threat.
Of course, that requires a certain openness and vulnerability to acknowledge we can’t do it all, plus recognition that it’s what is achieved that matters rather than who did the work.
You may not be in the crisis position that I was, but is there a role for some external perspective in your business? If so, I’m, always open to a chat to see if I can help, so please drop me a note or call me for a no cost, no obligation call.