Coach Tripp would wear us out in the weight room every time. Some days were a real treat when practice was scheduled immediately after the weight room…ughh.
I had one job, throw the ball upside down and backward over a distance of 45 feet in less than .7 seconds (that’s POINT SEVEN seconds). I was a deep snapper. If my arms were fatigued, the ball looked more like an injured duck and the speed was more akin to a turtle. If the ball couldn’t get there quick enough, our punter was at risk of getting his bell rung by the fastest humans I had ever seen in my life.
It was Coach Salva’s job to keep me motivated to continue cranking out reps even though my arms were in an all out revolt! It was a simple form of leadership.
Lead Well.
If you’re looking for more resources to work ON your business, we have them.
You are fatigued.
Your team is fatigued.
The overworking of our mental load is fatiguing our minds and our bodies.
THIS IS THE MOMENT OF LEADERSHIP.
For a while we have looked in the rearview when thinking through and debating leadership, thinking through all of the heroic responses from leaders throughout historical moments: Aurelius, Lincoln, Tubman, King Jr. Churchill, Gandhi, etc.
Elements in the rearview were at one time present moments. We are in the present moment right now.
Fatigue has blanketed our global culture and has left no one unaffected by its weight.
Much of the fatigue is in response to a lack of coordinated national and international leadership. Your teams are currently in a position of waiting for leadership, a vacuum of sorts, and YOU have the opportunity to fill it.
Your team needs a fresh wind, a new thing. Something to buy into, to look forward to.
We have a plan…
Fire (theoretically of course) your entire team, and then hire (theoretically again) them all back the very next day.
Tell your team, “you will all be starting a new job on ______(date) and we are going to re-invest in you in a powerful way!”
There are two leadership steps to take in this radical idea and both will require you as the business owner to write down your leadership and then implement with simple repetition.
We call it the O2 plan (like Oxygen:).
First is the onboarding phase of leadership.
Most business owners need help so badly in a moment of panic they bring people onto the team and hope that the new team member can navigate their own way into “just doing the work”.
It’s actually quite damaging and a bit in-human.
Just because someone was a superintendent at another construction company does not mean they are ready day one to be a superintendent at your construction company.
If life and business were all about task(s) then we could plug n’ play, but human life is…human. It’s variable, it ebbs, it flows. Human life is filled with laughter, and divorce, and school days, and work, and that annual family reunion, and diagnosis, and all sorts of predictable and unpredictable things.
In the same way that water systems rely on pump stations all along the pipeline to deliver this life-giving resource, business owners lead by providing seasons of leadership pump stations to help push through fatigue.
Powerful onboarding requires powerful preparation and forethought, but once built, it pays dividends.
Imagine when you hire a new team member they have an online course they go through over a period of three months where they are able to grab an insight into your vision, mission, values, culture, systems, processes, and structure.
Think it’s too hard? Think it’s overkill for your small business?
We dare you to try!
The second leadership step in fighting fatigue and restoring a fresh wind into your business is the ongoing phase of leadership.
When things get tight, two budget line items get cut the fastest; marketing and training. Just at the time where you need more business and need more engaged team members, we pull the rug out!
Leadership is hard because it requires vision, forethought, outlining, writing, storytelling, faith, cataloging, motivation, and repetition.
But you say, “man, I just want to sell _____________ (insert your product here).”
Your product is a commodity, like rice, sugar, and concrete. It’s all about the same and requires predictable investment.
Your people, your team is human, a non-commodity. Each is unique, peculiar, skilled, and motivated by simple vision.
Make sure you got that, each person is motivated by simple vision.
Every minute you invest in live or recorded ongoing training you are reinvesting the seeds of simple vision.
And where there is vision, there is movement!
In the middle of a crisis of fatigue, you can re-boot, re-invest, and re-energize your team with thoughtful onboarding (even your long term employees), and ongoing training.
Every time you create a written process in your business, you have created a new training module. It’s that simple.
Scott Beebe is the founder of Business On Purpose, author of Let Your Business Burn: Stop Putting Out Fires, Discover Purpose, And Build A Business That Matters. Scott also hosts The Business On Purpose Podcast and can be found at mybusinessonpurpose.com.
