This past September a couple of friends and I decided to hike into Fortress Lake for a fly-fishing trip. The plan was to bike up to the old ski lodge and then hike into the lake from there. It is a gravel road to the lodge, wide, but mostly uphill. From there we had a good idea of where the lake was, but none of us had ever been there before. When we got to the lodge we pondered our options and it seemed like the best choice was straight up the mountain, a direct path that would have been up a ski run at one point.
The trip up the mountain was definitely a challenge. We had full packs and there really wasn’t a clear path so we simply found a way up; through a number of strawberry patches and two relatively fresh bear digs.
At the top of each little crest or plateau we were thinking, ‘okay, the top must be right up there’; but it wasn’t. It ended up being a looong hike and when we finally got to the top we realized two things. First, there was a road that looped around to the left of our chosen direction, which we had somehow missed and which would have made the climb much more enjoyable. Second, the lake was not at the top. It was a little further on along the top of the ridge and then down into a valley, about another 45 minute hike.
For a variety of reasons we decided not to head down to the lake. It was later in the day than we had expected to arrive and it was time to head home. To say the least this was rather disappointing.
In many ways this was a great trip. Incredible views, a good hike to a place I had never been to before, fresh air, the added ‘excitement’ of being in bear country, and cycling out down a long gravel road was both exhilarating and nerve racking. And there were lessons to be learned; leaving a little earlier and knowing about that road to the left would have been good things.
But even though the journey was fun and good, I was left feeling dissatisfied. We had come to fish and did not do that. As good as the trip was, it was not complete, we did not reach the goal we had set or the get the results we were looking for.
Work can be like that. Great teams get results – that’s the point. The journey is important to be sure, as are any lessons learned along the way, but at the end of the day it’s about achieving the objectives that have been set.
Good teams do good work, meet most deadlines, and basically just get things done; they do enough to get by. Great teams reach or exceed their goals and objectives most if not all of the time. When a great team does not get the results they were looking for, they take it personally. They do not settle, they re-evaluate and figure out what went wrong and improve.
The point of all this of course is to put what I have been commenting on during the last few months into a larger context. Trust is foundational to our work environment, and while it is a good and essential thing in and of itself, it serves a larger purpose. The same can be said about having good conflict, clarifying your commitments and practicing healthy accountability. These are all good and very important things, but in the work setting their purpose is to help us achieve the goals we have set. Great teams pay close attention to what they want to achieve as well as how they are going to get there.
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Scaling Fortress Mountain
The trip up the mountain was definitely a challenge. We had full packs and there really wasn’t a clear path so we simply found a way up; through a number of strawberry patches and two relatively fresh bear digs.
At the top of each little crest or plateau we were thinking, ‘okay, the top must be right up there’; but it wasn’t. It ended up being a looong hike and when we finally got to the top we realized two things. First, there was a road that looped around to the left of our chosen direction, which we had somehow missed and which would have made the climb much more enjoyable. Second, the lake was not at the top. It was a little further on along the top of the ridge and then down into a valley, about another 45 minute hike.
For a variety of reasons we decided not to head down to the lake. It was later in the day than we had expected to arrive and it was time to head home. To say the least this was rather disappointing.
In many ways this was a great trip. Incredible views, a good hike to a place I had never been to before, fresh air, the added ‘excitement’ of being in bear country, and cycling out down a long gravel road was both exhilarating and nerve racking. And there were lessons to be learned; leaving a little earlier and knowing about that road to the left would have been good things.
But even though the journey was fun and good, I was left feeling dissatisfied. We had come to fish and did not do that. As good as the trip was, it was not complete, we did not reach the goal we had set or the get the results we were looking for.
Work can be like that. Great teams get results – that’s the point. The journey is important to be sure, as are any lessons learned along the way, but at the end of the day it’s about achieving the objectives that have been set.
Good teams do good work, meet most deadlines, and basically just get things done; they do enough to get by. Great teams reach or exceed their goals and objectives most if not all of the time. When a great team does not get the results they were looking for, they take it personally. They do not settle, they re-evaluate and figure out what went wrong and improve.
The point of all this of course is to put what I have been commenting on during the last few months into a larger context. Trust is foundational to our work environment, and while it is a good and essential thing in and of itself, it serves a larger purpose. The same can be said about having good conflict, clarifying your commitments and practicing healthy accountability. These are all good and very important things, but in the work setting their purpose is to help us achieve the goals we have set. Great teams pay close attention to what they want to achieve as well as how they are going to get there.
This entry was posted on Tuesday, April 24th, 2012 at 11:29 am and is filed under Comments. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.