A presenter at a conference I recently attended told the story of how his mom thought that it was important for him to learn how to cook when he was growing up. She decided that the place to begin was with a ham. As she was preparing the ham she cut the end off and the presenter asked his mom why she did that. She mumbled that it had something to do with allowing the juices to flow well, the salt to seep out, etc., and then admitted that she had no idea why, that her mom had done it that way so she did as well. A while later when he was talking to his grandmother he asked her why she cut the end of the ham before cooking it. His grandmother simply said that while living during the Depression the only pan they had was not very big and so she had to cut the end off of the ham to make it fit.
I assume that many of you know where I am going with this. Each of us, or our teams, or our organizations do things that if pressed for a rationale or reason why, could not provide an adequate response. There are just some things that get done a certain way because we have always done them that way or simply because the person before us did them that way. And if we do explore the reasons behind those choices we may not always find anything all that compelling or profound.
Re-inventing the wheel is not usually a great use of time, and change simply for the sake of change and be frustrating, but every so often it is a good idea to evaluate why we do the things we do – especially when it comes to policies, decision-making, and related activities. It is easy to get into a pattern of action that may not actually be the best use of our time or the most effective way of doing the task.
A new person to our teams can help with this if we provide the right environment and encouragement for it. A new member often sees things that those of us who have been around for a while might miss. When someone new joins a team there is a window of opportunity to use ‘fresh eyes’ to evaluate our team and what we do. The issue of course is establishing the required level of trust soon enough to allow this to happen. It can be difficult to ask and hear the kinds of questions a team may really need to consider.
If you do not happen to have a new team member in your midst at the moment there are of course other ways to perhaps gain this perspective. Giving yourself and your team permission to ask ‘why’ (sometimes incessantly like a three year old) can also reap benefits although perhaps annoyingly so. Spending time with a person from another department, or company if feasible, who does a similar task or has a similar process but approaches it differently, may also provide some new perspective. One way or another though, gaining understanding of why we do the things we do, and being able to objectively evaluate them, can be a great step forward in building a more productive and effective team.
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How To Cook A Ham
I assume that many of you know where I am going with this. Each of us, or our teams, or our organizations do things that if pressed for a rationale or reason why, could not provide an adequate response. There are just some things that get done a certain way because we have always done them that way or simply because the person before us did them that way. And if we do explore the reasons behind those choices we may not always find anything all that compelling or profound.
Re-inventing the wheel is not usually a great use of time, and change simply for the sake of change and be frustrating, but every so often it is a good idea to evaluate why we do the things we do – especially when it comes to policies, decision-making, and related activities. It is easy to get into a pattern of action that may not actually be the best use of our time or the most effective way of doing the task.
A new person to our teams can help with this if we provide the right environment and encouragement for it. A new member often sees things that those of us who have been around for a while might miss. When someone new joins a team there is a window of opportunity to use ‘fresh eyes’ to evaluate our team and what we do. The issue of course is establishing the required level of trust soon enough to allow this to happen. It can be difficult to ask and hear the kinds of questions a team may really need to consider.
If you do not happen to have a new team member in your midst at the moment there are of course other ways to perhaps gain this perspective. Giving yourself and your team permission to ask ‘why’ (sometimes incessantly like a three year old) can also reap benefits although perhaps annoyingly so. Spending time with a person from another department, or company if feasible, who does a similar task or has a similar process but approaches it differently, may also provide some new perspective. One way or another though, gaining understanding of why we do the things we do, and being able to objectively evaluate them, can be a great step forward in building a more productive and effective team.
This entry was posted on Thursday, October 10th, 2013 at 1:49 pm 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.