Have you ever dreaded going on vacation because you know that upon return your email inbox will be out of control and all the projects you left will welcome you back just as you left them? All too familiar, right? I think Eli Whitney has a solution for you, the idea of interchangeable parts. Why should you be the only one doing all the work? Trust issues aside, when you belong to an organization, part of that organization’s growth is in eliminating single points of failure and building added capacity by sharing team members’ skills. It’s great to feel valued when you find your niche within the organization but if, as was said when I served with the 82nd Airborne Division, that “the Sun won’t rise tomorrow, if you don’t come to work,” then you may not be fulfilling your potential in that niche.
“Putting ego aside, ensuring there is a back-up for your responsibilities in the event of an ‘emergency’ shouldn’t be anything but a good idea.”
When I joined my Operational Detachment-Alpha (ODA) in Special Forces, I truly learned the need for operational redundancy. Our Green Berets trained the ODA members in their specialty skills and learned to perform the job of the leader two levels up. That way, if a guy went down in battle, or simply needed a personal day, the ODA continued mission without missing a beat. This really helped improve quality of life, you knew that your colleagues had you covered, should you need to peel away from the grind. This should easily translate to the private sector. Putting ego aside, ensuring there is a back-up for your responsibilities in the event of an ‘emergency’ shouldn’t be anything but a good idea.
Murphy exists, Murphy’s Law that is. Not to worry though, sharing knowledge vital to an organization’s function can significantly push against Murphy. When we shared skills on the ODA, chief among those skills were medical skills. It’s an unfortunate law of war that when you go into battle, the medic will go down, it just happens. So, our team, like many others, prepared for this eventuality by making sure everyone on the team could perform a checklist’s worth of medical tasks to improve an injured guy’s chances of survival. Private sector organizations should also seek to improve their chances of survival by sharing skills, processes, and techniques among their team members. When someone is out sick, particularly on a small team, it hurts. If you aren’t around to do payroll because you are laid up, you better have set the conditions for someone to back you up. Better yet, your boss should have expected this eventuality and given the order to do just that long before it was ever needed.
“Demonstrating humility in business contributes to developing situational awareness, because you allow yourself to absorb what you hear and observe. Only then can you achieve the understanding that business is not a singleton’s pursuit, it’s a team endeavor.”
Having mentioned ego, some take the approach of viewing themselves as “indispensable” due to their special knowledge or skill. In their eyes, this generates the feeling of holding some sort of power, which feeds their ego. This is detrimental to a team environment, however, provided they are not acting this way for security protocol. I highly recommend taking a humble approach to business as humility generally contributes to building a positive working environment. If you work yourself into the position of being the single point of failure, you are just doing everyone a disservice. This is where insidious processes creep up in an organization. Suddenly a team member is absent - another colleague tries to do something that requires the absentee’s expertise - everyone begins fumbling a routine task with that essential cog missing; handling routine business swiftly morphs into something being done, seemingly, for the first time.
Demonstrating humility in business contributes to developing situational awareness, because you allow yourself to absorb what you hear and observe. Only then can you achieve the understanding that business is not a singleton’s pursuit, it’s a team endeavor. Teams are inherently interoperable; they need to be. Think defense in football. In zone coverage, depending on the opponent’s action, you are prepared to shift to cover an area. As a play develops, the area you cover may have been covered by another defensive back or may be covered by another teammate after you. This ability to be flexible in space and adjust to constantly changing dynamics is a quintessential visual representation of how members of a team should support one another; it should be no different in an office.
“When you achieve a high level of rapport external to the organization, you have achieved professionalism; a widespread public understanding that your organization and its members are reliable.”
Effectively supporting each other engenders trust that facilitates generating impactful results. Experiencing the impact resulting from this trust becomes a catalyst for customers and peers to also develop trust in an organization. When you achieve a high level of rapport external to the organization, you have achieved professionalism; a widespread public understanding that your organization and its members are reliable.
Don’t leave your people guessing how work is going to get done in your or anyone else’s absence. Plan and implement how to make your team members interchangeable parts. Reliability speaks volumes and customers will seek out professionals to provide solutions.