I suppose, it’s possible, you might just need someone out of the cookie cutter. Exactly like someone else you have or had around to do the same job in exactly the same way. Maybe, a production line, fast food, if you’ve been blessed with perfection.

Another one just like this one please.

Most times though, almost every time in almost every career, what you need first are shared values, a shared work ethic, and skills that cover the majority of what’s inside the line.

Then what you really need is variety, alternative experiences, a different view point, a broader base, a narrower one, outside influences, internal dynamics, unique creativity.

Teams, effective teams, teams that solve problems and build new things, teams that deliver are built with variety, difference, peculiar, individuality.

Skippy strategy: Start with values, work ethic and skills. For everything else, look away from the cookie cutter.

If it was a contract, and the contract was serious, you’d spend time working out all the main terms and even more time nailing down what has to be delivered, by which party, and when.

Of course, it’s possible you’d nod through the main terms and sign off on the deliverables without paying much attention. It’s possible you’d be three days or weeks or months into the thing before realising you’d gone down a track that’s different from the one expected. It’s possible you’d get caught out, or tripped up, or kicked off by something you hadn’t considered but the other side had.

In reality, if it was a contract, and the contract was serious, and you were serious, there’d be no nodding through or careless signing off.

If it’s not a contract, and you’re still serious, same principles apply.

Skippy strategy: If you’re serious, if you care … apply the discipline.

Some people always seem to know a guy.

Someone who can help out in situation X, has insight into subject Y, has a contact who has a contact who has a contact and each is prepared to help the others. Someone who’s worked with everyone and those same everyone’s are keen to work with them again. Someone connected. Someone with experience. Someone who can’t do everything but can get everything done.

Not most of us then.

The difference between most of us and that guy or that gal? They added value whenever they could, often for no gain other than the joy of doing it, and they kept in touch.

How to be that gal or guy? Follow their lead.

Offer your help, help out when you’re asked, add value whenever you can and keep a habit of staying in touch.

Skippy strategy: Help out and stay in touch.

Anytime someone new lands in your team there’s a running in period.

They get used to you, you get used to them. 

Getting used to you is a big step that always takes longer than you’d expect or like. And if it’s a new role that hasn’t existed in this team before, there’s added complexity as everyone, including you, works out the corners and edges of the job itself – and that’s a step that can take months. Then there’s getting used to the pace of the place, the work ethic, the team dynamics, the expectations.

It can be quite the long haul.

Getting used to them is as simple or complex and any human relationship. There’s a way to get the best out of each other, and seventeen (thousand) ways to nudge things away from optimal.

Start the work.

Skippy strategy: Take time and effort to get used to each other.

Ever stood outside of the loop?

Ever found out last, ever wondered what was happening, ever been kept in the dark about the what and the why, ever failed to get an explanation, ever been concerned that decisions were being made without full knowledge of the facts you know, ever questioned what was happening, ever felt that things just absolutely had to make sense because, y’ know, otherwise, this thing is crazy?

At the centre, it’s easy to imagine that you know all you have to know and that you’re making the best decisions possible.

In reality, at the centre, it’s easier not to know.

It’s easier to miss the connections and misunderstand how completely the foot bone is pulled around by the head bone. It’s easier to make bad decisions on weak information and little understanding of the impact they’ll have where it matters.

Skippy strategy: Widen the loop.

There’s value inside the lines: doing what’s expected, repeatably, fulfilling on established practices and keeping everyone happy as you go.

There’s value outside the lines: making your own rules, spinning on variety, throwing creativity, doing the unexpected and coming up with ideas and projects that only exist outside the mundane – as long as you’re successful most of the time.

For those compelled to be creative: the problems come when you abandon the known routes to known successes just because you want to. When you consistently get lost in the weeds you volunteered to explore. When you fail to keep to your own commitments and jump around so no one knows where you are or what you’re up to.

Even outside the lines, there are boundaries – the ones that keep you connected to the purpose, the point, and the people you need to come with you.

Skippy strategy: Keep connected.

Some people are extremely good at filling their day with meaningful ways of tearing up trees, adding value, and moving the dial. They’re the kind of people we want on our team but, reality, they’re rare beasts. Leave them entirely on their own and good things will happen – not necessarily exactly what you’d want to happen, but good all the same.

The thing they’re missing, direction. Go there, let me know when you’ve made it.

All teams need direction.

Most people need more. More encouragement, more accountability, more check-ins, more attention, more human-to-human involvement. 

Leave those people on their own and sooner or later, they’ll grind to a halt. Either because they don’t know what to do or they think nobody’s looking.

The job, with either group, is to apply just enough of whatever they need to keep them pointing and moving north.

Skippy strategy: Keep them pointing north.

We’re so convinced about our value proposition that we think everyone should buy it.

We’re so convinced about our value proposition that we try to convince everyone we believe should buy it to actually, erm, buy it.

We’re so convinced by our value proposition that we don’t listen to what they say or care about what they’re thinking, we only care about what we’re saying – looking for the magic formula of words that will unlock the promise for them so they understand just how wise they’d be to take their hands out of their pockets.

Sure, you have to be convinced by your own value proposition.

The trick then is to find people who are already in the market for that value, not to convince everyone else that they should be.

Ears are more important than mouths for this.

Skippy strategy: Get your mouth out of your ears’ way.

Sometimes we make decisions that we know are right but that we also know will cost us political capital – pushing things (the right things) through in the face of opposition from interested parties. It’s right, it’s right, it’s right, we know it’s right, but it feels kinda wrong, or unpopular, or has to be sold a little harder than we’d like.

That is the work.

To do the right thing even when it’s difficult, even when it isn’t met with whoops and joy.

Put your nose to the stone and getting on with it anyway.

The popular alternative – don’t do what’s right, do bow to vested interests, don’t add another brick to build the organisation and team and business you want.

It’s as easy as it’s misguided, as wrong headed as it’s short sighted, as lazy as it’s ineffective.

Skippy strategy: Do the things you need to do.

You can’t put in the bathroom before you’ve sorted the plumbing.

Well, you can, but don’t expect anything to work.

If you do it that way, expect it to be a mess for a long time as you retrofit – which means tearing down and building back – one unit at a time. It gets there in the end but wastes time and resources and causes frustration and irritation. Especially to anyone who did the work and who now has to do the re-work, or is waiting to use the sink.

Crazy.

Nobody would fit the sink before the pipes.

Nobody.

Except, everyone does. They hire the people ahead of the work, they sell the product before it’s ready, they interrupt the process to use the process, they stop development here to develop there when the development there needs the development here.

Skippy strategy: Going slower right is faster than going faster wrong.