adminpretty little secretary into a dumbfounded nag.
Most of us have been there. The Revisitation; when déjà vu lies on the boardroom table, while everyone brings out their pads and laptops and waits for you to proceed.
“How are things going?” you ask.
In the Revisitation everyone states exactly what they have stated before with statements like
- I am planning on starting . . .
- I am still not sure about how to . . .
- I thought about it and . . .
Oh yes that (then typing as if they had forgotten — maybe they did).
Revisitation puts 5kg weights on the wings of a golden eagle.
Flying becomes too hard and almost not worth it.
It is hard to go over already covered ground and it blinds vision when you constantly have to retrace your steps to get any movement.
Imagine if I published the same article each week. You would give up reading after a while.
What if everyday was just like yesterday, exactly the same second for aching second, 24 hours of monotony with your only consolation being that it will be repeated again tomorrow.
Same food, same bad jokes, same mistakes, never moving forward, stuck in an endless cycle of repetition, revisiting where you have already been.
I am not saying do not analyse what you have been doing, but rather pointing out the glue and mire that is spread when a meeting is based on revisiting the same goals that were set from the time before.
I have been in a system like this where the same goals would be revisited week after week.
Each week the excuse was enchanting. Then the excuses bled into the mouths of everyone else as if one person’s reason for non-performance was exactly the same .
I stopped the lull of revisitation by accepting nothing, but results.
If results were not attained they rolled over to the next week.
Teach your team to ship on time. Shipping on time requires productivity and a continual moving forward.
If you find yourself in this sort of revisitation cycle here are a few things to do:
- Reward results not intentions. You don’t pay the dial-a-delivery guy for trying to deliver your pizza, you pay for the pizza when it arrives.
- Clap for closes not attempts.
- Inspire through example not loud shouting.
- Link your team’s skills to a purpose — not just cash. (i.e. a web design company choosing to tell creative and empowering stories, rather than just coding and designing new sites).
- Paint the Big Picture and highlight the significance of each part.
(Sticking with the web design company, spend time helping team members see how they integrate into telling these stories and the affect their work has on empowering clients to succeed).
- Give grace to deadlines when relationships are promoted over cash.
In other words, just because a deal doesn’t close doesn’t mean a relationship was squandered.
Maybe it wasn’t the best timing for your prospective client (the guys on the other side of the table).
Always promote the long-term relationship over the short term sales goal.
Choose to revisit your company goals annually (or bi-annually), but never allow The Revisitation to manifest itself on a weekly basis.
If you do, you’ll be swimming in super glue and going nowhere fast.
leeroy