People vs Numbers
At a time when there are challenges all around us and many people are feeling overwhelmed, how does one walk the line between balancing the need to bring in the numbers and developing people?
I have two stories and some ideas:
Story 1
I delivered a talk recently for a Law Firm and offered the COO and HRD a choice of my two latest books, Be More Human and Big Bold Goals.
The COO went for one title and the HRD went for the other title (you can guess which way round it was!).
It serves to highlight the different priorities in a business.
Story 2
The first time I sailed the world, my first Captain had a saying that a fast team is a happy team. The culture was utterly numbers driven and all about boat speed. The underlying assumption was that if the boat was going fast, we’d all be happy and go even faster.
It worked! We arrived in Boston 18 days after leaving the UK in first place.
The relentless focus on the numbers paid off.
Roll forward 3 months and by the time we arrived halfway round the world in New Zealand, we were exhausted, burnt out, and a dysfunctional team.
As we started the next leg racing to Australia we literally crashed the boat.
I wonder how many leaders and their teams feel like this right now.
The next twist in the story though is important.
Our Captain resigned and we had a new Captain fly to New Zealand to join us.
A very different type of Captain. One who was much less focused on the numbers.
We went on to finish the race and over the next 4 legs, although we won one-third place, we were low down in the fleet.
I’d argue our second Captain was too people-focused on keeping everyone happy and not numbers-focused enough.
What’s the right balance?
If you were to put it on a scale where would you land? For you, for your team?
Lets’ say that 0 is 100% people-focused and 10 is 100% numbers focused where would you land?
Too people focused and no eye for the numbers and it’s a recipe for running out of money and crashing the business.
Too numbers-focused and no eye for the people who are actually driving the results and it’s a recipe for a burnt-out team and crashing the business.
Where do you sit in the business?
Are you in HR? What’s the conversation you need to have with the CFO/ COO?
Are you in Finance/ operations? What’s the conversation you need to have with HR/ people leads/ team leaders?
Are you on the the SLT? What are the conversations you need to be facilitating?
It’s about creating better conversations
It’s easy to end up in a polarised world. Here’s one suggestion: What can you do to step into someone else’s world and understand better the pressures on the business? Not just the pressures you face. The more we all see the bigger picture, the more likely we are to have a winning team.
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