As I was winding up my last class last evening in a debrief of the semester experience, in my closing remarks after some rich discussion for over an hour, I chose to speak to the mandate of the 80/20 Rule Pareto postulated rightly many years ago. This semester, the four classes, for an array of reasons, were each more challenging to get the teams organized and up and running than any previous semester. It still puzzles me, frankly, for my concern is that the array of issues encountered are potentially reflective of the greater population and if so, then my concern for the future decision makers and leaders has increased.
In speaking about the lessons learned from the semester experience and how the 20%-ers that impede the progress and productivity of the teams, a dot connected at a very personal level that I chose to share to make my point. The overarching point is that in business, the work must get done. Getting it done is made smoother when all the oars are in the water and the rhythm is established but if one set of oars is out of the water or out of the time sequence, the whole team is slowed in its performance. To sharpen this reality I shared the following very personal story as an analogy.
In April of 1990 while living in Luxembourg at aged 42 years old, I played a heavy duty basketball game of fathers against the American International School's varsity basketball team. I had longed for that annual event the whole season with mind working each Saturday morning watching games formulating how to beat this bunch of eighteen year olds. Finally on a cold 7 April morning, that time for battle came and it came with a vengeance. I was transposed to my college playing days but not my college playing physical conditioning. We beat that team and I had a superb scoring and rebounding game, running backwards up and down the floor, blocking shots, intimidating those "children." Yes, life was good for there is sweet savor in victory.
The game is over, the applause is sweet but I knew something was not right for I could not seem to cool off and was sweating profusely. For some reason I felt this need to exit the gym while an awards ceremony was underway by excusing myself to go to the rest room. My brain was processing that if I could physically lay on the cold tile of the rest room, my body would cool and cease the sweating. Well, you can guess that my body did not cool but only worsened. A student was in the restroom and saw me and all I could think of was to keep him calm, not to bolt and starting telling anybody for I knew this would go away. He did remain very calm and collected. That coolness on his part helped me to calm down. As an aside, that young man is named Laurent Weber and we are on FB so as I did earlier this week, want to thank him via this blog for his cool calmness when others would have went goofy.
The very short story is that I was, in fact, experiencing what is called a myocardial infarction, a heart attack due to a clogged artery on the back side of my heart in the right coronary artery. After so many years of playing basketball, the military, work pressure, etc, I soon learned that the small crook in that artery was there at birth but the game expenditure of energy probably broke loose a small piece of plaque that clogged the artery thus the text book definition of an infarction. Yes I was transported to a local Luxembourg city hospital and so you can know, all was and is well with me to this day. No surgery, no heavy meds; just the memories but each is crystal clear in my brain of that cold day, the thrill of victory, the fear of not knowing, the weight of concern for my family in a foreign land, the doctors none of which spoke my language but were all exceptional; yes very memorable.
That is my story but to the point of my blog today and the 80/20 conundrum. One thing you learn when a major organ is affected in your body, you get very interested in that organ and exhaust much in learning about it. The heart has a most unusual process God built into the organ and that system is called "collateral shifting." You see, the heart is surrounded or wrapped in a cardialc sac that is supplied oxygenated blood via large and small veins that course the cardiac muscle. When anything happens to slow or stop the flow of the rich oxygenated blood flow, an infarction, the heart immediately begins a process of cutting a new pathway around the area of the infarction to ensure the blood flood is maintained. It is simply amazing when you stop and think of the amazing creation of the human organism and the safeguards God created.
See, a team, a family, an organization must establish a singular heartbeat as it crafts its very unique culture. Once the culture is established, the fatigue factor of the culture in minimized as the productivity becomes the norm. However, if a 20% er, the infarction, remains, the organization, the heart, must work harder and harder to maintain blood flow to the muscle, the team. When that happens, in teams, the members dedicated to the journey begin automatically to collaterally shift processes and system to ensure the team, the heart, returns to its normal run rate of productivity. I hope that analogy is as clear to you as it is to me.
As this semester is now wrapped up with submission of my fourth and final class grades earlier today, much as been learned by the students, the teams and especially the leaders. I have heard and read volumes of feedback in the debrief sessions this week and personal profile essays written to me by each student about themselves to support the reality of the above analogy. My challenge to each of my students past and present is to seek ways to ignite what we have learned and experienced together into an active mode in their personal and professional lives. Like a foreign language once learned, if you keep using it you will never lose it but stop using and the loss of that language comes very quickly.
This has been a blessed journey this semester. It has not all been good but it has all be a part of a great journey and what an honor to get to lead that journey for these dozens of great minds. What a blessing!
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