Time to jump in the puddles

It’s almost Spring. This winter there has been a lot of snow. Now that it’s melting there is a lot of water out there creating some awesome puddles. When we were kids puddles were there to be conquered, have fun in, explore and discover new territory. After all what are rubber boots for? You could jump in, move in bravely and splash, inch forward cautiously and sometimes you were rewarded for your efforts with a soaker. Coming home with wet socks and a smile on your face was pretty much a give away that you had been having fun.

We all need to get out there and jump in the puddles. It’s fun, it’s exciting, it’s adventurous.

We also need to be playing in puddles more at work. Now more than ever is the time to move creative ideas to innovative actions to keep ahead of what’s happening. This approach takes courage. Often we get praised for doing a good job, following protocol, putting in a hard days work. Over time we have stuck to the processes and created order. It’s a much more difficult thing to engineer a modicum of chaos while keeping the process intact. If the goal is to make the organized more organized look for that initiating Follow Thru to line up what needs to be lined up. Celebrate that this individual sees the fun in organizing in the same way that there is fun and excitement in creating opportunities, meeting risk head-on, researching information or being hands on and demonstrating the way to do things.

The opportunity to have fun jumping into the puddles is there for all of us whether that means producing, reinventing, re-creating, confirming or organizing.

Our own instincts define fun for us, just as they tell us what we find challenging and difficult. The Kolbe B index compares our natural instincts (the Kolbe A), to those instincts we believe are requirements to do our job. Our conative strain is shown as the differences between the Kolbe A and the Kolbe B. If you believe your job requires you to manage rapidly changing priorities and taking risks to succeed, and you are someone who naturally avoids chaos, the fun part of your job will not be juggling multiple projects with competing deadlines. For initiating Fact Finders researching is fun. They want to know how deep the puddle was, was it muddy on the bottom and how many people walked through it. As a preventive Fact Finder writing this, trying to guess what questions a fact Finder might ask about the puddle was even a chore.

 Learning about what it takes to be successful in your role seems like a pretty important part of actually being successful in your role. Leading your people through the puddles is a lot more fulfilling if everyone gets to splash. The success of a team is propelled by the diversity of the team. Just as everyone has different coloured boots, we have different ways of contributing. Everyone’s  definition of fun is different. Everyone’s path to contribution – likewise.

We continue to have fun by working with individuals and teams helping them think and act differently to achieve their goals. Using the Kolbe process is a great way of doing that and it is fun for our clients too.