The Foot Bone is Connected to the Leg Bone is Connected to the Knee Bone…
Summary: “If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.”
Thought Experiment
Try this, most people find it eye-opening:
- Stand in an open doorway. Face as if you were going to walk through. Shoulders square between the doorframe.
- Do the beauty pageant wave: Hold your right arm (or left) up in an L. Your elbow should be perpendicular to your body and your hand pointed straight up, palm forward.
- Place your palm and forearm flat against the wall or doorframe — palm facing forward. Keep your shoulders in line with the doorframe.
- Press your hand forward. Slowly increase the pressure until you are pushing as hard as you can. Notice what you feel:
- At first, you will feel tension in your shoulder.
- The tension will start to spread to your chest and upper abdomen.
- You will start to feel it in your hips.
- You’ll start to notice your sense of balance is being impacted.
- As you approach max effort, you’ll start to feel tension all the down your legs into your feet.
- For many people, your heart rate will also increase. You might find yourself breathing harder than normal.
This is called muscle recruitment. At first, just your arm is involved. At the end, nearly your entire body.
(Stick with me — I’ll tie this into leadership soon.)
When the effort required is minimal, you only need the muscles of the immediate system. However, as the effort required is increased, your brain automatically recruits other muscles and systems in your body to help. Some contribute to strength, others to balance, others to ensure there is sufficient oxygen, etc.
That’s what happens in a healthy body. Our bodies aren’t designed to depend only on the strength of one part of our body. All parts are designed to work together when needed.
If someone is unhealthy, severely deconditioned, or has an injury, they might find the exercise to be uncomfortable or impossible. Or they might find that parts of their body don’t respond as I described above.
In fact, it can get worse. Injury or dysfunction in one part of the body can cause imbalances and dysfunctions in other parts of the body.
Like it or not — the foot bone is connected to the leg bone is connected to the knee bone…
Where Real Strength Comes From
Real strength comes from being able to recruit the entire body to help with a movement. The brain tries to do this naturally but unless it has been trained, it won’t be that good at it. And if it doesn’t continue to train, it will forget.
This dynamic is mirrored in your organization.
Real organizational strength comes when all organizational components work together to accomplish your one clear goal. Most people suspect this intuitively.
But if they aren’t led with clarity and trained to work together, they won’t be coordinated or efficient. And if they don’t keep trying to work together, they will forget how.
It gets worse. If they forget how to work together, they often start to work against or in spite of each other.
This doesn’t mean that every goal or task needs everyone’s attention all the time.
However, an entire organization needs the sales department to function well. The sales department needs the products or services to be available. The accounting department needs accurate and timely information. And so on.
Leadership and management are like the brain and nervous system. It’s their job to pay attention to when separate components need to pull together.
When they do well and practice this regularly, you get the organizational equivalent of gymnasts and dancers. When they don’t pay attention and don’t communicate, you get the equivalent of desk jockeys who struggle to climb the stairs at work.
Sometimes it is hard together. But nothing works well alone.
It takes work to partner, communicate, and work in alignment. Too many leaders don’t understand that it takes effort. Others just don’t like the effort.
As a result, they lead organizational cultures that produce silos.
In organizations, this is due to a lack of alignment. A lack of alignment around core values, goals, priorities, and expectations.
Sometimes this works alright for a while. Passably well. Especially if you don’t know what high performance can look like.
However, in times of change, challenge, or conflict (kind of like the last couple of years), siloed companies will underperform because they can’t all pull together when needed.
The last couple of years have made this very clear. If you haven’t experienced this personally, I’m sure you can think of a handful of organizations that have.
The Three Primary Ways to Break Down Silos and Work Together
Cultivate awareness: This is primarily the job of leadership and management. Pay attention to how your organization is doing. Are there places of pain or restriction that seem to go unaddressed? Are there bottlenecks in the system? Are there chronic issues of any kind?
Do you know what provides or depletes energy or motivation among your teams? Do you know what is required to get everyone to pull together — and at what point they need a break? Do you know how to recover or rest? Do you know how to encourage flexible and nimble thinking?
Create and protect alignment: Bodies that are out of alignment are not only weaker but are more prone to injury.
Organizations that are not aligned towards a shared sense of values, purpose, and goals are both weaker and more likely to suffer from problems.
The more your entire organization is aligned in the same direction, even if they have completely different roles, the more effective and problem-free you will be.
Commit to action: To be a leader implies that you lead. That is an action verb. Leadership only expresses itself through action.
Consider Your Organization:
What happens when any one part of the system is loaded and stressed? Does the entire system pull together to lend strength? Or is it stiff, unresponsive, or full of nagging aches and pains?
What is the one most valuable thing you can do to help create alignment in your organization?
Take good care,
Christian
Originally published at https://www.christianmuntean.com on November 9, 2021.
