Get Off the Roundabout

I arrived at a mini-roundabout the other day. The one pictured above, as you’re wondering. I arrived at the exact same time as two other cars; that doesn’t happen very often. Even more unusually we all wanted to turn right and go down different roads, and no one had the obvious priority. What happened? Well, we’re British, so we all sat and waited.

Two seconds went by and a thought entered my head… How long would we all sit here if no one moved?

So we sat.

And sat. Time passed.

Twenty seconds. Yes, twenty seconds it took before one of us moved. Even then it was me; bored with my stupid little bit of fun and the angry looks of delayed drivers in my rear view mirror.

Now I should probably apologise to the other two drivers if they were a minute late for a meeting, or a haircut, or a Zumba class (this is rural Lancashire), but I couldn’t resist mulling over whether the decision making process we used to make that split second decision at a roundabout is rooted in our training, education and experiences. I would normally have simply gone first and think I was doing everyone a favour by making a quick decision and getting us all moving again. Something this time told the academic, training part of the brain to overrule the operational, decision making part and see what happened when the roundabout suddenly became a leaderless task. What did it tell me?

Team Dynamics and Leadership. We all wanted to take the same action at the same time, and with no set rule or process to guide the group we ended up procrastinating, losing direction, and feeling uncomfortable. We all suddenly became risk averse; not wanting to set off at the same time as someone else and cause an accident. The initial split second of indecision had grown into half a minute of dithering for this informal team. If I hadn’t made the move, who would?  Would one of the similar team members have stepped up to the mark, or would it have been an external influence applying pressure for a decision (through the medium of a horn)? A team filled with similar thinkers can quickly become indecisive and impotent and will undoubtedly need some form of leader to push it forward.

Communication. What struck me was our inability to communicate despite being able to see each other clearly and all speaking the same language. What is the universal sign for “after you” or “me first”? After that initial delay, no one wanted to make a decision and even when I made the move I had no effective way of signalling my intentions. I guess in that moment I became a visionary leader of the roundabout; forging the way for others to follow and achieve their own goals through my example. Or that’s what I’ll tell myself.

I thought the moral of this story might have been about not having meetings round circular tables; as they’ll just encourage circular discussions and stalemates, but I still think it’s about that roundabout. Without a defined leader a team is prone to stall and lose vital time in its decision making loop, and in some cases antagonise other parts of the organisation. Teams need someone to drive them forward, and all the better if that individual is able to adapt their style to the given situation.

So get off the roundabout. Communicate decisions clearly to the team; quickly establish a decision making framework; take decisive action at the appropriate time; and get to the desired result a lot quicker.