How to create an environment that moves mountains within your organization

A career coaching exercise I went through last year was to look over my own resume retrospectively, picking out the projects and positions that made me feel the most fulfilled and engaged. The idea was that this retrospective would help coax out ideas for future goals and values.

The projects I picked, the ones that made me smile, were ones that made massive impacts within those organizations. We moved fast. We fired on all cylinders. We created value rapidly. We moved mountains.

I’ve recently revisited that exercise, taking it one level deeper: looking at it from a leadership perspective. What if I identified and pulled out common environmental threads that felt like tailwinds while I was working on these projects?

Here’s what I came up with– maybe these will help you foster a similar environment at your own organization:

1. I felt trusted. During the biggest projects that moved created the most organizational value, I knew that everyone in upper management/ownership generally trusted my judgement and my plan, even when things didn't go smoothly.?
2. I had executive alignment. I presented directly at board meetings, I either reported to or had a direct line to the CEO. In cases where I didn’t report to the CEO, I had little to no signal attenuation between me and top leadership. Anyone reporting to me knew, in turn, that I was trusted by and aligned to the upper echelons of the company.
3. Communication with relevant stakeholders simple, frequent, and frictionless. Some of my best work happened at a time when the entire company was basically in one single office. Though remote work has become more mainstream these days, there’s no reason that remote work communication frameworks can’t be adopted to facilitate productive synchronous and asynchronous collaboration. Simply taking an in-person mindset to a remote world (e.g. everyone in video calls all day) isn’t enough.
4. Cash flow and finance were aligned with the project. Nothing kills a project faster than cash shortages and accounting anxiety. During my favorite projects, vendor invoices were paid on time and any financial surprises or conflicts were resolved quickly.
5. The “end state” vision of these projects was widely known and agreed upon, and were generally exciting to everyone who was directly involved in the project.
6. Key vendors in the project were a great cultural fit and were treated like an extension of the team by the whole company. Good vendor relationships are absolutely critical to the success of any project. Expectations misalignment from other executives, overreaching end-runs, heavy-handedness, and skepticism can sabotage these relationships and the project.

As a leader in your company, you have the opportunity to ensure that anyone that you are counting on to do GREAT work feels like these six factors are working for them within the organization. This is "greasing the skids" for progress and rapid value creation.

If the opposite is true for any of these factors, be prepared for setbacks and friction.

As an employee in your company, keep an eye out for these things and speak out if they are missing. If you want to look back on your resume with a smile a decade from now, you'll want to make sure these tailwinds are present on your next big project!