What a diaper, a restless toddler and a restless toddler in a diaper tell me

First, about the diaper…

It is 7 pm on a weekend, when I’m tasked to get my son ready for bed. At this point he’s so wired that he jumps about the bed like someone tripping on a dance floor for the first time. At this point, 2 choices present themselves to me – either I restrain him and amidst mad howling, change his diaper and clothes OR I jump like him within the confines of the bed and without him realizing, change the diaper synchronizing my movements with his while changing his clothes. I choose the latter, every weekend.

I choose the latter, as much as I can, every weekday too. I’ve realized that a young and energetic workforce needs to wander through working life at their own pace and organisations have to meander around them, nudge them back if they’re too close to the edge and only occasionally just restrain them. However pre-defining ways of working puts anyone off. Agreed we live in times of agility and quick response, but leaders need to juxtapose that with the knowledge that there is never a dearth of opportunities to teams which are hungry to learn and succeed. So never let a deadline come in the way of a creative expression.

Now about the restless toddler…

It is 8 am on a weekday, when my wife and I are tasked with feeding milk to our 18 month old son. Having resolved to feed him without a screen, we tend to organize a full circus for him with multiple toys, displayed one at a time. Where it gets stressful is having to think 3 steps ahead of him to line up the entertainment in an order that keeps him engaged which requires us to think of the line-up well in advance. So we know that when he gets bored with one toy, which one needs to come up next!

This scene repeats itself at work too. I have come to realise that learning and growth with everyone in the organization needs to address certain pre-agreed goals but if you have a young team, you need to think about their next-to-next gig while you think about their next gig. For a large section of the youngest of the workforce in your team, learning is about breadth than depth. A generation for whom the world is a playground, knowing just enough about everything trumps knowing more than enough about a few things. For hunger such as that, every leader needs to think ‘what is next-to-next?’ and not ‘what is next?’ when it comes to thinking about growing people.

As leaders our only job is to pass the credit and take the blame. So in this season of appraisals and goal-setting, let’s not forget about everything that happens in between. So let’s create the spaces for people to run wild!

 p.s. -  I have nothing against deadlines. To quote someone I wish I knew – ‘I love deadlines. I like the whooshing sound they make as they fly by’.