Besides my love for sports, the other passion I have is for hiking. I especially love setting off on multi-day hiking trips, where the famous qoute “It’s the Journey not the Destination that matters” really rings true. It is often over-used however, I find it to be true and something that provides meaning to several situations in life, even outside of the multiple days of tirelessly walking along a hiking trail lugging the proverbial monkey (hiking bag) on your back. On one of the recent trips, one of our friends threw a twist to the qoute “it’s neither the destination, nor the journey but the company you keep that matters”. When I look back at some of the most memorable vacations/hiking trips that I have taken, that seems to be pretty spot on. Almost invariably it was the company that made the trips as fun as they were and I have ended up making lifelong connections because of many of those memorable trips (including my better half).
As I reflect back on my professional career, while there have been several highs like New Product Launches, First Customer Rollout, Industry First Milestones, Media releases at tradeshows etc.., true to the hiker inside me, I derive more satisfaction from the Journey that led up to these highs. And in keeping with the new-found wisdom about it being the company that matters, I really treasure the connections that I have made through these achievements more than the achievement itself. Tying this together to my last post about Teams, I would argue that it is the quality of connections amongst the people on a team that eventually makes the team tick and makes any of the achievements possible. Brene Brown has so eloquently summed up “Connection is the energy that exists between people when they feel seen, heard, and valued”. This energy is what drives a team of individuals to achieve things that are far greater than the sum of their individual talents. Brene Brown summarizes that “Connection is what gives purpose and meaning to our lives” and I would like to extend that parallel to an organization as an entity and extrapolate that the quality of connections within the organization gives purpose and meaning to the organization.
As I look back at my professional career, I can think of several instances where teams connected effortlessly and drove towards a common higher purpose, and in the process ended up over-achieving any of the goals/objectives or MBOs/OKRs, if you prefer to measure success in those terms. Observing the Energy of such an organization has always been a fascinating and rewarding experience by itself. On the flip side, when an organization lacks the connections across the teams, every single meeting/milestone will highlight the energy drain that the organization suffers from and as a result, even the simplest of goals/objectives seem like insurmountable peaks. Such organizations can define a purpose but almost all the time, they end up stuck on the lowest rungs of survival and safety needs (refer to Maslow’s hierarchy of needs), that inevitably will result in the individual survival instincts to kick in, making it a vicious downward spiral.
I hope you enjoyed reading this article. As always, feedback/critique is welcome. For my next post, I will try to keep it light on the spiritual part and share my views/experiences with respect to the classic innovator’s dilemma.
Connections Blog Post