Lessons when people move on

Isn’t it just great when you have a team of people working together who are incredibly productive?

Together they generate great ideas, they are full of enthusiasm and everything goes up a level. New things almost seem to be created every day and everyone is a part of it. You can see this happening if you read the earlier posts on this blog in recent months about the Creative Learning Academy.

Then, as surely as change happens to everything, the first sign that it is only temporary becomes apparent. And over the space of a few weeks several members of the team announced that they were leaving. Various reasons – retirement, new job, emigrating, secondment. All good stuff, but it meant that the magical formula and mix of people was coming to an end.

Players in a movie, or actors in a long-running play. Change brings renewal. At first it seemed like an impossible and infuriating task to rebuild a team from scratch. But if you have:

• clear values
• clear goals
• clear purpose

it is relatively easy to immerse new players into the work. In the space of a couple of months we have rebuilt the team. Those three components are key to this. Without them it takes longer to get the show back on the road.

The other thing that really helped was that whilst we had those three components clearly set out, there was still plenty of creative space within each work programme. This was essential to ensure that new team members have the space within which to make their own mark. Thus, each person has the scope to “learn the ropes” and then start to influence the shape of our work very quickly.

I noticed as this was playing out over the days and weeks, that each new team member went through a “pain” barrier. This was the shift that is needed to move to a way of working that requires each team member to become involved in shaping the overall work. It has been fascinating to watch the way in which each person in turn gets to grips with the basics, then begins to question their own ability to function before they then adapt and realise that they can make valuable contributions to the overall programme of work.

This process of shift, change and adapt is still ongoing – but it has been really useful to capture the learning as it progresses.