Have you ever missed Christmas?
It’s a deadline. A deadline for millions of people.
Have you ever heard someone say.. “Sorry kids, missed it. Took longer than estimated to organise so we will have to reschedule’?
No, neither have I.
I know this is a sad insight into my brain but for the sake of furthering leadership I’ll take the hit… let’s look at Christmas as a program of work… a collection of complex projects… millions of projects, billions of dependencies, complex supply chains, global distribution, purchasing, budgeting, resourcing… and no ‘boss’.
So how can billions of people achieve the delivery of their Christmas projects, on time, on scope – (roughly within budget)? It’s the biggest program run every year – and there is no overarching governance, no overarching assurance, no status reports… all we have is trust – entrusted leadership, inspiration, and an emotional commitment to deliver.
This Christmas program of work comes with a plethora of risks, issues and constraints… complex planning, loose and variable scope, not enough budget, many tasks to execute, dependencies, multi-cultural teams, multi-language teams, geographically dispersed teams, no command and control leadership, no organised cross collaboration, no set reporting, no steering committees to oversee us all…
…all with an immovable deadline.
So how then, do we do it – every year – with a perfect delivery record? Seems like we are setup to fail – but against all odds we succeed – failure is not an option.
My thoughts are:
- We all have a clear vision of what is required
- Date, goal and vision is (very) well communicated
- We have a collaborative culture of ‘get it done’ together
- We have a deep emotional commitment to succeed
- We do it for others
- There is a transparent view of the outcome
- We embrace Entrusted Leadership
- We are empowered to make decisions
Delivering on Christmas is one of the world’s greatest leadership agreements – year on year – we all succeed.
And on the whole – we enjoy doing all the work, and enjoy delivering.
Sounds like a great way to achieve outcomes doesn’t it?
Steve Randall.
P.S. This year my family’s Christmas project was thrown a curve-ball… on Christmas eve my son badly injured his hand (don’t ask) and we ended up spending Christmas day in hospital while he had surgery.
Just like all projects, things don’t go to plan and things happen at the last minute. This change impacted 10 people – 4 had flown in from Chicago, 2 from Melbourne and our 4 had flown in from Brisbane – but everyone re-organised, re-planned and executed with success… This type of ‘issue’ happened to millions of Christmas projects around the world – and everyone solved it – I believe because everyone understood the above points.
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Steve: 0400 005 924 | 1300 851 861
#Leadership #HardButWorthIt.