Planned Exit

Have you ever missed your exit on a highway? Maybe you were day dreaming. Maybe the exit was poorly marked. Maybe things just got in your way. How did it make you feel?

Since I went to college in New Jersey, a congested and high traffic area, missing my exit could add many minutes to the trip. It became a lost effort. I could feel energy draining from me and anger welling up inside as a productive day became less so, all because I missed my exit.

Does your team have a planned exit?

Do they know when their work is done?

Many teams are ongoing parts of a process -- operational in nature and presumably long lasting. Other teams are part of a defined project -- they will not be around forever and should not be around any longer than absolutely necessary. If they are, productivity drops to close to zero and time is wasted. As a high performance leader, you want more. Much more.

Providing a team with a planned exit removes more than half of personal issues.

Personalities stop clashing. Games get re-directed. The focus becomes getting the work done instead of installing a hundred individual and meaningless agendas.

If your team is scheduled for an an end, make sure you don't miss the exit.

-- Douglas Brent Smith

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High Performance Leadership

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