The Leader's Role When You're Taking on Water
It was a beautiful day out on the lake, and the fishing was going well for the three friends. Everything was fine until one of them noticed they were taking on water. The first guy to notice it grabs the nearest thing he sees that can bail water: a tiny little cup. He starts bailing furiously, but it doesn’t seem to be doing any good. The other two haven’t noticed yet, as they are busy fishing. The first guy assumes this is a temporary problem and keeps bailing, all the while looking back at his rod in case a fish bites.
It starts getting worse.
The second guy realizes there is a problem, and he, too, starts bailing. He has a red Solo cup, so he moves more water than the first guy, but he still isn’t making a lot of headway. He doesn’t want to leave his fishing rod, either, so is pretty distracted from the bailing effort. Every once in a while he gets a bite, stops bailing, and tries to land the fish. He finds it is more difficult to net the fish when you have to rummage in the water in the bottom of the boat for the net.
The third guy is late to the party. He has been solely focused on fishing and finally catches on when he can’t get to the live well because of the water they are taking on. Something has to be done! He grabs a bucket and starts bailing, too, still with one eye on his rod.
By now everyone is focused on bailing, and no fishing is going on, which was the purpose of the outing. And they keep on taking on water. The tiny cup, the red Solo cup, and the bucket aren’t enough. Yet they remain determined to keep trying the same things, hoping somehow their efforts will be rewarded with a dry boat and a return to their fishing. It hasn’t yet dawned on this trio to try something different.
Eventually they take on enough water that they have to abandon their day of fishing (the whole point of being at the lake) and are at risk of losing the boat altogether.
I’m not yet sure how this story ends. If the guys continue what they are doing now they will not be able to fish, and they will eventually lose their means of fishing. But trying something different takes away from fishing and from bailing, and in the heat of the moment nobody wants to stop trying to accomplish the goal (fishing) and preserve the organization (bailing).
I think sometimes people act that way because they don’t know that there are alternatives. Nobody told them there was a pump and they could use it. Nobody tasked them to figure out the source of the water and address it. Each of our fishermen were equipped to do only two things: fish and bail, and some were poorly equipped to do either.
This mindset is prevalent in many businesses, especially if you are a founder. You are busy providing your service or producing and selling your product that when things get really busy, you just bail harder. You put in a few more hours. You take on more roles. Soon you find you are spending most of your time just trying to keep up and nobody is steering the boat or trying to figure out why you’re taking on water.
When bailing furiously gets tiresome, you start losing people. That’s not what they signed up to do. Now you have to replace them and train up someone new. More water to bail! In the meantime, you or your other (already exhausted) employees are trying make up for the empty desk, so you put in a few more hours bailing and trying to figure out how to stop the boat from sinking.
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Business leaders have a responsibility to keep the boat floating and pointed in the right direction. Too often they think that grabbing a bucket and bailing is the right answer. While every extra hand helps, the leader needs to recognize that their responsibility lies in fixing the larger problem. In this metaphor the leader must:
Overcommitting the leader, doing the same things we did yesterday, or “trying harder” using failing or outdated systems or processes or the wrong team is a recipe for failure.
Leaders should always be willing to jump in and bail, but this must be a temporary measure. The real value in leadership comes from fixing the big problems, establishing systems and processes, building the right team, and charting the course for the future.
Hard to do that when you are the chief bucket person. If the leader insists that the only solution if for him or her to personally bail harder, we are done fishing and our boat is sunk.
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Bob Dixon is a leadership coach, a strategic consultant, and Certified High Performance Coach at Arete Strategic Consulting. He is a combat veteran with over thirty years of military service and a passion for helping people be more awesome. He is the author of Leadership Insight: Challenging What We Think We Know and dozens of articles on leadership and national security
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