I had 9 minutes before my next call, so here you go!
If you’re a visionary, here’s a play by play on how to ruin vision for the folks around you….
1. Hang onto unresolved trauma and insecurity. Let it guide your decisions.
– Look outside of yourself for the latest shiny object.
– Whenever someone suggests an idea, take it and run with it, even if you don’t believe in it.
2. Verbally process as broadly as humanly possible.
– If you’re in a staff meeting, talk about changes that could completely disrupt their worlds.
– If you don’t have buy-in from the team, drop a comment about what you plan to do.
– Do it just enough that you force their hand, but not enough that anyone can call you out on your motives.
3. Stop as many things as you can in their tracks.
– Get people amped up and excited running in one direction, then redirect all their energy in a different direction.
It doesn’t matter if they’re motivated by wrapping things up & completing them. Keeping them on their heels makes it an exciting ride.
Plus, it makes it that much harder for them to form a coup against you.
4. Make it an exciting place to recruit into.
The healthy people will leave, so you’ll have to have a way to replace them. Make it an exciting place for people to come to.
It takes unsuspecting folks a good bit of time to figure out what’s going on. If you can lengthen it, great. If not, just make sure you’ve got a good recruiting pipeline.
5. Capitalize on the short time people are there.
Since people will only be there for a short time, work them as hard as you reasonably can. They’re going to leave anyway, so make the most of it.
No need to pay too much attention to their skillsets, interests, or aptitude. Again, just make sure they stay excited and get the job done.
6. Build a strong sense of loyalty, especially to things that don’t work.
Loyal people are…loyal. And when you get them emotionally attached to something that doesn’t work, they’ll give their lives to figuring out a way to make it work.
You want them to feel progress. But if you find them getting too close to something that actually works, you need to find a way to sabotage what they’re doing.
Change the requirements.
Change the direction.
PS – If you are in an environment like this, please reach out to someone for help. You deserve better.
PSS – This does NOT apply to healthy organizations that are in a form of transition or change. Post coming on how to navigate the unknown in these cases.
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