As a participant in Texas’ Great Winter Freeze and Energy Grid Debacle, I’ve had lots of opportunities to dust off my Girl Scout survival skills training – and to reflect. Building and managing fires to stay warm this past week, I was struck by how differently the same fire burned in response to very small adjustments in the alignment of the logs. A seemingly tiny shift of a log left or right, or lifting one end a half-inch, or even adding a log could either double the size of the flames or snuff them out, leaving only glowing embers.
Watching this phenomenon play out over and over again, I was struck by the similarities between these fires and the energy dynamics I’ve observed in teams – and in whole organizations. Employees whose assignments are aligned with both the team’s goal and their strengths are generally engaged, proactive contributors. Team members experiencing the resonance of alignment amplify one another’s energy, and this kind of energy tends to translate into higher levels of creativity and productivity.
Alignment releases creative and productive energy.
On the other hand, employees spending too much of their day engaged in de-energizing activities simply because they are “part of the job description” while watching others struggle with a task they could do in a flash has an overall dampening effect. Frustration and boredom, it turns out, are also infectious – psychologists call this phenomenon “emotional contagion.” Unfortunately, this kind of energy tends to translate into disengagement and doing-the-minimum-to-get-by performance, the potential energy of the team dissipated into unproductive actions and emotions.
The funny thing is, both phenomena can be observed in the same team – the same group of people working in the same organization on the same type of project can run “hot,” like my fire when I got the alignment right, or “cold,” like the barely burning embers when things are misaligned.
Small shifts in organization or task alignment can amplify or dampen a team’s energy – and output!
I was also struck by the dynamism of the fire system, and realized that teams, too, are so much more dynamic than our organizational models and practices acknowledge. To keep my fire burning hot, I had to tend it frequently – nudging, lifting, realigning the logs to ensure enough proximity and enough well-placed space so that each log burned well and together released the maximum energy into the room.
Team alignment, too, is iterative and dynamic, a process of coming into a particular alignment for one project – or one stage of a project – then shifting to accommodate new demands, new conditions. These changes don’t need to mean a dampening of the team’s energy. Instead, they can be an opportunity to discover and release new sources of energy and for team members’ to deepen their appreciation of one another’s unique strengths. Achieving this level of functioning, however, will require shifts in organizational mindsets, policies, and practices to enable dynamism.
“Alignment” is a dynamic, impermanent achievement to meet the challenge of the moment.
Current delineations of task by job description (rather than by aptitude and energy) along with a persistent belief that suffering is an intrinsic part of work leave many managers at a loss for a remedy other than financial compensation or some other extrinsic perk. Meanwhile, a great deal of talent is wasted every day; megawatts of potentially productive energy dissipated into inefficiency and distractions.
Strict adherence to individualistic job descriptions limits the opportunity of collaboration.
The word syzygy describes a moment of alignment in dynamic systems. Three astronomical bodies in alignment are said to be “in syzygy.” Chromosomes, too, come into and out of syzygy during cell replication. Syzygy isn’t static but rather is a period of alignment that serves a purpose in a larger system. These periods of alignment will last longer in organizations than in either of these natural systems, but there’s value in adjusting our mindset to think of alignment as a temporary state, one that may last hours or weeks or months, rather than as a fixed configuration.
What would syzygy for maximum effectiveness look like in your team? Is your team currently aligned for maximum energy generation or is a disproportionate amount of their talent and energy being dissipated in activities that might be done better, faster, and with greater enthusiasm by other team members given the opportunity of a task swap or task sharing arrangement? Imagine amplifying your output without increasing headcount or burnout.
Are you ready to unleash your team’s full potential?
