At the beginning of the year, we are filled with plans to do great things, hit our goals, and aim for the sky. What happens?
We make those plans in a bubble, without consideration of context or continuity. The plans look great, but then, well, stuff happens – people leave, teams reorganize, budgets are cut, shiny new objects appear – plans go by the wayside and, all the sudden, we’re left wondering why we can’t get anything done, why we feel so exhausted, and why our team is struggling. It all comes down to an often overlooked factor – continuity.
Why Continuity Matters and Impacts Team Performance
Continuity in business vernacular means making clear progress with minimal interruptions so that true value creation can occur. It’s hard to come by in the business world.
Energy drain and frustration occur because we are not able to make progress on meaningful things we want to achieve. Work feels harder. Misunderstandings ensue. People don’t seem to care or are unaccountable.
It’s amazing we get anything done. And while we might not explicitly talk about processes and issues dragging us, we do feel their effects as we try to make positive progress.
How a Lack of Continuity Depletes Energy
Energy depletion occurs when you spend energy to perform without taking time to recover and renew your energy stores.
You can continue to perform well for a while, but over time, it takes a toll. You’ll find yourself going into survival mode or feeling the effects of burnout.
This happens on the individual level, and it also happens at the organizational level. There’s plenty of research around the concept that multi-tasking and context switching are unproductive. It makes work harder, increases anxiety levels, and increases the potential for errors.
What happens when you take that to an organizational scale? Interruptions and process changes make achieving continuity more challenging. You want to move forward but you don’t know where to get answers, who to talk to, how to have a smooth and harmonious decision-making process.
When you’re in the constant uncertainty that a lack of continuity creates, you often fall into a reactive state. Reactivity prevents continuity. It creates tunnel vision, so you can’t see where you are supposed to go next or where you’ve been.
It deletes context and pushes you more toward disengagement and discouragement. When you’re the leader and you feel this way, you also lose the desire to create continuity for others, which can negatively change the climate of your workplace.
How to Create and Fuel Greater Continuity
Recognizing that leaders have an outsized impact on team continuity, your instinct as a high achiever is probably to do things in the traditional way –step up, push people, connect the dots, do more to hold it all together for everyone. However, when you do this, you push yourself farther down the road to burnout, which will have an even greater impact on your team.
Here’s an example – you have a vision for a new project you want to take on. Because there have been changes in the organization, you don’t have a team that’s fully equipped to step up.
So, you decide to tackle it alone. You get worn out. You miss necessary details because you don’t have others’ perspectives and expertise. Your project does not succeed the way you envisioned because you didn’t have continuity and a system to make it happen.
When you work to build continuity in your organization, though, you work cooperatively. You share knowledge among team members and create synergy.
You slow down and listen to one another, creating continuity by sharing institutional and individual knowledge. You’re less inclined to make costly mistakes or rework projects. In the end, your work moves faster and more successfully. In other words, cultivating continuity pays dividends.
You CAN cultivate continuity, even in an environment of change. Here’s what it takes:
- Consistency. Everything doesn’t have to stay the same for consistency to occur. There’s a difference in consistency and stagnation. To be consistent, you need clear alignment between team members, standards for how you expect team members to behave, and commitment so you’re all working toward the same vision and goals. You create consistency while also being flexible in the face of challenges.
- Building momentum. We can lose momentum by standing still or drain team energy by expending efforts in many different directions at once. Chasing multiple goals without communicating or getting everyone on the same page slows progress. You can build momentum through clear communication with your colleagues, which will also create more continuity and increase opportunities to achieve goals together.
- Transparency. Continuity is disrupted when people don’t have clear guidance or expectations to manage their resources. Creating visible workflows makes responsibilities and deadlines clearer, so there’s less of a gap/learning curve when things change, and so people spend less time unknowingly working at cross-purposes.
- Acknowledging small wins. Continuity involves building on an existing foundation. That means when your people add something of value, celebrate it and build on it. Honor the ways they find to do impactful work in line with your stated vision and goals.
Continuity as the Root of Innovation
If you’re wondering whether focusing on continuity makes a real difference, consider this. Today’s companies thrive on innovation… and continuity is at the root of innovation. We innovate not by jumping from item to item or task to task in a chaotic fashion, but instead by iterating and continually looking for opportunities to make what currently exists better.
When you create continuity, you foster growth, innovation, and an appetite for change – all of which can fuel performance and differentiate your team/organization and set you apart as a leader of distinction.
