Playing the long game

With parenting, it’s what we do that counts, not what we say. When my two eldest girls reached 7 and 11, I decided to institute a more formal approach to pocket money. The girls selected a few age-appropriate chores, above and beyond their normal expectations, and we negotiated a weekly amount to compensate them for their efforts.

A few years later, we are at the point where the girls consistently remember their Saturday jobs and do a fairly good job of them. But this wasn’t always the case! It took a few goes for us to get it right.

Just writing the list and agreeing on the pocket money together wasn’t enough for them to develop new habits and do a half-decent job of dusting. (Honestly, HOW DOES THAT LOOK CLEAN TO YOU?!)

After the first couple of frustrating failures, I realised that I was being unrealistic in my expectations. If I wanted the kids to take ownership of their new responsibilities, they needed me to support them through teaching, reminders, and monitoring. It’s not a quick win (damn it), but it is something worth taking the time to get right, as they learn more about how to contribute to and run a household and develop skills that will serve them for the rest of their life.

“The pessimist complains about the wind. The optimist expects it to change. The leader adjusts the sails.” -John Maxwell 

The lesson? Embedding change and progress takes time and effort.  

Over the last two weeks, I’ve written about communicating change to your teams in a way that promotes engagement and creates meaning to build buy-in. The first part of this is the ‘tell’—the need to provide conviction and clarity about the change you want to see in your organisation and the importance of making it a reality. The second is the ‘ask’—asking the right questions to shape meaning and make strategy real.  

The final piece in the puzzle is the largest and considers the need for support—how do we embed longer-term change in the way we work and deliver outcomes? 

Change is constant – how many times have you heard that lately? It's a cliche because it's true. Sometimes, it feels like we’ve just rolled out something new when the next big thing hits. But change dies when we take our finger off the pulse and expect things to run smoothly without additional tweaking or support. 

Just like I couldn’t expect my girls to instantly become expert dusters who remembered their chores every week without my input,  we can’t expect our teams to stay the course unless we lead by example and provide consistent support. 

In the spirit of asking better questions, it’s about asking: 

• “What’s working?”
• “What isn’t working?”
• “How can I help you to do this?”  

More importantly, it’s about practising what we preach – if you’re not modelling the importance of doing this and getting it right, why would your people?  

Are you providing the support your teams need?