Passions

Be passionate about things people can’t disagree on.

First thing to note: People will always try to find disagreements just to disagree. This isn’t about collaboration or consensus; it’s about “picking your hill.”

When I joined Goat Group, their operations were a mess. I was actually asked to cut my paternity leave short because of how backed up and flailing the operation was. I could have come into operation with a slew of new initiatives, processes, and theories, but I’ve found that to be an uphill battle. It becomes about convincing people that “I’m right.” I didn’t care what the team was working on; it was more important that we were working towards the same goal and that it united us. It needed to be something people wouldn’t challenge or disagree with.

The first thing we did was ensure everyone in the facility knew that the most important consideration was SAFETY” The business had zero accidents and injuries before I joined, but I was resolute in my messaging. I beat that drum relentlessly for thirty days to the point that if a new team member had been on the job for five minutes, multiple team members had already told that new trainee that the most important thing in the building was “safety”.

In thirty days, everyone was aligned and working as a team. Any differences in opinion had been replaced with a cohesive culture of teamwork. When a new directive or process was introduced, everyone was responsible for ensuring that peers and teammates were up to speed and aligned. By all working toward a message that we already agreed was necessary, we built a massive culture of unity.

I learned this from my first boss at Target. He didn’t care about the arbitrary business metrics by which we were judged (but God help you if you did anything that hurt the customer experience). When cashiers called for help, anyone and everyone were expected to jump in and ring up sales. If people were unresponsive, and he came over the radio, you knew hell was about to rain down with simple questions like, “Do you think making customers wait in lines is a great experience?”

He showed me that it's not about just being passionate or fired up; it is about picking the right passions. An essential part of this is first picking passions that don’t garner disagreement. No one was going to argue safety at Goat. People wouldn’t argue that having no lines at the checkout wasn’t necessary. If I ran a restaurant, the first thing I would do is ensure cleanliness and food safety were seared into everyone’s brains, from the head chef to the part-time hostess. If a restaurant can’t get aligned on food safety, it doesn’t stand a chance of getting passionate about anything else.

One takeaway:

Be passionate about things people can’t disagree about.