OK, I’m in the car, I’ve left sufficient time to get to where I’ll be making a presentation to 100 managers and then I see it – the long red snake of brake lights with an orange flashing tail.
I mused, as a police car shortly followed by a foreign looking ambulance, shot past - Why now? Why me? Aren’t motorways supposed to be the safest roads? Well, yes they are but car pile ups still happen.
Once at the venue, having found a car parking space and not seen any bodies at the accident, I discover the room hasn’t been laid out as we need it, so my colleague is frantically throwing deep red table cloths about like some rampant matador. Having set up the equipment and seen the slides projected I begin to relax. Managers are ambling in – its only 5 minutes late and given what’s happened that’s a result.
On reflection, as I write this, in a Radio 4 ‘Thought for the Day’ type moment, before launching into the afternoon session, there are parallels which jump out to working in Reward.
Setting strategic direction and using focus groups can act as sat nav or GPS but we can still miss turnings. Some of us may be equipped with the forthright Australian equivalent of the Tom Tom (known as the Bruce Bruce) which shouts ‘Which part of turn right don’t you understand?’ But at that point do you turn back or carry on to find an alternative and potentially better route?
My point about milking this analogy is that we can have the best map or plans but there is also a need for flexibility. Taking a different turning intentionally or otherwise may provide a better or just more scenic route.
There is so much to distract us around restructuring, redeployment and redundancy but we can’t let the wheels of reward and recognition fall off otherwise our organisations will crash. It is important for us to keep on in there and we will indeed get ‘there’ in the end.
Although it may not always seem the case and unlike ambulance drivers, what we do in our day job does not normally involve life endangering situations and to help retain a sense of perspective, this is something worth remembering in these difficult times. There was not even one death caused by my PowerPoint presentation either – 2 results in one day - glory!
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