Teamership: Developing resilience in connections

Having a network of connections is important and builds resilience. Photo by Austin Distel on Unsplash

Sometimes it’s easier to value something by considering what it would be like if it weren’t there. It seems a bit counterintuitive, but it’s pretty useful. Applying this logic is relatively easy. Unfortunately, it’s not always easy to fully grasp the implication of that until you have an experience of it.

As the Joni Mitchell song about the Big Yellow Taxi told us…” don’t it always seem to go, that you don’t know what you’ve got ‘til it’s gone”.

This was my experience on a recent work trip to Melbourne. I dropped my phone and it stopped working. All of a sudden, with no warning I felt a really strong sense of disconnection. I wasn’t able to communicate with most other people that I needed to, I couldn’t navigate myself from the shops to my accommodation in the way that I had expected, and I wasn’t sure how I would do a lot of tasks that I had taken for granted just minutes before.

Of course, it wasn’t that bad and I managed to navigate my way through the week with a cheap and cheerful temporary solution. The lessons I did pick up, though, were:

• I took my use of my phone for granted.
  
  I just assume that it will always be there, always be connected to the network and always able to connect me with the people and information that I need when I need it.
  
  The parallel in a multiple team network is clear. It’s very possible to take a lot of your connections for granted.
  

• Single points of failure are risky.
  
  I hadn’t realised just how reliant I was on the phone until it was gone. A lot of functions were reliant on a functional and connected phone (navigation, communication, alarm, etc).
  
  The parallel in a multiple team network is the value of a network. Having a network of connections is important and builds resilience.
  

• I was glad to be able to get back up and running quickly.
  
  A combination of being able to find a phone just before the stores closed and having most of my information backed up meant that I was functional within a couple of hours.
  
  The parallel for us operating in teams is that we need to have ways to quickly reconnect to people, teams, customers and information.

Here are some questions for you to consider this week.

1. Are there any connections that you might be taking for granted?

2. Can you identify any single points of failure in your connections (including whether you are one for others)?

3. How quickly could you re-establish connections if they became lost or lapsed?