Sometimes You Just Have to Pull Forward

You've arrived with your family at the busy 300-site campground, and look with dismay at the sharp ninety-degree turn required to back into your narrow tree-lined site. As other trailers queue up behind, you survey the bush, the steep ditch, the light post and the big boulder that complicate your task. You want to be cautious, but you also want to appear competent and confident - after all, everybody's waiting and watching - so you start to back up.

In your haste, you turn a little too tight, the trailer starts to pinch, and soon you're stuck with one wheel an inch from the boulder and a twelve-inch pine tree threatening to make a new window in your trailer. You start to sweat. You crank the wheels hard the other way, and keep backing up. You cringe as the boulder gently scrapes a groove down the side of your trailer, and yet you push on. More people gather to watch your efforts.

In your anxious desire to get into your campsite and out of the limelight, you gun the engine and the trailer bumps over a couple of pieces of firewood left over from the previous campers, and you slam to a stop with a tree branch embedded in the rooftop air-conditioner. The truck is wedged between a tree and the boulder, and you can't open either door. So you crawl out the passenger side window, trying to look nonchalant as the line of waiting campers slowly drives by, gawking at you in all your RV glory. This wasn't how it looked in the brochure! (At Candle Lake Provincial Park. We were in the queue of waiting campers.)

When learning to back up a truck and trailer, some of the best advice is simple, yet not entirely obvious. "To get good at backing up, you have to know when to pull forward." Some campsites would be completely impossible to get into if you only allowed yourself the option of backing up; you'd get stuck, you'd do damage, you'd fail, or even worse, you'd be publicly humiliated! Pulling forward allows you to correct the line, adjust the angles, and back into spots that are inaccessible if you only go backwards.

A similar concept applies in business, with three examples presenting themselves recently:

1. A C-suite team had serious inter-personal conflicts and poor communication, but would never take the time to address these. In the words of the CEO, "we've got to focus on our objectives, and can't let ourselves get sidetracked." So, they continued to bang away at their goals, and bang away at each other, without ever stopping to adjust and get agreement. Consequently, but not surprisingly, they could never get agreement, and were completely ineffective at reaching their goals.
2. A software development team was being taken to task for their productivity levels, so they started banging out code before having a clear understanding of the client's requirements. Management insisted that the developers meet certain quantity targets, but wouldn't invest the time to clarify what exactly the code should do. In their blind pursuit of efficiency, they backed themselves into a corner they couldn't get out of; the hours wasted on useless code made the department miss all their productivity targets once they finally found out what the client wanted.
3. A leader insisted on positive language among her team. She continually used upbeat, cheerful language, and required all of her people to speak favorably and enthusiastically about the company's initiatives, about departmental policies, about everything. Her stated goal was to build team spirit and keep everyone focused on the positives to foster engagement and motivation. A few quick interviews revealed a great deal of negative cynicism festering under the surface; festering because it could never be expressed, and could never then be addressed. By allowing only positive comments, she unintentionally backed her people into frustration and negativity.

People are always watching you in business, and you probably feel a lot of pressure to seem confident, to appear competent, to continue taking action. You want to be seen as a positive, can-do contributor who's always on task and always moving closer to the target. Onward and upward! Ever-improving quarterly results! When challenges and tight situations present themselves, it's tempting to yield to the pressure and just keep forging ahead.

Sometimes, though, the fastest way to move your company forward is to move backward - to pause and reflect, to regroup and adjust your approach, to deal with simmering issues and festering relationships. And, sometimes, the only way to nestle your trailer into that perfect camp site is to pull forward and start again.