Say you were standing on the sidewalk and there were hundreds of people energetically heading past you on the street. You liked the look of what they were doing, so you joined along beside them and you were away. You’d know some important things like what you were doing, when the group turned you’d likely keep up, there’d be a sub-set you’d attach to running or wheeling your chair at their pace and you’d feel like you fit in and were doing a great job. You would be!
The many great new staff who have joined teams and organizations – including the team at Holland Bloorview Kids Rehabilitation Hospital – over the past three years have entered into something markedly different than the pre-pandemic Holland Bloorview, while we expect them to know, feel, experience and be productive in exactly the same ways they would have been had they joined at any other time. They walked/wheeled/ jogged in with the group heading down the street and no one stopped to share what the starting line was, the duration or the finish line. Is it a race or a recreational run? Heck is it a protest? Are they heading away from something or towards something? Who are the rest of the people? Why are they all here?
The many great new staff who have joined teams and organizations – including the team at Holland Bloorview Kids Rehabilitation Hospital – over the past three years have entered into something markedly different than the pre-pandemic Holland Bloorview…
Not only haven’t we really told new team members the story – the so what of it all – but we haven’t even acknowledged to ourselves that it’s been missing.
I was talking to a mom and young person recently about their frustrations navigating services at our hospital and the wait times they’ve been subjected to for something that seems like it should be pretty simple to address. In asking questions and digging into their experience I had an aha moment – they were working with someone who was dedicated, smart, competent and focused AND siloed, working with them primarily through virtual care, and disconnected from the rest of the organization outside their own program. The story that makes the connections was missing.
For people to do their jobs well we have to make meaning of the whole and put individual tasks, teams and activities into the big picture. So we have to tell the story. We have to return to purpose, incorporate how we have changed and learned without losing the core promise that connects us.
I was reviewing some internal funding proposals recently. These are proposals that came from within our own team. I was struck (repeatedly) by people asking for money for great ideas and … things we already do!
We need to understand each chapter of the book that is this place and how it connects to the others. The story lost during the emergency of the past three years needs to be front and centre and it won’t happen except with hard work, intention and telling and re-telling. We’ve lost some of the story-keepers and we’ve lost the time we used to tell stories.
And yes, the past three years of the global pandemic are part of and have added to the story but we can’t let them take over and become the story. The story of my organization (and I bet yours too) is long and wonderful and we will only be great and add new chapters if we start retelling and sharing where we’ve come from, who we are as a whole, and why we do what we do. Each of us can do it. You can and you must be a storyteller and a story-keeper too.
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Julia
@Hanigsberg
Julia Hanigsberg, President and CEO blog 