Your Garden is Never Complete… Neither is Your Team

I love to garden. And I love being part of a team. So let’s spend a few moments and connect those two topics today.

Every skilled gardener knows that building a healthy and successful garden requires planning, effort and maintenance. You need to understand the environment for your would-be garden… sun, soil and water are the big variables. You need to populate your garden with plant types that are likely to thrive in that garden’s environment. Just because a certain type of plant thrives in your garden does not mean it will thrive in my garden. Different environments require thoughtful choices about which plants to include and which to leave out.

Once you have chosen your plants, you have to think about the layout of your garden… which plants should be in the back, the front, next to each other. You might organize your garden by color scheme, plant type, plant height or bloom season. And before you put the plants in the ground, you have to prepare the soil, turn it over and aerate it, add in some fresh compost or nutrients. All of these steps dramatically increase the likelihood of a beautiful, successful garden.

You did the work, and now have a beautiful garden… nice job, and congratulations! But you still aren’t done. In fact, your work is never done. Gardens are never finished. As the garden matures, certain plants will really thrive and grow, and might encroach on the plant next to them. Other plants, for whatever reason, may not thrive, and either wither away or just never take root. As the garden matures, you will almost certainly need to move things around, give some plants more space, move other plants out entirely, perhaps to another location. You will need to maintain the environment for your garden… refresh and aerate the soil from time to time, pull out unwanted weeds, and cut off spent blooms (“deadheading” in gardening parlance).

A healthy garden is never “finished.” It always requires maintenance, thought and care. It takes work to make it beautiful. And it takes even more work to keep it beautiful.

I love to garden. And I also love being part of a team. And the requirements are nearly identical.

When we build our team, we need to think about the environment they will be in, and the types of personalities and skills that might thrive in that environment.

We need to prepare that environment, and build a culture with norms and expectations so that people are likely to thrive in it.

And we need to constantly maintain that environment, move things around from time to time, prune a little here and there, refresh the “soil” so to speak.

Teams, much like gardens, require careful planning and preparation, and plenty of maintenance along the way. They both require work to build and maintain. The work is never done.

Have a great day.