Ok, it’s Spring, which may be why the image of a tree came up when I was working with a client last week. The presenting problem was that they weren’t seeing the growth they had hoped would result from some recent activities.

I asked them to imagine their company as a tree
- look at the roots — were they drawing enough nutrients from the soil to fuel growth?
- examine the truck — was it supporting the weight of the branches/efforts?
- reflect on the branches — were they all healthy and growing, or were some blocked or no longer healthy?
- look at the leaves — were they growing equally across all the branches?

Ok, I can see some of you gagging, but the results of this reflection were actually quite helpful. It became clear that one of the partners was responsible for all the “grounding” and the “soul” of the organization — and she wasn’t having enough time to reflect and nurture herself to come up with new ideas. Meanwhile, the other partner had no roots and was madly loading more “leaves/activities” on the tree and then wondering why they weren’t sticking (and why the effort was feeling heavy).

The plan going forward required them both to look at how to reinforce the root structure to both be able to bring depth to the work, to clean up some of the “deadwood” that had developed in the “trunk” of their relationship, to evaluate and focus on fewer “branches” so that their effort went in to 2-3 focused initiatives…and to let the leaves sprout rather than frantically throw effort at a million different “projects”. Although this last point was tough to get agreement around (we so often confuse effort and activity with results) but seemed key to “lightening up” the work so that more organic growth could occur.

Might this kind of reflection inform your thinking about the health — and the direction for growth — of your organization?