Keeping Co-Structure Challenging
When I worked for the City, I had a few meetings scheduled each week, and at each I was either holding someone else accountable or someone was holding me accountable. My boss and I would meet each week to discuss my projects, ideas, and challenges. I’d meet with our web development director each week to see what the development team was working on and what stumbling blocks we could overcome to keep web improvements in the pipeline.
It was tough, and it wasn’t always fun, but that system of accountability is something that an enterprise uses to keep a lot of moving parts running in tandem. Once you go out on your own, it’s gone. Sure, you’re accountable to clients and/or for specific product deliverables, but it’s easy to lose control of your time, and there’s nobody around to tell you otherwise.
So a few of us are working on this thing called Co-Structure, where we help hold each other accountable and help us balance our life and work more effectively. At first, we’re going to work on direct accountability – asking each other what our goals for the day are and then checking in to see that we’re all getting things done.
What’s fascinating to me is what questions we’ll ask each other to stay on track. It’s easy to ask and also to avoid simple questions; we can each set our goals for the day too low and then feel good for achieving them at the end of the day. And we can neglect to ask follow-up questions or really challenge our colleagues.
So I think we have to agree at the outset that we’ll challenge each other and be aggressive about it. I need someone to ask – “do you think you set your goals high enough today?” That will mean that I tell my Co-Structure colleagues my real goals, and not just the easy ones. At the end of the day, we’re accountable to ourselves, but let’s make sure we’re being challenged enough to make it worthwhile.
