Routes, Routines, and Ruts

Our last set of posts described one feature of strong leaders and healthy organizations: constant cycling between chaos and order. Strong leaders adapt their organizations to forces both within and external to them. They alternate between improving execution to radical change because they know this is the best way for an organization to realize its goals and its potential. One way of looking at this behavior is to consider three related, yet strikingly different terms: routes, routines, and ruts.

Routes

A route takes you from one place to another. It has the feeling of being planned, of being laid out intentionally. Routes avoid obstacles and respect the terrain. When a leader takes an organization from chaos to order, they’re essentially laying out routes for the organization to follow a “road map”, as it were, for the organization.

This is the grand part of leadership. This is the part where you imagine where your organization should be and how it should get there. This is where you need vision. This is where you need a broad view of your organization and its surroundings.

Routines

In an earlier post, we mentioned that routines are the frameworks of organizational culture. Routines capture the way you do things. They describe how work flows between functions and departments. A routine literally comes from following a “route”.

This is the satisfying part of leadership. When your organization has gotten to the point where it has internalized its routines by following a roadmap, you will have successfully implemented change. Now you can switch gears and focus on improving execution. This is where you work with your departments to streamline workflows. This is where you start defining cogs (in a good way) that fit together and turn smoothly. This is the new status quo (in a good way).

Ruts

Once an organization has found its stride, it takes very little effort to keep it going. At this point, leaders split into two camps. The first camp views this achievement as success and is content with how things are. This is the vision they had for their organization. This is where they wanted to be. When these types of leaders are in charge, the organization inevitably develops inertia and settles into a status quo (in a bad way). Routines become ruts that people get stuck in. As the organizational terrain shifts due to external forces such as competition and technology, the routes that were initially laid out become less and less relevant. At some point, they lead nowhere.

The second camp of leaders understands that getting their organizations into a routine is a good thing, but instead of being an opportunity to rest, it’s an opportunity to think. This is when they can look out further and survey the future. This is when they can apply their domain knowledge and insight to plan the next set of routes for the organization. This is when innovation happens.

Routes are purposeful. Routines are deliberate. Ruts are pointless.

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