Working on a number of grapevines we have in the yard this past week I was struck by the similarity between raising grapes and being involved with organizations.
It may seem like a stretch but follow the logic through and make up your own minds.
For starters, the fruit of the vine, the grape, comes from the stems that have developed and grown and not so much from the major stem itself. Granted, without the major stem being there, there wouldn’t be any growth so there is — to use a trite term — a symbiotic relationship, one depends on the other but still the fruit—the purpose of the vine—comes from the new growth and not the old stem.
So it is with organizations ... from new people will come new ideas. Granted, maybe some of those ideas have been tried and didn’t work out—at the time they were originally tried…you know, the old "been there, done that" cliché. But maybe times and conditions have changed and what didn't work three years ago may just work now. So from the new growth in an organization will come new ideas and new approaches to accomplish the organization’s mission.
But not all new growth develops into fruit-bearing appendages so the vintner needs to watch as the season develops and trim off the "suckers" before they drain too much energy from the vine itself. Carrying these non-contributors places a burden on the main stem, depletes the resources of the system, and takes up space that could possibly be used for additional growth by those stems or vines that are producing.
So it is with organizations ... this time, though, these organizational "suckers" are those who keep trotting out the same arguments, or offering the same promises with no follow through, or offering the same criticisms but with no new solutions. All groups have them—in fact there’s a "law" out there, Praeto's Law that states 80% of your problems will come from 20% of your people and conversely that 20% of your people will be responsible for 80% of your successes ... the 80/20 Law as it is called. What leaders and boards have to do is separate the quiet contributors from the noisy non-contributors and focus in on the former. The latter, if ignored, will gradually drop off or change their ways.
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Updated: 05/08/04
