Handing over the baton

Picture: Bellmanstafetten

I was running a relay race with friends this weekend. It was a good and sunny day, and the place was crowded with happy runners. One of the challenges of the race - besides running - was to find your buddy in the crowd and hand over the baton as smoothly and quickly as possible. It may sound easy, but the place was crowded and we lost a few minutes looking for eachother at the shifts. To us, this was not a big issue. We were there to have fun, and we did. However, next year we will know more about how the relay race works and we will be more prepared for the shifts. Maybe we´ll put baloons on our heads or something, in order to find eachother easily...

We have similar challenges in all projects and processes in work and private life - handing things over to the next person as smoothly as possible. We may loose time, energy and efficiency when this happens. Often it is more important that everything works smoothly, then it was for us on this sunny Saturday. So why does this happen then?

* We may not know who to hand over to
* There may not be anyone to hand over to
* The next person isn´t ready to take over
* We can´t find the person to hand over to
* We don´t know what to hand over
* We are not ready to hand things over in time
* We don´t have the same picture of the process as the next person

If we can eliminate some of these challenges beforehand, we will save time and energy. Prepare, research for information that will help you out and communicate throughout the whole chain of individuals so that you all have the same vision of the process. Then everyone will be moving on with great energy and focus.



Picture: Bellmanstafetten