Episode: 363

Episode Title: The Wrench in the Works

Have you ever worked hard, reached consensus, got ready to launch and then had a wrench thrown into the works? One of my teams did. Here’s how we overcame it, next on The Perna Syndicate.

Ep 363 show:

Welcome to The Perna Syndicate! This week, we’re getting into the nitty-gritty strategies to shift the paradigm in education, workforce, and economic development and what that really looks like at the tactical level. And you know, it isn’t always pretty. 

In my work with the team in Lee County, Iowa, we were set on a goal. We worked hard, we got everyone on board, we were about to launch—and a wrench got thrown into the mix and almost stalled the whole project. 

Did that ever happen to you? There’s always a wrench in the works, isn’t there? That unexpected challenge that comes out of seemingly nowhere and threatens everything that you’ve accomplished so far. Well, that happened with my Lee County team and we were all faced with a choice. 

We could stay true to our unifying principle of making decisions for students first and our organizations second—or we could each go back to growing our own little tree, our own area of expertise within our organization, and forget the big picture of the forest. 

We had some pretty tense meetings as we worked through what a students-first commitment really meant. But we reached a point of authentic honesty, where we could really understand everyone’s concerns and address them together. We got the wrench out of the works, we dealt with it, and guess what? We’re back on track. 

Tomorrow: what happens when you come up with a really great solution on your own? When you’re working with stakeholders—yeah, that doesn’t always work. We’ll cover that and more on the next episode of The Perna Syndicate. See you then!