A few years ago, my husband decided he was going to start bidding on abandoned storage units. 

If you know Mike, this probably doesn’t surprise you. 

He is an idea guy and a visionary. He gets excited about a new idea, diving in headfirst with big plans, and then several months later he is ready for his next adventure. 

In the past I would find myself going all in on the execution side of the ideas that ended up feeling like a burden. It was not a good partnership.  

This time we agreed on a few ground rules that we could both live with: 
* Nothing comes into the house without pre-approval.  
* Nothing goes on my side of the garage.  
* He rents his own storage unit for overflow.  
* He owns the entire operation.  

A year later, he’s still doing it. 

The auctions are his version of Christmas morning. He never knows what he’ll find. He’s discovered Louis Vuitton bags, deeds to houses, Native American paintings, and, to his surprise, very valuable horror movie DVDs.  

And because he enjoys the work, he does all the unglamorous operational stuff willingly. It’s not all fun and games either. He saw a box for a 3D printer that turned out to be, a box with nothing in it. That doesn’t stop him.  

He organizes it. 
He researches it. 
He prices it. 
He sells it. 
He keeps the inventory moving. 

And my favorite – the business funds itself and then some. 

Bonus – When our daughter and friends needed a mini fridge or TV for college, we had three.  

It got me thinking about what happens when a new idea moves beyond the visionary of an organization.

The grand vision doesn’t always translate to the people responsible for execution. They feel like they inherited someone’s idea rather than something they helped build. Questions like “How the hell are we going to handle this?” get asked. All they can think of is accountability meetings, dashboards, software, consultants, processes; the list goes on.  

How do we move teams from dreading work to being eager and buy into an organization’s vision?  

The idea is not the problem. It’s time for a new Operating Model.  People engage when they feel they are part of something bigger than themselves. That often means the less bureaucracy the better. They need an environment where they:  

* Know what they own.  
* Have enough autonomy to actually own it.  
* Understand the boundaries they need to operate within.  
* See how their work connects to the bigger objective.  
* Work with people whose strengths complement their own. 
* Have a reason to care about the outcome. 

Mike doesn’t organize his storage units treasure because someone put “inventory management” on his performance goals.  

He cares about the treasure hunt. The operational work is in service of something he enjoys. I don’t mind explaining how algorithms work (thanks LinkedIn) to boost eBay posts or helping him sell at a flea market for a few hours. But organizing a newly purchased storage unit, I’m out! 

An organization’s vision turns into reality when you bring different strengths, different perspectives, and different motivations together to understand how each piece fits into the whole. People have to care enough about the outcome to make the effort work.

That’s when a group of people starts operating like a team.

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Keep turning that chaos into progress, 
 
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