Business Is Like A River

A few months ago while returning from a business trip to Grand Junction, CO I traveled along the Colorado and Eagle Rivers reflecting on my trip and visit with my client.

As I was driving I would occasionally glance at the river running adjacent to the highway and noticing the very high water levels as well as the speed of the water flow.  I have traveled this highway many times since I was a kid, taking vacations with my parents and at this time I made the following observation; this river has always been flowing, sometimes low and sometimes high, as it was on this day of my travel.

Based on this observation, I correlated the river flow to business; it is the river that represents our business, in many cases it is always flowing, sometimes high and sometimes low, sometimes fast and sometimes slow. But there is always (in most cases) a flow.

As I made this correlation I began to reflect on a rafting trip I took as a young teenager and began remembering how the trip went; how fun it was and what I learned from that experience as well as what it means to me today.

I remember our River Guide providing our team of rafters instructions on shore before stepping in the raft. He taught us the best way to hold the ore and checked each person’s hand set up, physically moving our hands if they were not set properly.  He also showed us how we were to be positioned around the raft. As he was positioning people, he made observations about a rafter’s size, weight, physical strength and asked about their comfort level of rafting as well as the position on the raft.  From here he moved people around, balancing out the raft for best performance and safety.

Now that our team knows how best to use the equipment and knows what our positions were, our Guide began outlining our roles based on our positions on the raft.  He also outlined a series of terms, commands and instructions he would use during the course of our trip down river.  Did I mention that we still had not shoved off yet? These instructions were done while still on shore.  He taught us the correlations of the commands/instructions to what we would be seeing on the river and why they would be important, therefore we would be prepared and we would know what to expect when we hit any large rapids, fast water, a hole or someone falling off the raft.  Even more important, there was time for a little practice. Our Guide would yell out a command and we would perform our roles. In the meantime our Guide made more observations and corrections about our performance as a team and as individuals.  After a few practice sessions, our Guide provided us some encouragement with a “good job” and encouraged our team to celebrate with more “good jobs” and high fives for all!

Our Guide then explained to us that our team is ready to shove off with a celebratory yell of  “Let’s go ride these rapids!” In response our team cheers with excitement and we gather to place the raft in the water.

Now, on the river, our team in place and instructions in our head; trying to remember everything, our Guide puts us through some “live” practice in some calm water by having us conduct turns. “HARD RIGHT” he yells, and the team members on the left side dig in their ores deep into the water, turning the raft.  He then yells, “HARD LEFT” and the right side digs their ores in, turning the raft to the left. Our live practice” turns were now complete and our Guide congratulates the whole team on their performance and gives us the “stamp of approval” by exclaiming, “ARE YOU READY? LET’S DIG IN AND GET IT!”

Courtesy of one of my dear friends.

Everyone in the raft lets out a big cheer and you can see the excitement in everyone’s face regarding this journey, as the nerves have now left each of us by our guide setting the right expectations and instilling confidence in his team with praise and recognition.

Throughout the day we guided our raft through the white water rapids, avoiding boulders, and having a great time, enjoying the excitement of the ups and downs of the river.  Along the way we take a break to rest and our Guide checked in with each team member to see how we are doing physically and emotionally as we had just gone through some challenging waters making sure our confidence was still intact. Once his check-ins were done, he peps us up to finish the day and explained what we will encounter for the next couple of hours. He further provided some details about the class of rapids we would face and in what order they would come as we continue down river.  Then he concluded we would celebrate towards the end of our day with some swimming and jumping off a bridge (for those who wanted to) for added excitement. In the end, we all enjoyed our trip thoroughly, learned a lot about ourselves, and had a truly rewarding experience. And no one fell out or got hurt.

What Does This All Mean

As I am continuing my travel home from my business trip, reflecting on the rafting trip from several years back, I reached some deeper conclusions about how this experience relates to us, our companies and our performance.  As I mentioned in the beginning, the river represents our business; industry; type of service as a whole. In most cases there IS a flow, whether you are there or not, there is still a flow.

Our companies are represented by the raft. The raft rides the flow of water as our companies ride through the business climate. We cannot guide and control the river but we can guide and control the raft, our company. The raft is a tool to navigate to our destination and goal(s).

Without a Guide, a raft is only a raft, a shell, floating along with no direction or ability to avoid obstacles and danger.  A Guide is the person who knows the river, making observations, steering and navigating the river, giving commands and instructions for the raft to be steered and guided effectively and safely. Our Guide represents top and middle leadership in our organizations. They are the ones with the big ores and rudder, averting danger, building and encouraging the team, and ensuring the company arrives to the planned destination safely and with education, excitement and some fun along the way. The Guide sets the expectations, lingo, commands, roles and instructions. The important thing a great Guide does is build confidence in the team through education, development, praise and recognition. Through my rafting experience, our Guide developed a team atmosphere and was a key player to providing an enjoyable experience.

You may not have to guess too hard to know who the rafters represent, but I will say it anyway. They represent our company’s teams, individual contributors; our employees.  Without them, rafting thought the river of our business can be very challenging and even dangerous.  While having people just on the raft does not mean your rafting experience will be good, safe and/or enjoyable, or even productive.  If we have a choice in our business and on our raft; who would we pick to paddle, help navigate, save our life, keep the boat from danger? In this example, it will take all of the rafters to ensure we have a successful ride, trip and experience. We also have to look at the quality of our Guides who must make observations of the river environment (the business climate), as well as the team to take advantage or avoid a situation and who can make decisions based on those observations. In addition, the Guide being the one who must also communicate, instruct, teach, and set up the expectations of what will happen and what may happen, to help prepare (forecast) the team when (and if) a situation occurs.

Think about this for a minute: Commercial rafting Guides don’t get to choose their teams to go down the river for a great ride and experience. When I speak with people who take on the adventure of rafting the white water many, if not all, tell me it was an awesome experience.  When I listen to their stories it is not just about getting wet and riding the fast and rapid waters. It comes down to the quality of the Guide to lead them through danger, have fun and to keep them safe. This is done through the thorough development of creating a team through observation, communication, education, support and praise from the Guide, the leader. Keep in mind; this is done within one day.  I hear from employees of many different size organizations who have been employed with their organization for months upon years, and they don’t have the same experience.  Why not?

In my experience, I have heard from many leaders, managers and employees that “change can come from the middle; it does not have to come from the top.” In many case, yes, change can COME from the middle.  However, for change to be successful, it must be supported, modeled and accepted by the top. Whatever and however the “top” is defined.  Using our rafting story let’s look at this “change from the middle” concept.

If one side of the raft wants to go right to take a fork in the river or to avoid a boulder, will they be successful? Maybe. If the left side of the raft digs in and paddles hard forward to turn the raft to the right, it will turn; if they continued to paddle they will make a circle. In this scenario the Guide does nothing what may happen?  They may hit the rock, get hurt, flip and be thrown from the raft. At best, they may miss the fork because the rest of the team did not get the message to paddle or reason why they should turn or even participate. In addition, the Guide, leader, did not support the direction change to help steer clear or garner the other side of the raft to participate to help turn the raft. At any rate the Guide still has to do something to ensure the success of the “middle employees’” suggestion of a change.

So how do we, in our business industries, companies and teams achieve success as our rafters do? We have to ask some serious questions:

• Do we know the flow and river environment/business climate and culture?
• Do we have a good raft/company?
• Do our employees (rafters) know what to do, how to do it and where we are going?
• Are we checking in with our teams and individuals to observe their confidence and comfort levels?
• How often are we checking in?
• Do we REALLY know how they feel about their experience?
• Do our Guides make observations before casting off into the river?
• We choose our teams, so are we performing at an optimal level? If not, ask why not? If we are, investigate why we are.
• Do we have one side of the raft paddling, changing directions, and the other side is not? Why is this happening? What are the Guides doing?
• What is the quality of our Guide? How many times has the raft been in danger or gone the wrong way?
• How many times have the rafters had a great experience? Why or why not?

When we look at our business and company in a rafting analogy we can see our organizations’ performance in a very telling experience.  The river may always be flowing, but how we ride the river makes a difference in our success, safety and enjoyment of the ride.