Plan. Refine. Repeat.

Plan, refine, repeat. This summarizes the never ending cycle my team has found itself in the past couple of months. Looking back, it is somewhat of an agonizing realization for someone who considers herself efficient and goal-oreintated. In the beginning, it felt productive scheduling multiple meetings with different people throughout each week, but as time went on we began realizing that there were no decisions being made. Though knowledge gathering is important, there comes a time when actions have to be taken.

These feelings came to a head as I sat in class the first week of school. My feelings ebbed back and forth from stress to more stressed as we discussed the Performance Pressure Paradox and how teams tend to stop using their time and resources effectively as they near deadlines. At first, I had a very hard time motivating myself to get to work because I could not see my original goal as realistic anymore. I had a fear of failure that was paralyzing in a sense. This caused my role in my team to shift as well. I noticed in our first few Rise meetings instead of the motivator and big thinker I usually am, I was suggesting new ideas that would be easier to accomplish. By the second week of class, however, I made myself stop thinking of new ideas and, as Dr. Shipp suggested, “sat in the ‘oh crap’ moment.” This was stressful, but also gave me the time to realize my idea is still possible. I met with another class mate who I consider to be a member of my personal board of directors and we talked about how my project was going. I trusted him to give me his objective opinion and ask me hard questions, which he did. He helped me realize that my new idea that I thought would make things easier was really not that different than the original plan and that the tasks that seemed so insurmountable were not as difficult as I was making them out to be. This meeting showed me the importance of allowing yourself to sit in the “oh crap” moment as well as to seek outside counsel and encouragement when it is temporarily unavailable from a team member. By re-finding my passion for the project, I was then able to take over the encourager role in my team.

A second breakthrough that has helped re-motivate my team is the concept of prototype and refine. My team members and I have spent countless hours stressing over the details of a plan with no results to show for it. We have finally realized that not everything in the plan has to be perfect before we start taking action. This has somehow freed us from our paralyzing fear of failure by realizing that we just need to take one risk at a time. With this new freedom, we have completed several big steps. We have an employee application drafted and ready to present to Paschal High School Faculty on Friday before presenting to students next week. Risecupcakery.com is up and running and we have also contacted a potentially large account. Though these things seem small and there is still much to be done, we have made more measurable progress in the last two weeks than we did in many weeks last semester. I do not say this to discount the amount of research and networking we did last year, but it is reassuring to know that when we take one step at a time, we will begin to get closer to the goal. Seeing things get accomplished has boosted our confidence and made the project fun again.