Post by Rachel Link

Now that the LINK holiday packages have arrived to LINKmates across the US, I can share this video of my family assembling the 80 packages over the Thanksgiving break. As someone who manages large change initiatives, I love to reflect on and learn from how kids self-organize, choose roles, and execute projects and tasks as a team. This year we had a couple of sales guys, a few attorneys, and others to join in the fun: Nick Byrne, Mary Irvine, Al (Skip) Irvine, Karen Irvine. 1: How kids approach a project is very different from how adults and professionals do. There are benefits to both approaches. Kids: 💪 Pick a job they like and are good at. 🎤 Communicate freely and don’t worry about hurting anyone’s feelings. 🧪Don’t hesitate to try things, experiment and verbally share what they learned. 💡Adopt changes to the overall system quickly without over analyzing it. Adults: 🧰 Scan the environment for how this situation could be better, optimized, more efficient. 🔧 Immediately try to manage the chaos. 🎁 Eventually, pick a job when they realize the kids aren’t listening to them, don’t care to be optimized, and that the system the kids have is actually working out OK (because it’s a short term, low risk project). 2: Asking the kids to do this task, answering their questions, and re-watching the film reminds me of a few universal work, process and teamwork truths… 🧸 Anyone, if they are driven by the mission and understands what needs to be done, can contribute. Note my three-year-old nephew, Leo. He’s stuffing boxes, moving boxes, closing boxes. The system was easy to understand, he was capable of doing it, and the people around him supported him. 💸 While I did pay the kids for this job, not everyone is motivated by money. My daughter would have done this for free because she likes working with others, and the feeling of helping and accomplishment. (My son on the other hand…) Organizing and managing teams is about understanding drivers, goals and outcomes. Our job is to create a system that works at the top level yet is flexible enough to meet those motivations on an individual basis. This is hard. 💕 Ultimately, people are driven by the mission. The kids asked questions about who was receiving the gifts, what they do at the company, if they have kids of their own, and wanted to know factoids about each LINKmate. When it feels personal, you do your best. Keeping people at the center drives the people that support it and deliver. Not pictured but massive THANK YOUs: Adrienne Betenbaugh that comes up with the ideas for the gifts and who I drove crazy related to ordering, timing and deliveries; Lawson Parker Sivertson and Danielle Fabrega who designed the bottle and sourced sticker designs from across our design team to create the holiday sticker sheet; Andria B. who shipped sample bottles, box sizes and colors, crinkle paper, created mailing labels and delivered to UPS - rockstar.

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