For a lot of years, the annual ritual for planting my garden starts with using a hoe to turn up the dirt and amending the soil, mixing the nutrients and the turned up dirt with a shovel. The practice got the job done, but was not efficient. This year, my neighbor lent me her rototiller. What a difference the right tool makes! Not only was it faster, but it did a better job.  Not just a little better job, a significantly better job.

The same happens all the time in business. People use tools that work, but aren’t designed to do the job quickly or effectively. Having the right tools can make all the difference in how quickly work gets done. And how much the people doing the job enjoy it. Do you have the right tools in your business?

Every week, the yard crews come through the neighborhood on different days and mow, trim and blow. Each crew uses roughly the same technique, ending with blowing leaves and trimmings along fence lines. But the cloud of leaves, trimmings and dust doesn’t just stay on one side of the fence. Some of it ends up on the other side. The tossing of stuff over the fence happens as part of the job because there is no attempt to keep it contained to one side. And at times, a little makes it over the wall and at other times, a lot makes it over the wall.

The same thing happens every day in business. People go through their day tossing problems over the wall. Sometimes they are small. Other times they are large. It happens because it is easier to let the problem migrate somewhere else than to contain it and fix it. And the situation will continue until someone steps in and resolves to start fixing issues and stop throwing them over the fence.

I recently took a flower arranging class. It was a lot of fun creating something where nothing existed before. As the class worked to create the arrangement step by step, the instructor cautioned us that the tulips would continue to grow. And the lilies would open up and take lots of space. Both instructions were giving us advice to choose the height and placement for what was to come.

She wasn’t kidding! The tulips grew four or five inches, while I thought they might grow two. And the lilies opened up, covering half the arrangement. As a result, the arrangement ended up out of balance after a few days with the tulips out running the rest of the arrangement and the lilies covering many of the other flowers.

The same thing happens in building out organizations. Some people and departments start outpacing the rest of the organization. And other departments and people take over, not allowing others to be seen and reach their potential. Even if you know it is coming, the best laid plans don’t always work. That means it is imperative to watch for it and continually rebalance so the organization and people operate in harmony. When was the last time you rebalanced?