is the horizon moving?
I was five or six years old at my aunt's house, staring across her pool at a raft on the other side.
It didn't look far. I jumped in.
I had to stop twice to catch my breath. And every time I looked up, the raft seemed just as far away as when I started. My swimming skills at that age were generous at best (image: a lot of thrashing and a not a lot of forward movement) and I couldn’t help but wonder if someone had moved it on me while I wasn't looking.
I made it eventually and grabbed the edge of that raft, out of breath and very proud of myself.
I've been thinking about that raft in my coaching conversations. I’m hearing from my leaders about target shifts, and how they are navigating what feels like choppy waters trying to figure this out and communicate with their teams.
The goals that were set earlier in the year are still technically on the board, AND somewhere between then and now, priorities shifted, resources moved, and the definition of winning got updated. And your team is looking up, treading water, wondering what happened to the thing they were swimming toward.
Are You The One Moving The Raft?! When you shift a target midstream, your team feels it even if you don't announce it. What seems like a reasonable strategic adjustment from your vantage point can feel like the raft disappearing for someone who has been swimming hard toward something for months. Targets change, that’s the reality. Teams can handle that. What they have a harder time with is when nobody says anything about it. They are wondering if the work they’ve done still matters and more importantly, they are asking this question internally: Is it worth going all in on whatever comes next? The raft can move. Just tell people before they've already swum halfway across the pool. And if they’ve already made the swim, give them a life preserver to hang onto for a minute to catch their breath, and get them realigned towards the new target so they can take their energy there.
Are You Swimming Toward the Ever Moving Raft?! If you're the one in the water watching the target drift, the worst thing you can do is keep swimming in silence hoping it stops moving. Say something. Ask what success actually looks like right now. The leaders who are shifting targets aren't always aware of how disorienting it feels from where you're standing, and most of them would rather know.
And if the raft keeps moving no matter what you do, that's information too. Some environments are just unstable right now, with priorities shifting before you can finish anything. If that's the pattern, the problem isn't your swimming.
This Week's Challenge
When did you last check whether your team's understanding of the goal actually matches yours? If there's a gap, what would it take to close it this week?
Is there a target in your work right now that feels like it keeps moving? What would it look like to say that out loud instead of swimming harder and hoping it settles?
Here's to making it to the raft. And to telling people when you've moved it,
Jena