Does your organisation have a sprained toe?
At karate recently, I suffered an injury most grievous: I sprained my left pinkie toe. As a right-hander, this toe is arguably the smallest and least useful toe of them all. It’s not load bearing, its contribution to stability is minor at best. And yet, it has affected my entire body.
I hadn’t realised how much I use those pinky toes to grip and balance on uncertain ground. How my knees, hips and back are now aching because I’ve adjusted how I walk. The twinge when I try to get my sock on. My small emotional shock every time I see the spectacular purple and green bruise spreading across my foot. And unlike a sprained ankle, I can’t pop a compression bandage on it. The best I can do is wear supportive shoes to provide additional stability, while my pinkie toe recovers.
I once worked with a client whose team was the pinky toe of the company. They handled server operations, their work didn’t directly tie in with any of the grand strategic goals, and they felt like nobody really knew what the team did. But then the toe was sprained: one person moved on to another company, and another of the team had extended time off for parenting leave. Suddenly their previously invisible department went to fire-fighting mode because they had lost capacity. They tried to protect themselves by putting in place stricter requirements before they would accept new work. The wider organisation was now feeling the impact.
There can be individuals or teams in any organisation that are like a pinkie toe. Often taken for granted, possibly smaller than other areas in team size, or salaries, or other resources. They’re just part of the whole. But when they suffer an injury, the effects are felt not just locally, but across the entire ecosystem.
Do you have a sprained toe in your team? What are you doing to support your toe and get it back to operational status? What could you do differently to protect against future injuries?