Flow Maps - two ways
I am a product person at heart with an obsession for alignment, clear strategies, great team setups, and putting the user first. I build organizations that can thrive in our ever-changing world.
I am a skier, a kite surfer, a climber, a speaker, and an entrepreneur. I work with individuals to up their mental game to be fully present in the moment and perform at their best when it matters.
These two things have one thing in common they are about reaching flow. And to reach flow you have to focus a lot on the base that you are building so that things can then unfold on top of that base.
In a product organization that is creating alignment, setting goals and a strategy, breaking it down, making sure information flows so that people can follow. It is about shaping teams according to strengths and needs and establishing ways of working together that people can rely on.
On an individual level, it is about rechecking your motivation and your why, it is about getting the skill and challenge balance right and developing an awareness for yourself and therefore developing self-confidence and trust.
Sounds pretty similar to me.
My first personal experience with organisational flow was at AutoScout24. For everybody who is not familiar with the concept of flow, this might sound more familiar to you. That time I am talking about here is decades ago now and if I meet people who were on the team at the time their eyes light up and the conversation goes something like: “Do you remember Werkstattportal? It was such a good time. We did great stuff there. I think we got some things right. And here they will mention something we used to do. The examples will differ but they will always be about deep collaboration, trust, and a shared goal. And then they will close with “And we had so much fun doing it.” Unfortunately often followed by “I feel like I have never found that in my work life since.”
And I deeply share that feeling and have since dedicated my professional life to recreating what we had. We didn’t have words for it then. Today I would call it team flow. Team flow is this awesome feeling when things just click. When you effortlessly work together. When you tackle hard problems with ease. When you have arguments but always with the purpose of getting to the best possible results. When you are at ease with each other and everybody can be themselves. When you are creating impactful products. When you are learning and developing. Growing together. Oftentimes this is attributed to luck. In that particular team accidentally people who work well together came together, they will say.
It is not. It can be created. You need to build that base through great leadership. A Flow Map is a way of going through all dimensions of that base. To look at them and decide how important they are for you and your organization right now to enable flow going forward.
I feel the warmth of the sun on my black wetsuit. It has just broken through the dramatic black clouds. The last rain shower of many in the previous days has just passed. At the end of the bay, a fading rainbow still stands against the dark sky contrasting with the white sand and the turquoise water.
The wind is hammering now. Throwing white caps onto the waves. I start moving towards the edge of the water. The sand under my feet is already heating up from the first rays of the sun. The kite is pulling me in further towards the water. I drop the board onto the water. A quick steering impulse to the kite and I am off. My feet hit the board with ease and we start moving as one. The kite, the board, and I. We hit the first of the incoming waves. The first splash of cold water on my body is a shock to the system. There is the next wave and then we are out of the shore break gliding along. I feel the ripples of the water under my feet, the spray coming up to my knees, the pull of the kite just strong enough to lean into.
I turn around to ride the first wave. A wave that was created days ago by a storm all the way out there on the Atlantic that now rolls into this beach in the west of Scotland to allow me to play. The wind is pulling, the wave is pushing and I am flying along. No better feeling than those moments when those two forces align. I hit the bottom turn perfectly. The waves are clean now that the tide has come in. There is no fear just the urge to play with those waves again and again. I catch a glimpse of the road and see my buddy in the red van appear. He is not a kitesurfer. I met him some days ago when he offered me tea as I came off the water after a particularly cold session. He used to live here and is currently back to celebrate his fiftieth birthday. His joy of being on this beach on this particular day was contagious and now a little bit of this joy ignites inside me whenever I see his car pull up. It is the kind of session we dream of. When everything feels easy and playful, we are 100% in the moment. When the powers of nature, the wind, and the breaking waves don't feel scary but fully within our limits of ability. When there is no effort just play and the joy of the movements coming together. When we don't want it to end. When only back at the beach we realize the energy it has cost.
This particular session is engrained in my brain and body. I was in full flow. Even though kite surfing is destined to create flow and it is something that I do for fun it has not always been pleasurable. There have been plenty of sessions driven by anxiety, by being overwhelmed, by being mad at myself by simply not being in the moment. And I didn’t seem to have any influence on when a session would be amazing and when it would turn sour but similarly to organizational flow also individual flow can be created.
So I built my base. Today I have a deeper understanding of why I kite, what motivates me, and what it is for me. I have more distance from what I think other people think, I make sure I get my skill challenge balance right and I have tools to make sure I am fully present and focused at the moment. All elements of flow and therefore my personal flow map for kite surfing.
