I grew up in Minnesota where almost every town, big or small, has some sort of hockey rink.
One thing that makes hockey unique is the Power Play. This happens when a player commits a penalty and has to sit out of the game for 2-5 minutes depending on the severity of the infraction. The team that committed the penalty is not allowed to bring in a substitute. This gives the opposing team an advantage. They have more players on the ice.
In other words, the team that committed the penalty must play short-staffed.
The short-staffed team instantly shifts tactics. Their priorities change. For the duration of the Power Play, their priority is less about scoring and more on protecting their own goal to prevent the other team from scoring. It’s about keeping the other team from taking advantage of them while they’re short-staffed.
Every organization experiences being short-staffed. Some absences are known and can be planned for in advance, such as vacations. But often you don’t know you’re going to be short-staffed until someone simply doesn’t show up to work.
The biggest lesson to be learned from hockey is to prepare and even practice for being short-staffed. Great teams shift their game plan instantly. They train for it. Everyone knows what to do when they’re at a disadvantage in a Power Play.
Here are 3 questions to consider when creating your own short-staffing plan:
- How do priorities need to change when short-staffed?
This means having a plan for what doesn’t need to get done during low staffing periods. When teams know what they don’t need to worry about, they can shift their attention to the highest priorities.
A common mistake leaders make is not communicating this to their teams. To a leader, it might seem obvious what’s a priority and what isn’t. But it may not be as apparent to your staff. When you set clear expectations, you increase the chances of people doing the right thing.
Ask your team what activities they feel are most important during times of short-staffing. They probably have great ideas since they’re the ones doing the work. It also gives you perspective on what they would do if someone didn’t show up. By asking them, you’ll discover where you might need to shift their understanding surrounding what’s the most important work to do.
- How do you cross-train for high-priority activities?
Leaders like people to stay in their lanes. They want each person to do their job and not worry about what someone else is or isn’t doing. It makes sense. It keeps people from stepping on each other’s toes. But when you’re short-staffed, you need people ready to step up.
I recently attended a concert at a local coffee shop. It was their first music event and it was packed. While this was great for the business, it didn’t create a great experience because they weren’t prepared for the chaos.
They waited to bring in additional staff until the night of the event. Because they didn’t train them in advance, customers waited over 30 minutes for their drinks while the owners taught people how to use the register.
While the music was great, the service wasn’t.
It’s tempting to look at this situation and think the easy fix was to train people in advance. But most short-staffing situations aren’t known ahead of time. The trick is to know which activities each employee is best at and make sure others are cross-trained in those skills.
And it isn’t just showing someone what to do one time. It takes practice. It’s regularly scheduling someone else to do the task so they’re familiar enough to handle it well when short-staffed.
This is what hockey teams do. Each player knows how they need to shift their focus to achieve their goal: keeping the other team from scoring. They train for it. You need to train your team for it too!
- When are you short-staffed?
This answer seems obvious: when someone doesn’t show up to work. That’s true. But there’s another time that most leaders overlook. When you are implementing new initiatives.
Learning requires energy and brain capacity to focus. Routine activities will not happen at normal speed when asking your team to learn something new.
Perhaps you’re implementing a new Point of Sale system. Everything you know about this new system says it will speed things up. But that only happens after everyone is proficient at using it.
Learning takes time and leaders often forget to plan for it. They expect all the regular tasks to get done plus the learning. In these times, it’s helpful to temporarily suspend some of the lower priority tasks until the team is proficient at the new initiative and then ramp up activities to full levels.
Next time you watch a hockey game, pay attention to what teams do when they’re short-staffed in a Power Play.
How might a bit of planning and practice make your team better when people don’t show up to work?