Go With the (Lazy) Flow
Culture is a strange thing. Leaders can and should be intentional about how they build and reinforce it, but sometimes it develops or regresses for completely unforeseen reasons.
Enter, for example, the lazy river.
Last week, we brought together our 32 alumni fellows and a dozen central team members to prepare and train for our summer slate of academic boot camps. These fellows are remarkable people, hand selected for their talents and potential. They are the lifeblood of our programs, and we invest a considerable amount of time ensuring that they are equipped to teach and mentor enlisted veterans throughout the summer.
Our central team did brilliant work in preparing for this weeklong training, developing sessions on student centered learning, logistics training, and content specific sessions like grading problem sets and and guiding students through our college success track. Our director of education was hyper intentional about building culture and community among our fellows, which is no surprise given her extensive background in education.
Yet for all we planned and accomplished as a team, I'm not sure anything was as pivotal to our success as the lazy river. As a budget conscious nonprofit, we select training locations based on a variety of factors that allow us to minimize cost while maximizing the experience. It just so happened that the hotel that checked the most boxes also had a resort-like feel. We didn't think much of it, except to encourage people to bring swimsuits.
For those unfamiliar with lazy rivers, they are essentially winding loops of slow, continuously flowing water. You grab a tube, and maybe a drink, and then float leisurely about, trying not to think about how many kids relieved themselves in the river that day. Personally, I choose to believe that 50% of the river is chlorine, and I'm uninterested in any facts to the contrary.
On any given night of our training, there were members of our team floating in the river. At some points, we had something like 30 WSP fellows and staff in there at once, pretty much monopolizing the innertube supply. Of course, veterans are always looking to spice things up, so some feisty folks occasionally tried to turn the river into a wave pool. Others stacked tubes around their bodies, creating floating caterpillars. Still others would create a barrier across the river, setting up a frenzy of tubes and limbs when another group innocently floated their way, with no one quite sure mid-battle which side they're on.
But whenever there was calm, there was conversation. And not just lighthearted, resort-style conversation. Deep, probing questions, reflections, and answers. We all took what we learned during day and processed it while floating about, bouncing organically from one conversation to another.
I see these trainings as an opportunity for me to build a relationship with every incoming fellow, and I have a bit of a reputation for pulling up a chair to a table where I wasn't invited or inviting somebody to go for a walk just to chat. But in the water, it's all, well, fluid. It isn't strange to join a new conversation, because it very well could be that that's just where the current took you. And if that conversation isn't for you, or if you get the sense that others need some privacy, you can just kinda float off without it seeming awkward.
I wouldn't have learned half as much about my team if it weren't for that river, and I honestly believe that the connections forged there will make our boot camps far more successful. Of course, the river wasn't for everyone. But the vibe created in the evenings carried forth into all subsequent sessions with the entire team. I think it's fair to say that the spirit of the river flowed through the entire week, even for those who stayed dry.
There's that old adage – business moves at the speed of trust. The candor, vulnerability, and joy experienced in that lazy river built trust better than anything else we could have done. The training sessions throughout the day laid the foundation, and the connections reinforced in the river added brick-and-mortar to the structure.
On the first day of training, I joked that a lazy river would henceforth be a requirement for future alumni training sessions. As I reflect back on the cultural impact of the river, I'm not so sure if that's still a joke.