Each Sunday our goal is to share a piece of gold with you. Some small piece of information that helps you to have a better week and achieve a better outcome. 

As I’ve watched and learned from hundreds of businesses over the years, I’ve come to recognize that one of the most powerful and culture-impacting actions that a company must get right is managing downstream.  

Downstream is the idea that all work within an organization moves through the organization in a downstream flow. For many organizations, work starts in marketing as a lead, then to an opportunity in sales. From sales it will move to product delivery/production, once completed it will move on to invoicing, collection, financial reporting, etc.  

Each business handles this flow a bit differently. There can be many more or sometimes fewer steps in the flow, but all organizations hands off work from one team to another.  

Getting this hand-off flow right has such a massive impact on business and on culture. Most teams are focused on getting their own work done, handing the work to the next team, and then moving on to their next priority.  

However, a culture that focuses on facilitating true teamwork knows that if a bad piece of work is handed downstream to the next team, it majorly affects processes and slows down outcomes. Here are just a few ways that can happen: 

  1. The teams downstream feel like the people upstream from them do not care or respect their role in the business which leads to resentment. This can often come as a result of ignorance about company workflows. This mindset promotes comments like “Service delivery will fix it. I don’t have to worry about getting this piece done,” or “Accounting isn’t that busy, they can clean up this documentation.” 
  2. The teams downstream lose massive amounts of productivity because they’re forced to clean up a mess caused by the previous team or they’re having to delay processes by sending something backup upstream to get additional information.  
  3. Rework costs thousands of dollars. Teams are having to revisit previous projects and spend double the amount of time finding the right answers that they could have provided instantly the first time around. 
  4. Turnover within the business is higher because no one likes to feel like they are the clean-up crew. Everyone needs to be valued, understood, and respected by their peers for the work they do to contribute to the business. 

I describe it to our team this way: Pretend you are giving the next person in line a sandwich. If you make them a sandwich that they will enjoy and want to eat (a ham and cheese, for example), then you are serving them well. However, if you make them a shit-sandwich and expect them to like it and eat it, don’t be surprised when it’s given right back to you or is met with serious frustration.  

No one likes to eat a shit-sandwich.  

When your company culture focuses on respecting the people downstream from you, the entire organization works more effectively and efficiently. When work is completed diligently and holistically by the previous team, the next team will be glad to take it, process it, and move it to the next phase.  

As soon as an organization understands the importance of workflow and respect for the teams downstream, everything starts to speed up, and the culture is directly impacted. Even when there is a challenge, if you’ve created a standard of accountability to those downstream, one team can approach another and share… “Hey, this isn’t up to our normal standards, so I wanted to check in with you to make sure you are setup for success.” This results in appreciation and understanding instead of animosity.  

I would encourage you to remind your teams to focus on creating the ham and cheese sandwich and leave the shit behind! 

The goal of AoD is to build better leaders who run better companies and change the world.  If you’d like a copy of our Work-handoff template, purchase your copy of Adapt or Die here and then go to adaptordie.com/assets to get started.