I am going to say it, I don’t get wine. It does nothing for me, however, lots of people enjoy it so maybe I am the strange one.
The wine-making process has some unavoidable outputs, namely carbon dioxide (CO2). In the fermentation process, the wine inside the barrel is converting sugar into alcohol and releases CO2 as a by-product.
The CO2 has to go somewhere. If it stays in the barrel it slows down the fermentation process. Also, the pressure in the barrel may cause damage.
If you just left a hole in the barrel for the CO2 to escape it would allow oxygen to mix with the wine and cause acidification and ruin the flavour.
Da Vinci, Maybe
To overcome this dilemma an ingenious piece of hardware was created called the airlock. It is possibly created by Leonardo Da Vinci, and the story is way more fun if we think it is.
The airlock is made of glass, and now sometimes plastic. It has three parts, the base, the water chamber, and the top.
The base goes into the wine and allows the barrel to be topped up with wine. On top of that is the water chamber which allows CO2 to bubble out of the wine but maintains a barrier to stop oxygen from getting in.
The airlock functions in three ways.
- It allows CO2 to be removed from the wine.
- It provides visibility of the volume of wine in the barrel, the ‘angel’s share’ is removed through evaporation.
- The wine can be topped up easily without exposing it to oxygen.
So how does a few hundred-year-old piece of wine-making equipment help you be a more effective leader?
Problems Happen
No one wants the CO2, but people want the wine. In order to create the wine the CO2 has to happen. Every process you make will have certain undesirable outputs.
Ideally, you want to change the process to avoid them altogether but something can’t be avoided, in that case, you need to face the problem head-on and acknowledge that they exist and how you will deal with them.
Team members, clients, and higher-ups might get frustrated so there needs to be release value where they can raise their concerns without destroying the process.
Transparency
Having a way to see the volume of wine without touching or interrupting the process is very important.
You want to be able to know how your project is going without having to disrupt the people doing the work to get updates.
The status of things should be easily viewable and this might take a lot of coaching to get the team to clearly articulate where things are rather than you having to stop them all the time for progress updates.
Simple Measures
The wine-makers understand they need to get the wine at a certain level, they are not testing a million things constantly, they know if the wine stays between certain volumes then the fermentation process will be working.
Make sure you find out what to care about and let your team be great. If you don’t trust them to achieve you will need to constantly be helping them rather than leading them in terms of vision and purpose and then you can go and solve more interesting problems.
Tweaking
The wine still needs to stay at a certain level so they have to top up the barrel from time to time.
Your processes should not be so rigid they can’t be adjusted as required for the competency and capability of your team, the client’s request, or the overall direction of your team at any given point.
Things will happen when working, you need to be able to identify the potential issues before they happen and have a plan to mitigate, reduce, or remove them before they happen.
Problems aren’t a problem if you know, and acknowledge, they exist.
Make sure the work is as transparent as possible, including who is doing what, and when.
Keep the metrics as simple as possible. Complexity is a tax on attention, what really matters, focus on that.
And your process will need to be adjusted over time, the environment you are working in changes so your process will need to change with it
Luke McMeeken-Ruscoe 