In problem-solving organizations, some tasks are repetitive, resulting from ongoing operations. Others are one-of-a-kind, and directly related to the organizational mission. And there are other tasks, one-of-a-kind or not, that relate to infrastructure and affect wide segments of the organizational population.

A team raises a wall of a new home in Nevada sponsored by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, in an echo of an old-fashioned barn raising. Photo courtesy U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.
Tasks of this last category can be addressed using an organizational form similar to a "barn raising" — a custom from the early history of U.S. farm communities, where community efforts were applied to the benefit of single farm families.
In "Workplace Barn Raisings," Point Lookout for August 2, 2006, we surveyed the kinds of tasks that modern organizations can tackle as barn raisings. Here are some ways "barn raisers" can divide the work.
- Plan, plan, plan
- Whether you're raising a real barn or a figurative barn, you have to plan, and someone has to take the lead. Think of your barn raising as if it were a real project. It is.
- Do your winter work
- In traditional barn raisings, community members did "winter work" to prepare for the event, on their own farms, during the winter. They harvested timber, hewed beams, made pegs, and sharpened tools.
- In a modern barn raising people do figurative "winter work" on their own well in advance. In moving a library, for example, they can label boxes or locate sources of dollies.
- Prepare the site
- The main ingredient
in organizing a modern
barn raising is no
surprise — organization - Real barns need foundations and floors. And some of the work on the heavy timbers has to be done after they arrive on site. In real barn raisings, we do this kind of work on site in advance of the event.
- Some of the work for your barn raising must be done in place, in the weeks leading up to the event. In our library example, labeling the bookshelves and installing dolly ramps might be examples of site prep work.
- Know what to do the day before
- In a real barn raising, food preparation is in the last-day category, but there are lots of other items, like preparing to look after children and farm animals during all the ruckus.
- In a modern barn raising, the effort itself might have consequences internally, or with customers or ongoing use of the event site. You probably need to deal with these issues starting the day before the event.
- Attend to people needs
- In both traditional and figurative barn raisings, the celebration and sharing are part of the fun, and much of the benefit. Provide food and drink, scheduled breaks, comfortable places to rest, and a party afterwards.
Since you'll be asking people who are already working full time to lend a hand with your barn raising, you might have to coordinate delays in other efforts. Things can get complicated, but if you send me your success stories, I'll post them here in a kind of barn raising of a barn raising. Top
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Reader Comments
- Jim Batterson
- When we lived in Montpelier, Vermont, they wanted to move the library. They asked everyone in town to check out some books from the old library and return them to the new library. Don't remember how well it worked.
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Related articles
More articles on Personal, Team, and Organizational Effectiveness:
At the Sound of the Tone, Hang Up
- When the phone rings, do you drop whatever you're doing to answer it? Do you interrupt face-to-face
conversations with live people to respond to the jerk of your cellular leash? Listen to seemingly endless
queues of voicemail messages? Here are some reminders of the choices we sometimes forget we have.
Working Lunches
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idea, but there are some hidden costs.
Remote Facilitation in Synchronous Contexts: III
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High Falutin' Goofy Talk: II
- Speech and writing at work are sometimes little more than high falutin' goofy talk, filled with puff
phrases of unknown meaning and pretentious, tired images. Here's Part II of a collection of phrases
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Improvement Bias
- When we set about improving how our organizations do things, we expose ourselves to the risk of finding
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See also Personal, Team, and Organizational Effectiveness for more related articles.
Forthcoming issues of Point Lookout
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And on July 16: Responding to Unwelcome Events
- Unwelcome events have two kinds of effects on decision-makers. One set of effects appears as we respond to events that have actually occurred. Another set manifests itself as we prepare for unwelcome events that haven't yet occurred, but which might occur. Making a wrong decision in either case can be costly. Available here and by RSS on July 16.
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