27 Magic shows in a row… Lesson learnt: Role Clarity

It’s scary how fast time flies. I felt like I just blinked and it’s now nearing the end of February 2015! How does this happen!?

I am currently in the middle of 27 Magic shows at the Adelaide Fringe festival and I am just having a ball. I still am speaking at a few keynotes interstate during this month of madness and I am keeping things together (only just!).

Preparing for the 27 shows, last minute changes. 

A big lesson that I’ve learnt during this crazy month is role clarity. As a leader in the team what I realised is that each team member needs to know what they are supposed to do exactly.

On our first night at the Adelaide Fringe festival my team and I had 3 hours to set up, it took us literally the full 3 hours to set up and everyone was running around like headless chooks! It was so stressful, we had literally 2 minutes to spare before the audience walked in. As a result of this rush I was not in the right mindset to put on my best performance and as a result the show was extremely disappointing. I couldn’t understand what happened that evening, I made sure we had extra staff back stage yet still we struggled immensely! (I was losing my mind).

After the show, I went home and sat in my room for hours reviewing what had just happened and that’s when I realised that as a leader I didn’t give team clarity in what their roles were – I failed my team. Everyone literally just did everything, being an entrepreneur we get used to doing everything ourselves and when we have extra resources sometimes it can throw us off. I spent the entire night staying up feeling extremely upset that I put on a rubbish show and at the same time started writing out the tasks for each team member. It was like a schedule for each person back stage including my self. The next evening arrived and 4 hours before we were due on stage I sat down with everyone and made sure that everyone knew what they were in charge of, I told my team I trust that they would complete each task without me looking over it. What took us 3 hours to do on the first night we did in less than 30 minutes on that second night once everyone had clarity in their roles.

A simple business lesson that I already knew but had forgotten. No matter what business you are in remember to sit down and spend time ensuring that your entire team knows what their role is and don’t try to control everything. The moment I started to trust my team more and delegate more tasks to them, it allowed me to work on my magic shows more as opposed to just working in them night in and night out.

Learning this lesson alone has already helped me grow my businesses and improve my magic show by leaps and bounds!

2015… Bring it on!

Family and friends coming out to support me!