Plate spinning is a circus manipulation art where a person spins plates, bowls and other flat objects on poles, without them falling off. Plate spinning relies on the gyroscopic effect, in the same way a top stays upright while spinning. A gyroscope is a self stabilizing device. They used in aircraft, spacecraft and compasses.
Self-stabilization is a concept of fault-tolerance in distributed computing. A distributed system that is self-stabilizing will end up in a correct state no matter what state it is initialized with. That correct state is reached after a finite number of execution steps.
Plate spinning involves multiple plates; keeping one spinning is not a challenge. Three plates you must keep spinning are Customers, Share Holders and the Team.
Some keys to plate spinning are: love it or leave it, the status quo is a death sentence over time and what gets measured gets improved. Business, family businesses and individual is success must be centered in commitment. If you’re spinning plates or in the line of succession in a Family business you have to know no half measures will work.
The audience is watching, as the plates start to wobble and slow; people being to wonder how long before the crash? The plates, the business, the gyroscope will not keep going, growing without energy, change and the hands of the Team and the direction of the next generation of leaders. Measurement can come in many forms, Hawthorne lives! Weekly score cards by interns, showing the items learned was one innovative measurement one business used.
Self-stabilization was first written about in 1974, by E.W.Dijkstra a Dutch computer scientist. His algorithm has applications in for teams. Some key themes to consider are time, commitment and the starting point. In quality discussions, continuous improvement treatises and cultural essays a key point is the starting point. In plate spinning the starting point is also a key, you have to have a fair start. In business, in the self-stabilization process there is a cycle of events that follow permit the correction. Successful teams, businesses fix issues and the better ones self-correct.
The team, the leader understand the best way to serve others is to weed their own garden, fix their issues.
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