Colleagues,
We are leaders. What does that mean? In an organizational sense, we see a problem, we develop and implement a solution, and we check to see if we got the results we wanted. Simple, right? What could possibly go wrong? Of course, all kinds of things could happen:
That’s just a partial list, you could add to it I’m sure. The beauty of strategic action cycles (SAC) is that they mitigate all of these problems. It isn’t that the problems don’t exist, they just don’t matter as much. When I’m enacting incremental change, and something goes wrong, I haven’t lost much. Maybe a week or two of time, energy, patience, and money. We can quickly reevaluate and make adjustments based on what we learn. In fact, there is no such thing as a failed strategic action cycle. When an incremental change doesn’t work, it provides us with critical information that can inform our next step. Do good and be well, Frederick
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Colleagues,
I hope this is the last message I will ever write about new floors! They are beautiful, and it was well past time, but maybe an incremental approach would have been better. Way back on October 20, I noted that among the reason we decided to embrace a big change were:
The problem with big change is that so much can go wrong before you ever get to the final result. For example:
All of these things happened in our project. What about your last big change project?
As you may be contemplating your next big change, take some time to think it over. Is there a way to apply leverage and to engage in a series of strategic action cycles, as opposed to one long sustained effort? Do good and be well, Frederick Colleagues,
It was a month ago that I shared with you that we were getting floors put in throughout our house. Here’s an update and a leadership lesson. After moving all of the furniture out of the upstairs, the project was delayed for two weeks as the floor did not ship from the manufacturer. The day after they started on the floor, my remarkable mother-in-law passed away unexpectedly. We returned from a week of mourning in Ohio to new floors at home. We also returned with COVID infections and Pam, our oldest son, and I have all been struggling to muster energy over the past week. So, sick, sad, and overwhelmed, we faced living in a space where literally every room was either empty or packed full. In fact, we didn’t even have an operational kitchen sink the first night we returned. There was, and still is, so much to do and our energy reserves are very low. So, where do we start? It is easy to get distracted and begin working on whatever is in front of us, but that is the urgent approach. The strategic approach is to survey everything and ask, what will give us the best reward for the least effort? The kitchen sink and beds were an obvious place to start. From there, we took care of a couple key parts of the kitchen and created a nice sitting space in the living room. You may have taken a different approach, but the critical point is to be intentional and invest in the things that will make the biggest difference with the least energy. Do good and be well, Frederick Colleagues,
Yesterday we talked about strengths and weaknesses. We noted that working in your area of strength gives you energy and motivation while working in an area of weakness drains them. Today we’ll look at three strategies for working in your area of weakness. Strategy 1: Rely on your team Having a leadership team is critical. That team should include people with a variety of skillsets. Distributing power and letting other’s take the lead allows each person to work in their areas of strength. Strategy 2: Delegate or ask for help It may make more sense, from a resource perspective, to have someone else do the work in the area that is your weakness. This also allows you to hep build leadership skills in someone else, thereby increasing the overall leadership capacity within your organization. Strategy 3: Energize yourself first Working in your area of weakness will drain you, so why not give yourself some extra energy on the front end. Before tackling something that will be very difficult for you, invest some time doing something you are good at and for which you will be able to see immediate results. This will give you some extra motivation and energy to spend on that difficult task. Incidentally, I am using strategy three as I write this. I’ve got a challenge area to work on this afternoon, so writing about leadership is a way for me to energize and build a sense of accomplishment before struggling through the hard task later. Do good and be well, Frederick Colleagues,
Most of us are very good at one or a few things, average at most things, and not very good at one or two other things. While we should always strive to improve those deficient areas, we should also always be mindful of leveraging our strengths. Remember that one of the principals of leverage is M=V/E, or motivation equals value divided by effort. When you are really good at something, it is easier to do and yields better results. In the equation, we can increase V and decrease E, yielding increased motivation. This is why doing what we are good at can actually help us feel more energized. Of course, the inverse is also true. When we focus on something we are not good at, it requires more E for less V, thereby decreasing motivation, which has a draining effect on us. Ideally, we could spend all of our time doing the things we are best at, but you probably don’t have that option. What can we do about that? We’ll look at the answer to that question tomorrow. Do good and be well, Frederick |
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