Tag Archives: leadership

Random thoughts – keeping you on your toes

Intelligence and Knowledge

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Intelligence quotient is a number representing a person’s reasoning ability (measured using problem-solving tests) as compared to the statistical norm or average for their age, taken as 100.

Although IQ is considered to be somewhat age related, in general it is believed to  remain relatively stable across your lifespan.  That is, the reasoning ability is set in your early years and does not change much.

Knowledge is acquired through a combination of learning and the application of your reasoning ability.  Theoretically, your ability to acquire, develop and utilize knowledge is limited by your reasoning ability (i.e., I.Q.)

Application

Often we subjectively assess other peoples intelligence based on outcomes.  We associate this with ability to create and disseminate knowledge – in essence the ability to learn.

For example theories and law’s developed by Alberta Einstein are almost universally considered to be the result of high intelligence (a high IQ).

Many believe their own IQ’s, that is their  innate reasoning ability, would not enable them to reason out such complex concepts as the theory of relativity.

I wonder if this is true.

Nature or Nurture

The very concept of IQ leads to the conclusion that you are born with (nature) a fixed ability to reason and this limits your ability to learn (nurture).

Since, as a general rule IQ is not believed to change significantly through your life (although there are age based variations) this concept leads to the conclusion you are born with a certain ability to gather and create knowledge.

Although this innate ability does not endow you with knowledge (work is required to do that) your basic capability to gain knowledge is genetically based.

For me, this logic is just one of the issues with IQ measurement.  The ability to measure it in the first place being another.

The Quest Continues

Research on intelligence, both what it is and how it is acquired (nature vs nurture) continues and I look forward to the continued streams of unfolding conclusions on this topic as more data is gathered.

All in all, it makes for a fascinating discussion.

Random thoughts – keeping you on your toes

Proactive or Reactive

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Generally a pro-active response requires more effort than just accepting the default or status quo approach.  Reactive reponses generally have an urgency associated with them  and are often more like a band aid.

That is they cover the problem temporarily but do not necessarily resolve it.  A pro-active approach requires planning which in itself adds effort.

Default, going with the flow or reacting do not involve any preparation.  Planning is not effortless, but the results are typically more satisfying.

Effort, duration, results

Spending more time and effort should produce better results.  This applies regardless of the product or service. However there is a caveat, both time and effort must be productive.

The act of just spending time or randomly acting on anything may or might not be effective.  The better approach is for it to be thought out (i.e., planned) for maximum effectiveness.

Pro-actively planning the approach, what, when and how is far more likely to result in successful achievement of the objective.

Repeatable and Sustainable

Another often overlooked benefit of the while thought out action is the ability for yourself and others to repeat it over a long period and expect consistent results.

This is the underlying concept of many activity models like ITIL, CMMI, Cobit or 6 Sigma. These models provide a framework for planning.

Ultimately the pro-active approach produces better quality, time after time.  This concept can be applied to anything you do whether it be a trip to the grocery store or a trip to the moon.

Random thoughts – keeping you on your toes

Choosing to be percieved as Stubborn

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Stubborn describes a behaviour that is considered inappropriate by most people.  More to the point, when we characterize someones behaviour as stubborn it’s not a compliment.

When a person is percieved to display dogged determination not to change their attitude or position on something, especially in spite of good arguments or reasons to do so, we lable them stubborn.

Subjectivity

Like so many things related to behaviour classification, stubborness has a significant subjective quality.  The assessment is largely based on the assessors perception and opinion.

The most subjective part of the assessment relates to the motivation of the resistance to change.  That is, deciding the stubborn person is resisting change, though there is no good reason for them to do so.

The subjective  part hinges around an opinion relative to the quality of the arguments for changing anothers attitude.  Typically the “stubborn” person does not see it that way.

Ergo, someone who behaves stubbornly from your perspective might not agree with you.  This can lead to entrenched positions by all parties, a situation not conducive to resolution.

Seeking Positive Outcomes

Not surprisingly when one person percieves stubborn behaviour in another the natural response is to develop their own stubborn behaviour.  Ultimately, to an outside observer, the discussion begins to resemble two brick walls with strong foundations, spouting barbs.

Help is at hand.  This is where your self awareness is a key tool.  Recognize the rising stubborness in yourself and in the moment use self talk to remind yourself escalating stubborness on the part of all parties never leads to resolution.

Relax, agree with the party you view as stubborn.  This technique invariably creates a small opening where your opponent become slightly receptive.  After all they now believe you get it.

Slowly  using continued reinforcement of agreement you ply your points and with time and patience a place of mutual agreement can be achieved.  The key here is iteratively building receptivity to discussion (softly) and using this to slowly achieve common ground.

Random thoughts – keeping you on your toes

Intangible Benefits

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Motivation to expend effort is usually related to the expected outcomes.   There is usually a reason to act and logically the benefits in doing so favour the action.

The effort/benefit analysis is most interesting when the measure of success is more subjective than objective.  Or to use common business case terminology, intangible versus tangible.

I don’t have time

A common explanation, I often hear, for not spending effort on certain tasks is “I don’t have time”.  Most of the time this is because the intangible benefit is percieved as low.

Sadly, this is probably not the case.  An example of this is, “I don’t have time to show them how, I’ll just fix it myself. ” The immediate benefit of providing training is not obvious.

In the long run, correcting the root cause (training) rather than repeatedly fixing the issue, ultimately improves quality, effort, personal satisfaction and a host of other attributes over the long run.

Best of all, the benefits achieved by this upfront training effort are both repeatable and sustainable.  Unfortunately this is not an easy metric to measure and has a subjective component to the measure of it’s value.

Think about it

On the next occassion “I don’t have time” pops into your mind as a reason not to take a particular action, ask yourself “Do you have time not to?”.

Basically, in the long run, will not dealing with this issue now demand a lot more time and effort. The key here is to give full consideration to possible intangible benefits before deciding not to act.

Random thoughts – keeping you on your toes

Hidden Agenda

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Peoples knowledge and experience underpin their behaviour.  If you ask someone for advice on hammers and their knowledge base is nails, it’s likely their counsel, although obstensively about hammers will derive from the nails perspective.

Of course there is great opportunity to be had through leveraging peoples diverse backgrounds ( what they know and have done) but it is not easy.

The effort required to extract everyones best behaviour and integrate it with everyone elses is not trivial.  My own experience is the results more than justify the effort.

Facilitation

Facilitation covers any activity you undertake that makes tasks for others easy.  In this case the task is to bring diverse knowledge and subjective assessments together in a cohesive whole.

The critical skill is to facilite the interaction without appearing to do so.  The facilitator needs to be independent and willing to focus on the goal and making the task of getting to it easier.

This requires a deft touch.  In a sense, you are leading a group down a path, however if you become perceived as a leader or trying to lead your facilitation effectiveness is suddenly greatly diminished.

True facilitators are neutral.

Guide

Your goal is to guide others interractions to the best conclusion possible.  To do this you must not participate.  Agreement or disagreement with the discussion is your nemisis.  Your only objective is a positve high quality result.

The participants knowledge and experience, bound together in a cohesive way is all you need to obtain the objective.

 

Random thoughts – keeping you on your toes

Making Mistakes

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Life is full of mistakes.  When you make a decision and/or take an action that turns out to be wrong, it is a mistake.  Everyones makes mistakes.

Life without mistakes is highly improbable, but also would be awfully boring.  Making mistakes is not a goal but not making them shouldn’t be an objective either.

Embracing Mistakes

Mistakes can have negative consequences.  They can also uncover paths to success or provide valuable experiences that can be used to avoid even greater mistakes.

It can be exhilarating to attempt to scale the mountain, especially when you succeed.  Fear of making a mistake and perhaps not even trying could be as costly as the mistake itself.

Balance

A common theme in so many of my posts is finding the optimal balances between opposites.  In this case, the balance is effectively between caution (to mitigate the risk of a mistake) and boldness( to go where no man has gone before)

Too much caution and places where no one has ever been will remain unexplored.  On the other hand too little caution when bursting into the unknown may have dire consquences, even death.

Recovering from Mistakes

The most important part of any discussion of mistakes is how to behave when they occur.  First and foremost, always acknowledge the mistake and acquiesce to your complicity in it.

This is critical because a defensive posture envaribly magnifies the mistakes.  With acceptance, it is much easier to move to the next step – resolution.

Following acceptance, analyze the impacts and consequences of the mistake  and plan a course of behaviour that results in maximum mitigation.

Random thoughts – keeping you on your toes

Throwing Bowling Balls

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Sometimes communication needs a little punch.  A colleague of mine calls this throwing bowling balls.  Sometimes I  get a snappy email response from him, “thanks for the bowling ball”

A touch of levity empowers communication  and as long as it can be taken in good humour, as a bowling ball versus a nuclear detonation there is nothing wrong with spicing the message to increase noticeability.

Getting Attention

Not surprisingly, getting attention is not as useful as keeping it.  When crafting your message, verbal, written or even through body language the key is not just to be noticed but more importantly to be heard.

Bowling balls come in hard and fast, you need to pay attention and react or risk getting hurt.  It’s the reaction which creates the opportunity for dialogue and ultimately opens the door for understanding.

Mutual ackowledgement and understanding (very different from agreement) is the place to start the communication.  Moving on to agreement, if you can, is the next step.

Why Listen

Communication entails transmission of a message.  Most important to the sender is receptivity.  Without motivation why would anyone waste time on your communication.

In today’s environment digital messaging abounds.  People with a large volume of email can be selective about what they pay attention to.

In some cases this is just a defensive tactic.  Time management can be over whelming and the motivation to bypass seeming innocuous or low priority messages is high.

So send that bowling ball spinning to it’s destination when some motivation toward having your message selected for attention is warranted.

Random thoughts – keeping you on your toes

Leveraging Differences

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Leveraging different skills and strengths by integrating them to a cohesive whole, produces better results.  While this is a somewhat intuitive statement, there are large bodies of research supporting this conclusion.

The major challenge is to enable a group of people with diverse backgrounds, experience, skills and values  to achieve the maximum level of cohesion.

This one of the most powerful leadership skills, but also the most difficult to practice.   Differences can result in adversarial behaviour. This is natural.  Can the leader resolve this?

How to channel adversaries into comrades?

Motivating others to collaberate, while respecting and leveraging each others differences is best done with a deft hand.  That is, create an  environment which encourages the co-mingling of different perspectives,  without being obvious.

The core principal is not to direct, but to guide.  Create and communicate a clear vision and strategy to reinforce the power of group diversity  over that of individual effort.

Using Superman

An individual with super strength, x-ray and heat vision who can fly and is invulnerable seems to be an appealing approach.  With Superman as your prime resource, who needs a diverse group that struggle to work together?

Why not just rely on this all powerful super human. Seems like it might be easier.  Of course it’s a problem if someone shows up with kryptonite.

High performing teams leverage each others strengths and minimize the risks associated with their weakness.  They do not have a single point of failure and can adapt and effectively defend against kryptonite like attacks.

In this lies the key value of leveraging diverse strengths versus a single source.

 

Random thoughts – keeping you on your toes

Keeping your brain alive

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Intellectual stimulation, exercising your brain, is as important as physical exercise to maintaining your health.  Elongating your life span requires attention toward all body parts – muscles, vital organs and thinking processes.

Supporting thought

On and off my posts focus on leadership behaviours.  A critical tool in understanding and motivating others is to create an environment that allows for positive exercise of intellectual prowess.

Properly orchestrated this can enrich the performance of the team, group or organization, through a series of a productive set of behaviours, that addresses not just physical well being but possibly more importantly, mental health.

Like your muscles, without regular active use your thinking processes can become atrophied.   Leaders must not just motivate action and outcomes but enable others to do so in a mentally stimulating way.

Setting the Environment

One approach is to encourage respectful dialogue.  Exchanging information in a reasoned manner while encouraging dissent and opposing views can be a very powerful motivator.

More importantly, this behaviour results in higher levels of engagement which in turn raise motivation and ultimately outcomes are better.

These outcomes hopefully map to the groups goals and objectives.  Encouraging the team to mentally challenge themselves includes the use of scenarios specifically targeted to make everyone think.

In these cases, the goal or objective may be in and of itself, about the thinking process, no more no less.

 

Random thoughts – keeping you on your toes

Change is good

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In 1964 Bob Dylan issued his classic self penned folk song “The times they are a changin”. It was an anthem for the youth of the time echoing the popular desire for cultural change.

As appropriate as the lyrics were to the decade they were written in, the message is timeless.    Consider:

“If your time to you

Is worth savin

Then you better start swimmin

Or you’ll sink like a stone”

Basically, I interpret this to mean, if you can’t keep up with the change, you will drown.  A true statement any time, not just in the decade of the sixties.

Resistance is Futile

In Star Trek, Next Generation. one of the classic antagonists were the Borg.  An alien race that absorbed everything in their path.  Their motto was “Resistance is Futile”.

Although it does not fit exactly within the context of the TV drama, I have always appreciated the catch phrase as representing the epitome of my attitude toward change.

That is, embrace the change and get on with it.  There is little value to resisting.  Ultimately the effort, time and potentially the pain you elicit does not stop life’s progression.

Change is Good

Often I get feedback that not all change is good.  The clarification I provide is; this phrase does not imply all change should be accepted blindly without attempting to influence or impact the nature and outcomes of the change.

Simply put, the process of change in and of itself  is beneficial.  That does not mean it’s not necessarily a process potentially fraught with frustration but it is better to embrace and guide the change rather than to battle it.