Tag Archives: results

Random thoughts – keeping you on your toes

Good Leaders

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All of us rely on leaders in some way.  Like many animal species (humans are still animals after all) we form groups and somehow either through a natural or unnatural process (e. g. voting) someone assumes or is given the role (or perhaps roles in the case of multiple leaders).

Why do we need leaders?

Vision, mission, and  strategy are invaluable in all organizational situations.   From government, home, charitable to corporate and all types of organizations in between having a single point of reference to define, coordinate or facilitate the organizational road map  is only practical.

That is to say, multiple places where the buck stops has been proven experientially throughout history to be impractical. Consensus and collaberation are worthwhile ideals but ultimately even in collaberative high performing teams, the group looks to a single point.

What defines a leaders success?

Everyone has unique requirements of a leader.  This is why self awareness is such a critical skill for leaders.  Understanding what the people want, person by person is the first step.

Knowing the needs of others and facilitating their achievement is the foundational behaviour of great leaders.  Of course, there is more to it than just helping others achieve success, but also creating an understanding of what the objectives are.

Most simply put, leaders enable the achievement of success. Those that enable success the most seamlessly and where the results are most notable, are the best.

 

 

Random thoughts – keeping you on your toes

Making Decisions

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A past boss of mine,who was a senior executive within the companies C-suite, used to describe one of his key activities as facilitating decisions.

Given his level within the company the focus of his decision facilitation was focused far more on strategic than tactical topics.  Nether the less , his own view of his functional role coincided with mine.

Actually there was a real synergy and integration among his leadership team, including himself, for that reason.  As the senior leader he focused on the achievement of the highest quality decisions.

Most importantly though, he enabled the decision making utilizing the best resources and sources.

Guide don’t Drive

Decision making is simply the thought process of selecting a logical choice from the available options.  It involves gathering and analzing the pro’s and con’s of the available data.

The process of making decisions can suffer in quality with too much or too little consideration.  This level of attention is a delicate balance.

My former boss recognized his teams success rested on the quality of decisions.   This then, producing high quality decisions,  became a focus.

This is not to say seemless execution is not needed and expected but rather the critical path to success starts with decision quality.

For Example

A quick and simple example of the potential benefits and risks associated with decision making is that of picking a stock.  A good decision can bring you wealth, while a bad pick could be costly.

 

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

Self Aware, Situation Aware & Balance

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Whatever you are trying to achieve, how you behave is a critical success factor.  This applies whether attempting to make a sale, get agreement, achieve consensus, build understanding, gain support and the list goes on.

Sterotypical behaviours are often associated with the goals.  Things like the pushy salesman, the receptive consensus builder, understanding  listener  and so on.

Do what works!

Situations can drive us toward different kinds of behavior.  In sales mode we might feel a little directness is needed .  Maybe some superiority, at very least there is probably a desire to at least appear knowledgable.

More important, and effective, than pre-concieved behavior is adopting your action to the exact context.  That is being fully aware of yourself, the other parties and the environment.

This awareness enables you to customize your behavior to the needs of the situation, ongoing.  Ultimately what you do becomes reflective of what needs to be done in order to achieve your goal.

Seek a balance

Successful outcomes of any interraction are far more likely to occur when they provide benefit to all participants.  Although you will have an objective, a critical success factor which always applies, is that everyone gets something.

This perspective is often called win-win.  In essence it simply ackowledges the best interactions are those that everyone feels good about.

Over time this type of approach builds reputations.  Those who focus on benefiting themselves become recognized for this type of practice.

Ultimately this impacts their  ability to sustain results overtime.

Random thoughts – keeping you on your toes

Some thoughts about Results

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Good results have to be maintained.  Once achieved, relying on past success to be sustained into the future, without continued effort is wishful thinking.

That being said, it is true maintaing a strong positive reputation can be easier than resurrecting one from abysmal failure.  A powerful reason to seek success and when achieved work to continue it.

The Underpinning of Success

I had an interesting discussion today about whether good outcomes can arise by accident or whether planning and effort is required.  Can poor operational processes lead to success.

Obviously happy accidents occur.  People do win the lottery, although the odds are very low and winning is totally unpredictable. And conversly great effort does not guarantee good results.

The risk of failure is higher with bad processes and small effort, hence good risk mitigation dictates putting in the effort and trying hard (whether success is a guaranteed outcome or not).

Controlling Your Destiny

Whatever the level of effort, defining expectations, that is baselining success is a key element in achieving strong results.

Over the years I have seen many projects simply change their duration, cost or scope goals and then when the project is finished, pronounce success.

Moving targets to allow for achievement of same does work but personnally I don’t view it as a successful outcome.   In my experience though this is not an uncommon practice.

Ultimately though, it is like a pyramid scheme, not sustainable.  You can stretch the results for a while but eventually reality catches up.

Random thoughts – keeping you on your toes

Quoting Shakespeare

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I read a quote by Shakespeare the other day and I was surprised by how great it was. My surprise lay not with the meaning but rather just the poetic beauty of the phrasing.

“Things won are done, joy’s soul lies in the doing”  William Shakespeare, English Playwright, Troilus and Cressida

This sentiment is not new and off the top of my head I can rephrase with a number of common sayings:

  • It’s not the destination that matters, it’s the pleasure of the trip
  • Getting there is half the fun
  • It’s not about winning, it’s how you play the game
  • It’s not what you do that matters, it’s how you do it

And the point!

While it seems simple, the way Shakespeare has crafted this message, clear but poetic and lyrical is so much better than the run of the mill sayings.

The meaning is basically the same, albeit with some nuances, but the impact is so much greater.  On reading this quote I was struck by a realization that truly sometimes how you deliver the message can really make a difference in understanding and impact.  The point jumps out.

The Blog or the writing of it?

I have been scribing these random musings for over year now.  Strangely, or perhaps not, my motivation is not the end product (although I am sure they are fabulous).  Rather my joy comes in the writing itself.  What a rush.

And no less a scholar then Shakespeare himself imortalized this truism in a simple statement “Things won are done, joy’s soul lies in the doing.”