We talk a lot about designing your own workplace culture.
But where are the touch points where we can actually make a difference?
Ellen Weber has an interesting post this morning on how to inject an inventive edge in your workplace culture.
Jump over and check out Build Invention into Your Workplace.
On your side,
- Karl
When candidates say what they have to say in order to get elected, how can you know who you’re really voting for?
How about insisting on substantive answers to meaningful questions? Check out this list of 15 questions developed by the Center for Public Leadership and the Ken Blanchard Companies. Link to this post or directly to the Center’s blog post and get your friends and associates insisting on substance over rhetoric.
1. Values: What are your five core values and how do they shape how you lead?
2. Attributes & Competencies: What are the attributes and competencies you value most in yourself that will serve you well in the White House?
3. Weaknesses & Mistakes: Recent American history has many examples of leaders whose weaknesses brought them down. What are your tendencies that could cause your presidency to fail?
4. People I Have Learned From: What historical figure has exercised leadership in a way that you aspire to? What were their strengths? Tell us about a situation that tested their leadership.
5. Multicultural Experience/World View: What experiences have helped you deeply understand the mindset and values of other cultures?
6. Building a Team: Tell us about a high performing team that you’ve built. What made it high-performing?
7. Coalition Building: Can you share some examples of when you were a catalyst who brought groups with polarized opinions together so that all voices were at the table?
8. Increasing Participation: The internet and technology have flattened the political playing field, allowing for more participation and collective decision making. How will you create a more participatory democracy and give people the opportunity to influence decision making?
9. Increasing Participation: Young people have engaged in this election in greater numbers than ever before. Please give us some examples of how you have listened and responded to the next generation in your campaign. How will you keep the next generation engaged?
10. Decision Making Style: The president’s role requires decisiveness. Please share some examples of your ability and willingness to be decisive. Can you tell us about a time when a lack of decisiveness got you into trouble. In retrospect, what would you have done differently?
11. Judgment: Tell us about a time when your judgment was tested in crisis. What do you want us to appreciate about your judgment?
12. Leading Change: Can you give us an example of how you have overcome resistance to bring about a needed change?
13. Innovative Thinking: How will you create an environment for innovation within your leadership team?
14. Building the Confidence of Others: What are the first few things you’ll do to raise confidence at home and abroad?
15. Priorities Indicative of Values: The USA ranks 1st in incarceration and 18th in high school graduation. What leadership skills and values do you bring to the challenge of reversing these numbers? Can you point to three things in your past that will help us understand that you care about this challenge?
In the best spirit of No Excuses Leadership™, I’m delighted to find Lisa Haneberg over at Management Craft suggesting that leaders might recognize for themselves when it’s time to move on.
My favorite Question of the Week for leaders to ask themselves is: “How might you be a part of the problem that won’t go away?” I like it so much because it points to the heart of leadership effectiveness, which is self-awareness. Knowing how you show up at work and the impact your presence, actions and words have on others.
“Be WITH the team, or change teams,” Lisa exhorts. So many of us make the mistake of making our own vantage point our sole frame of reference for evaluating the big picture. But a vantage point is just that… one point among many. Is it because we have more power that we get to let ourselves off the hook and blame the team for missed goals, petty in-fighting, or poor customer service?
I think not. The leader is always ultimately responsible for what happens on the ground. No excuses.
If we haven’t talked recently about the challenges you are currently facing, let’s do so. Give a call or shoot me an email. Your contribution is too important to ignore.
On your side,
- Karl
Sometimes an insight doesn’t sink in until stated backwards or upside-down or in the negative.
Check out Ian McKenzie’s 10 Rules to Ensure You Don’t Reach Your Goals. I think you’ll find them practical, simple and insightful.
Most challenging to me was #3: “Spend time with people who are not reaching their goals. Stay away from anyone who has clear goals and a plan to reach them.” The implications to several current relationships will take some serious thought!
If you haven’t registered for our free online Goals Journal, start keeping track of your most important goals today! View a sample Goals Journal here.
On your side,
- Karl
You have to read this post from Ellen Weber on how our own choices can sabotage our efforts. Even if the fall-out from our choices isn’t as dramatic as Eliot Spitzer’s, we all find ourselves doing things that work against our goals.
Click over to her Brain-Based Business site and check out her insightful list of ten ways we shoot ourselves in the foot. These include: avoiding risk, dodging reflection, procrastinating, and choosing insincerity among others.
While not exactly thrilled to see some of my choices on the list, understanding the how and why behind how those choices affect (read damage) my capacity to choose as I’d like in the future, was a real eye-opener. I gained a new motivation to choose differently.
Who’s side are you on? Not always your own, it seems.
I say we change that today.
“Yet” being the key word, because in one form or another, we are all developing content,
holding conversations, sharing ideas, and collaborating all of the time already.
It is now becoming easier, faster and cheaper on an exponential scale. Check out Chris Cree’s comparison to the revolution (I would say cultural transformation) caused by the Gutenberg Press. His insights on speed, price, distribution and participation are cause for pause.
More than a fashionable trend or a badge of technological prowess, online interaction is transforming content, communication, community, and collaboration.
Watch for coming announcements at Bold Enterprises.com expanding your online learning and collaborating options! (Do you have a Goals Journal yet?)
On your side,
- Karl
You know how strongly I feel about having a “bias toward action” in effective decision-making.
I found a great series of questions for evaluating unexpected opportunities over on Liz Strauss’ site. She calls it, “The Opportunity Action Test.”
Not an exam at all, these reflective questions help you discern. Before undertaking any time-consuming or budget-busting analysis, spend half an hour running through the list and see whether enough insight emerges for you to make a decision.
At least to go ahead and make your next decision today!
On your side,
- Karl
You know how I’m always pushing the value of lifelong learning. I came across a fun (even useful) idea that I thought you’d enjoy checking out.
Scott Young suggests having a “To-Learn” list. More intentional and less haphazard than casual reading, so you’re more likely to make progress in more areas. But still simple and doable, so you’re less likely to put it off as you might a degree program or developing a long-term plan.
Check it out. Give it a try. Don’t be surprised if it turns up in one of my coaching assignments.
Check out this Concrete Goals Tracker. David Seah has put together an easy-to-use tool for prioritizing and encouraging progress on the tasks most important to you.
We’re always looking for ways to move away from overwhelmed busyness and move toward satisfying effectiveness. (Without, of course, needing to be divine first.) I like his priority categories for weighting the value of the various outcomes of our efforts.
Here is a simple tool I am going to try right away. I thought you’d like to know.
On your side,
- Karl
What would happen if you made additional tools and support available to your employees without dictating to them how or for what to use them?
See what IBM experienced when it made various publishing and broadcasting tools available to its employees and trusted them with the uses. Read Eric Eggertson’s insights into how building a corporate “culture of trust and authenticity” will result in unanticipated creativity and buy-in.
People are not an interchangeable commodity whose energies we exploit as long as we can get away with it. They are our primary asset, a source of infinite energy and creativity, IF we come to terms with the reality that core to their (our) motivation is the opportunity to contribute and make a difference.
Try an experiment of your own and see what amazing new improvements, initiatives and/or innovations emerge from your team.
On your side.
