Karl Edwards presents Working Matters

Category: Working Matters

  • Your Decision Isn’t About You

    It might be your decision to make, but your decision isn’t about you.

    A sure-fire way to make a poor decision is to make yourself, your reputation, your authority, your work standards, or your self-perception one of the issues.

    In this week’s podcast interview on being more intentional in decision-making, we share some ideas for shifting the focus of your criteria off of yourself and onto the outcome you want coming out of this decision.

    In any healthy workplace culture, we are accountable for achieving outcomes. Some of us, though, find that accountability a cause for concern. Subtly our attention shifts from achieving results to how we are being viewed by our superiors. Deadly.

    Our best chance for making decisions that achieve is to keep our own egos out of the equation. That may be the most difficult decision we ever have to make!

  • Lessons from Odd Jobs: You’re Fired

    Odd JobsMarcus Goodyear solicits a story from me about an odd job I’ve had.

    As ordinary as the job might normally have been, it became an extremely odd one the day I had to tell 10% of the firm that they were being laid off… effective immediately.

    How it became my job to fulfill this grievous and thankless task, I’m not quite sure. I remember dreading it for days. I remember the look of shock on each person’s face. I remember every question about their future well-being, for which I had no answer.

    Life and work collide in strange ways at times. Decisions ensuring the well-being of the whole result in harm for more than a few. Short term harm, we hope and trust. But we do not know.

    Once the employment relationship is severed, other forms of relationship feel awkward… even inappropriate. Who am I to ask about their feelings, when I have just upended their world from my position of power and security?

    It’s the difficult decisions that make us think most deeply; feel most intensely; and, hopefully, choose most courageously. We don’t get to track the future implications, consequences, and eventualities that came of that fateful day. I am left holding neither all the responsibility nor no responsibility for all the choices by all the people involved from that point on.

    It’s life and work in real time. Often it involves the oddest jobs.

  • Perception or Reality?

    Not all our decisions are based on facts. Not all our facts are accurate interpretations of reality.

    Our “take” on any given decision depends on the accuracy and completeness of our understanding of the issues involved. In other words, whether or not our perceptions are grounded in reality.

    Could your frustration with a certain employee’s performance really be a frustration with your own inability to provide clear instructions? Could the recent drop in sales have more to do with a drop in product quality than the missed goals of the sales team?

    Crucial is whether you have a safe way to get as many issues as possible out on the table. Are you involving others in the issue-unearthing process or are you operating in isolation? Do you have access to a variety of perspectives and sources of information?

    Listen to this week’s podcast conversation and tell us how you stay grounded in reality when making decisions.

  • Listen In -> Decision-Making #2: Becoming More Intentional

    This week Claudia and I begin laying out a positive framework for more effective decision-making.

    Key is becoming aware of your focus. Is it the decision itself? Is it the problem being addressed? Is it on getting enough information to make an informed decision?

    We’re going to suggest you focus on the outcome you want to see result from the decision.

    Listen in.

    powered by ODEO

  • Education for What?

    EducationI’ve been thinking about the value of formal education since returning from a college tour with my daughter.

    Granted there’s an expectation in the culture that necessitates degree work for appropriate professional credentialing. But in addition to that, there is the importance of being able to think clearly, comprehensively and complexly in order to meet the challenges of 21st century planet Earth.

    I’m not a big fan of the job-focused approach to education. While being able to secure a job is vital in this money-based world, we need more than the capacity to impress to result from our education.

    Try asking yourself, “Whose world is this?”

    If your answer is, “Theirs” then your focus becomes figuring out what “they” expect and making sure you have it. Once you learn their rules, your education becomes a means to comply and compete. To get the job and to keep the job.

    If your answer is, “Mine” then your focus becomes figuring out what “you” want and making sure you are taking steps to make it happen. You become a participator in making the rules, and your education becomes a means to think and act more creatively, more systematically, more resourcefully. To show up fully and make a difference.

    If you have teens like I do, whose world are you preparing them to inhabit?

  • Listen In -> Decision-Making #1: Battling Unfortunate Patterns

    When making decisions do you rashly shoot from the hip, or analyze data forever?

    This week we begin a new series on decision-making. Instead of searching for the perfect decision, we need to develop a posture oriented toward being able to assess and decide in an intentional, timely and poised manner.

    1. Battling Unfortunate Patterns
    2. Becoming More Intentional
    3. Becoming More Timely
    4. Becoming More Poised
    5. Practical Challenges We Face

    We begin the series with a discussion of the decision-making traps many of us fall into that don’t serve us well.

    Listen in.

    powered by ODEO


    New No Excuses Leadership Course
    This series on Decision-Making is the first of three series that will comprise our No Excuses Leadership Course. Watch for opportunities to participate in this online coaching experience toward the conclusion of these series.

  • Permission Granted to Enjoy Spring Break

    VacationThe kids are on Spring break. I am not.

    But I work for myself. So theoretically I can stop working any time I choose.

    But then life does not happen “theoretically,” does it?

    And so I look through my to-do list, my project list and my contact list, and I think, “I’ll never breath again, much less enjoy Spring break!”

    Those of you who know me, know that I am anything but driven. So finding an excuse for a diversion in not my particular difficulty.

    Allowing myself to enjoy the diversion, though, is.

    So here’s what I’m doing. I’ve planned a few activities with the family over Spring break. They are on the calendar. Anything else can take place around those fixed points of light.

    Instead of Spring break slipping through my fingers, for example, I’ll be visiting colleges with my daughter for several days. It’s been on the calendar. Set aside before anything else had a chance to compete for the time. And, believe me, now that we are getting ready to depart, you wouldn’t believe the number of things competing for the time.

    Let me know what you do to set aside time without being haunted by everything else that you are not doing.

  • Lessons from Eliot Spitzer

    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.

  • Complex Simplicity

    butterflyTo take all the complexities of a situation into account is overwhelming. To insist on simplicity is naive.

    Keeping processes and structures as simple as possible while keeping one’s awareness of the complicating issues as high as possible might be the constructive tension that would serve best.

    How do you manage the tension between the value of simplicity and the reality of the complex?

  • Are You Blogging… Yet?

    “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