Leadership Caffeine for the Week: Coffee, Your Health and 8 Suggestions to Improve Your Team’s Problem Solving Skills
Filed under: "To Do" List, Career, Crisis Leadership, Leadership, Leadership Caffeine, Performance, Professional Growth
Great news! Reading this weekly blog feature with your favorite cup of coffee might actually be proving beneficial to your health. At least the coffee part, that is.
In “Good News for Coffee Addicts” in the June, 2009 Harvard Business Review, Dr. Thomas Lee cites a number of long running studies that indicate that “drinking coffee cuts the risk of dying early from a heart attack or stroke. Coffee also appears to offer some small protection against Type 2 diabetes, gallstones and Parkinson’s disease.”
Dr. Lee offers up additional findings on coffee’s impact on productivity and emotions, with “Controlled laboratory experiments indicate that it (coffee) causes feelings of well-being and increases energy, alertness and motivation.”
That’s enough to convince me that it was serendipitous to name this weekly post, “Leadership Caffeine.” It’s time to improve your feelings of well-being and jack up your productivity, so grab another cup of black coffee (the benefits wane with sugar and cream) and read on.
Leaders and the Problems with Problems:
The best learning opportunities in the workplace occur when individuals or teams come face to face with a vexing problem. These situations provide outstanding growth opportunities and a great chance to generate and implement innovative and creative solutions. Of course, the manager has to play by the rules.
Unfortunately, there are still a few managers and leaders out there that insist on spoiling these ripe learning opportunities by requiring you to follow a specific approach or steps in solving a problem. This is micromanaging primed. A good micromanager (oxymoron by design!) focuses on what you are doing, but a great one takes it a step further and requires you to do it his way. It is his way or the highway.
This approach squelches any opportunities for creativity and personal development and reduces the health of the overall working environment to something that no amount of coffee could repair.
Some Sharp People Suffer from this Malady:
While you might read this and quickly scoff at the notion that you would ever dictate to people how to do things, it is more common than you might think.
I see this issue frequently in technical environments where brilliant architects and developers are promoted to lead teams and lacking the insight, experience or even mentoring from above; they proceed to define their job as “telling people how to develop.” To these individuals, this is almost logical, since in their minds, they were promoted based on the strength of their technical acumen.
Oh, and you sales pros are not immune either. Similar circumstances. Someone in their infinite wisdom promotes the top sales rep into a regional or district manager role with several more junior reps reporting to them, and the same process ensues.
8 Suggestions for Improving Your Support of Problem-Solving as a Leader:
1. Under ordinary circumstances, you should not tell people how to solve a problem. Work hard to avoid being prescriptive. Of course, under extraordinary circumstances such as a life or death situation, this might not be possible.
2. Do focus on framing a problem and ensuring that everyone understands the gravity of the issue and the goals of a solution.
3. Don’t shoot down ideas and solutions that are different than what you would prescribe. Instead ask questions, seek to understand how the approach will meet the goals.
4. Challenge assumptions, not methods.
5. Encourage individuals and groups to gain external input and/or to compare their proposed solutions to those already in place in the market. For product, service or market problems, benchmarking against competitors can quickly uncover mundane, me-too solutions.
6. Encourage individuals and teams to look in non-traditional places for ideas. A famous example is how managers at Toyota studied the U.S. Supermarket industry to gain ideas on just-in-time inventory and production techniques.
7. Screw up the courage to let people try things radically different than how you would have done it. Provide support, and if failure occurs, see the next point.
8. Recognize that failure is part of the path to getting it right. Instead of prosecuting for failures, figure out how to leverage the experience for learning and improvement.
The Bottom-line for Now:
Seek to enculturate effective, collaborative and creative problem solving that does not involve you at the epicenter of every solution. When problems start getting solved without your involvement, you are starting to succeed as a leader.
Dream and Act Big: Leadership Caffeine for the Week of April 5, 2009
Filed under: "To Do" List, Career, Leadership, Leadership Caffeine
This week’s jolt of energy is taken from a great interview with Jim Collins in the April, 2009 issue of Inc. Magazine.
Collins connected with Inc. editor, Bo Burlingham to share views on the state of our world, building great businesses and entrepreneurship. The entrepreneurial focus is relevant for many that have either been pushed into this world through downsizing or are considering it as they grow weary of the uncertainties of corporate life.
The result is a feast of insightful, refreshing and invigorating quotes. Oh, and I’m taking my motivation from Collins with a cup of the always bold and invigorating Sumatra Mandehling Gayo Mountain from my favorite local roaster, Conscious Cup.
Just a few selected quotes and observations from Collins:
-On what the leading entrepreneurs of the past three decades have in common:
“They defined success on a very big scale.”
-Recalling a quote from Steve Jobs in the late 1980’s that captured the noble vision of entrepreneurship:
“We aren’t creating computers, we are creating bicycles for the minds.”
-On the choice that people face on working for others or working for themselves:
“I see entrepreneurship as more of a life concept. We all make choices about how we live our lives. You can take a paint-by-numbers approach, or you can start with a blank canvas. Starting with a blank canvas is the only way to get a masterpiece, but you could also blow up.”
-On the emerging environment:
“We’re heading into a world characterized by big events, big forces, massive storms. We’re going to be vulnerable little specks high on the mountain when the storm hits out of nowhere. And if we’re not prepared, we’re going to die up there.”
-On why he’s not pessimistic in spite of the emerging environment:
“It is only in times like this that you get a chance to show your strength.”
“In the end, I think we need to have absolute faith in our ability to deal with whatever is thrown at us. And we need to have a complete, realistic paranoia that a lot can be thrown at us.”
-On the source of his optimism:
“A lot of it has to do with the young generation.” Quoting a general at West Point, “This is the most inspired and inspiring generation to come through West Point since 1945.”
“I’m hopeful precisely because of this generation of kids. I really think we ought to give them the keys as soon as we can.”
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Art’s comments:
First, bookmark the interview and read it from start to end. The selected quotes above barely do justice to the wisdom and inspiration that Collins has to offer in this article.
Second, consider how his guidance and observations can help you deal with your situation, whether you plan on being an entrepreneur or an intrapreneur.
Great things tend to flow from tough times and when people focus on defining success not necessarily in monetary terms but on a grand scale.
My own real world example in process: I’m working with a group to change the shape of volunteer management and volunteerism in our local community. Our emerging goal is nothing less than to transform Volunteer management practices in this country. Lofty yes, but doable? Absolutely.
The same lofty ambitions can drive for-profit organizations, but it requires thinking beyond success and focusing on significance.
And last and not least, I love his perspective on the younger generation. While the media focuses on what they describe as a: texting-obsessed, trophy-laden, what’s in it for me generation, I am with Collins in seeing the reality to be very different. (See my article: In Hopeful Praise of the Millennials.)
As you have occasion to work with, lead and support the development of this younger generation, perhaps it is time to think deeply about the challenges we have saddled them with and offer our support and hope instead of our criticism.
The Bottom-Line for the New Week:
OK, grab that second cup and go forth into the new week motivated to do something great. The longest journey starts of course with the first step, and the greatest monuments start with the first stone. Take that first step or lay down that cornerstone and dream big!
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