There’s ample science to conclude that we’re lousy at multi-tasking and alternatively, that taking time to reflect improves our self-efficacy and ability to learn. Unfortunately, most of us work in and contribute to a perpetual tornado of activities in our daily lives. It’s imperative for your well-being and effectiveness to find opportunities to simply pause and think deeply.
Some individuals are thrust on to a big stage and summon the strength to lead others through perilous times. For the rest of us, we are faced with almost daily opportunities to step-up and lead on the small stage. Some look the other way and others summon the strength from somewhere inside themselves to do the right thing.
For individuals involved in the world of design and design thinking, reframing vexing problems is a standard part of the process. For the rest of us, a bit of design thinking focused on reframing is invaluable in our daily labors. Here are some ideas to help you jump-start your reframing activities in pursuit of better solutions in the workplace:
We spend a great deal of time in our organizations striving to reduce risk and uncertainty. For some tasks that’s possible, but for the big issues of strategies and market forces, it’s impossible to bend behaviors and responses to fit our scripts. Effective leaders understand they must build teams that recognize uncertainty as opportunity and live to excel in those moments.
Difficult decisions and challenging conversations are inextricably linked. You don’t get to the big decisions on strategy, structure, or talent without some tough discussions. Yet often, we as leaders fail to model the right behaviors. Here are eight ideas to help you and your team strengthen discussion and decision-making processes.
Too many managers and organizational leaders emphasize answers and directives over questions. You are leaving performance and innovation on the table if you do this. Instead, know that your curiosity is contagious and start leading with open-ended, thought-provoking questions.
Integrative thinking is the process of using the tension from two conflicting approaches to a problem in pursuit of a new and innovative outcome. Instead of responding to competitive or strategic situations with the same approaches, try these 5 tools to identify new and superior approaches.
Sometimes the simplest ideas are the most effective. In this article, I share six ideas on how to use a leadership journal to strengthen your performance through continuous daily improvement.
There are many reasons our seemingly failure-proof plans go horribly wrong. One critical step you can take to move the odds of success in the right direction is to borrow a step from Red Teaming and learn to unpack and stress test key assumptions. This article shares some ideas to help you get started with this critical step for strengthening decision-making and planning activities.
There’s an awful lot of conventional wisdom that is nothing more than a cover for organizational and managerial laziness. It pays to cultivate an allergic reaction to anything that smells like: “We’ve always done it this way.”
