A good strategic framework provides focus by limiting the number of directions the organization runs. You’d be foolish to try to extend all your products while simultaneously expanding all your markets while also ramping up capacity or shifting your business model to include new types of production, sourcing, sales, delivery, and partnerships. This isn’t just an issue of capacity. It is also an issue of risk, learning, complexity, and credibility.
I saw a new study by the University of Minnesota that encourages messy desks after concluding “Disorderly environments seem to inspire breaking with tradition, which can produce fresh insights.”
I always appreciate it when big companies like Wells Fargo provide perfect, highly visible examples to prove my points. You will make better decisions faster if you SOAR through Decisions. Unfortunately, most people skip three of the four steps. And Wells Fargo has just provided a fabulous example of skipping the fourth! The R in SOAR stands for Risks. When you think you’ve arrived at a decision, it pays to pause to consider what might go wrong. Ask yourself or your team, what are the downsides to this alternative? I guarantee Wells Fargo skipped this step and let me show you why.
When I graduated from college, I was not even sort of ready for a full-time job. I saw “real jobs” as a prison sentence that would end my flexibility and steal my chances to travel. Friends proved me right by getting hired and then promptly saying no to every opportunity while they just worked every day and awaited that first week of vacation six months down the pike. So I latched on to seasonal and temporary employment for a year or so instead. I worked at a resort, drove school buses, pumped gas, sold minnows, substituted at the local high school, and tutored the truant officer’s son who refused to go to school. Between times, I moved around, mostly by bicycle. I always made enough to get by.
“Amy Cuddy’s TED Talk” on body language has been viewed 32,728,866 times, more by now, for a reason. This isn’t the same old talk about how your body language affects others. She’s talking about how your body language affects you! We all know that a tall posture, firm handshake, and smiling eye contact will make a better impression than slouching and looking down. That’s a no brainer. What you may not realize is how much it changes the way you feel about yourself. Try it right now! Stand tall, shoulders back, breathe deeply, eyes straight ahead, smile. Doesn’t that make you feel stronger, more powerful, more successful?
A few weeks ago, I wrote “8 Secrets Smart People Know About Time Management.” Among other things, I explained that there are five effective ways to deal with having too much to do and one of those is to accomplish more faster. People try to do this all the time. They buckle down. They shut out distractions. And then they beat themselves up for failing. Why do they fail? Because they aren’t really doing anything differently. You know the old adage about the definition of insanity: doing the same thing over and over again while expecting different results. By that definition, most people are nuts. Every week, every day, they do essentially the same things and hope that somehow they will get caught up. On top of that, people are faced with endless advice ranging from little tips to vast programs like Lean. Most people do not have time to digest all that they read or invest heavily in a process like lean. So here’s a simple way to reconsider your work and find a shorter, faster path. No new vocabulary or special tools are required. You can get as fancy as you like – but do that later. To get started immediately, embrace these staggeringly simple steps to accomplishing more:
The Patriots lost last night for the first time this season. But that is the least of their problems. Gronkowski was carted off the field and he now joins Amendola, Edelman, Lewis, Dobson, Jones – more players than I can list – who are injured. Brady looked crestfallen when Gronk went down. But this morning, what are they saying? “Just wasn’t our night.” In true Patriots fashion, they refuse to contemplate what Gronk’s injury means for the next game or the rest of the season. “It was a very hard loss” and “players gave a tremendous effort” are all that we will hear. Their job is to get it done. One game at a time. No matter what comes at them. Whether they will get it done remains to be seen, but we all know Tom Brady is special because of his uncanny ability to get it done by focusing on that and nothing else. Everyone has problems. Most people spend far more time agonizing, talking, and worrying about those problems than actually doing something about them. Save that energy. Channel Tom Brady. Your job is to get it done. One step at a time. No matter what comes at you.
A client called to talk to me about creating a vision. He was struggling because he felt hand-cuffed by too many constraints. I responded by explaining the need to maintain a clear distinction between the vision and the journey. That evening, while watching Nelson Mandela’s Long Road to Freedom, I remembered our conversation. Right in the middle of the movie, Nelson Mandela, his fellow leaders of the ANC, and two wives embodied the problems that occur when that distinction is blurred.
There is much talk these days about the importance of adopting an abundance mentality and shedding a scarcity mentality. There is also much confusion. I just read an article on the subject that promoted big thinking and the belief that you can always do better while also discouraging the continuation of poverty behaviors like wasting your limited time searching for discounts and clipping coupons. Unfortunately, the article was totally focused on making more money and buying more things. In my opinion, it missed the point completely.
A second snowstorm in less than a week forced many Boston companies into a second costly closure. The next day, while the CEO of one of those companies and I were discussing the value of organizational clarity, she raised a perfect example. The employee in charge of closures had struggled massively the day before. “Should we or shouldn’t we close?” His head was filled with conflicting thoughts: trucks on clogged streets, snow falling an inch an hour, people waiting for deliveries, and a painful backlog from the previous snow days, to name just a few. He agonized and agonized. In the end, he had to come to the CEO for a decision. The CEO responded with one word: “Safety.” The same answer she would have given the week before and would be prepared to give with the third and subsequent storms. Suddenly the decision was easy. But in the meantime, this single decision sucked up several employee hours, created significant stress, and left the CEO wondering why otherwise capable employees are so often crippled by decisions. Why does this happen? Why couldn’t this employee see that safety must reign?