If you think arming teachers is the solution to gun violence, I bet your track record as a manager, especially a hiring manager, leaves much to be desired.
A couple of months ago, I wrote a piece called 15 Time Wasting Activites Corporations Encourage Daily. Growth strategist Alastair Dryburgh of London commented that my list of wasteful activities comprised the main tasks of management. And he was absolutely right. I bet if you asked random leaders and employees alike to list tasks of management, they would mention most of those 15 time-wasting activities. Activities like reporting, reviewing, planning, meeting, discussing, and documenting. Why are these wasteful?
“I hadn’t realized how entrenched I was in so many time-wasting habits until Ann Latham made them transparent. It’s almost embarrassing,” said Jim Goodwin, CEO of CHD. Just a few days ago, I talked with another client who told me that after working with me, he can’t not see the lack of clarity surrounding him. The lack of specificity, the lack of cognitive process clarity, and the lack of effective communication that are so ubiquitous. The language that drives activity, not results. The time-wasting habits so firmly entrenched in business-as-usual. The disclarity that was completely invisible to him before, and that is now so transparently an obstacle to progress. I share these examples to demonstrate that just because you are a competent, successful, hard-working leader, like these two, doesn’t mean you are aware of the disclarity around you.
It’s tough to grow when you are breathing your own exhaust, getting little useful pushback, and not knowing what you don’t know. That’s why my best clients enlist my services as a trusted advisor.
When I told you about my newest book, The Clarity Papers, I forgot one important detail: the Special Offer!
Remember when Bambi was born and Thumper was jumping around yelling, “It’s happened! It’s happened! The new prince is born!”? Well, that pretty much describes the way I’ve been feeling the last few days and I’m really excited to share my news. No fawn, unfortunately, more like a dawn! My newest book, The Clarity Papers, has arrived! Furthermore, the Kindle version will be available for free tomorrow, January 24th, through Friday this week. I’ll post a reminder tomorrow morning with the link so you don’t forget. What’s The Clarity Papers about?
Look around you. Listen to the conversations. Read pretty much any meeting agenda. What will you find? Lots of people discussing, reporting, communicating, and reviewing – activities described by what I call treadmill verbs. Why do I call them that?
It’s tough to grow when you are breathing your own exhaust, getting little useful pushback, and not knowing what you don’t know.
I had my first virtual reality experience at MIT recently. The program was called The Enemy and the point was to introduce us to three pairs of enemies, get up close and personal, and hear them talk about their beliefs and experiences. The three conflicts were in Israel/Palestine, the Congo, and El Salvador. As I expected, all six wanted peace and better lives for their children. And all six grew up in circumstances, mostly desperate, that defined the enemy and, seemingly, limited their options. Across the board, their actions were violent, heartfelt, and contextually defensible, if misguided. I walked out as I walked in, wishing for a better world and wondering how you get people to step out of their circumstances long enough to find common ground and peaceful alternatives that lift all people. My wishes extend to all three of these conflicts, as well as to today’s USA and beyond. Imagine a world governed by civil, rational, collaborative problem-solving! We could have left feeling pensive, I believe, but that didn’t happen. Instead, the MIT crew ushering us through this experience tainted the experience by breaking one of my cardinal rules:
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.