Blog Archives

Struggling with Change

3/27/2017

March 27, 2017
Clear Confident Leader Weekly Observer, Issue #31
From the Greenbelt of Boise, Idaho, Forsythia blossoming

While we do not often consider the growth of people’s minds in the same way we consider the growth of their skills, both kinds of growth have a vital part to play in a person’s success and effectiveness. … Leaders with different forms of mind will have different capacities to take the perspectives of others, to be self-directed, to generate and modify systems, to manage conflicts, and to deal with paradox.
– Jennifer Garvey Berger

Leadership agility is directly analogous to organizational agility: It’s the ability to take wise and effective action amid complex, rapidly changing conditions. – Bill Joiner and Stephen Josephs

We face an increasing rate of change and a growing level of interdependence and complexity in today’s world. Yet even the word “change” can trigger us to anticipate threats and adopt a defensive posture. We can quickly shift from a state of trust to distrust.

“Complexity” can cause us to feel overwhelmed, and react by focusing down to what we know and can control. For leaders, this can quickly become an inflection point in the trajectory of their agenda or business.

Consider the recent attempt to repeal-replace the Affordable Care Act. A proposed solution was rushed through committees, triggering significant divisiveness across the country and within the majority party in Congress, and outright rejection from the minority party. The leadership response was to force a vote. When approval proved impossible the vote was withdrawn.

There is little doubt that “Change” is needed with the U.S. Healthcare System, yet it appears we’re missing what Bill Joiner and Stephen Josephs call Leadership Agility: “the ability to take wise and effective action amid complex, rapidly changing conditions.” Whether the recent vote is an inflection point or not remains to be seen.

Unfortunately, this type of situation plays out in organizations of all sizes every day. Forcing quick “solutions” based on what can be authoritatively controlled usually leads to greater distrust and disengagement. Repeated over time it kills momentum in organizations, and can spiral down into resentment, anger and hatred.

To creatively engage and address complex situations requires a different form of leadership thinking and being. This means developing more than a set of skills, it also means developing how we think and approach complex situations. To create a better future and thrive, we need as Jennifer Garvey Berger describes, an improved “capacity to take the perspective of others, be self-directed, generate and modify systems, manage conflicts and deal with paradox.”

We have a critical need to develop our Leadership Agility to creatively respond to the environment in which we live and work.

What are the complex situations you face in your life, organization and business?
How are you reacting to them?
How might you respond with greater Leadership Agility?

I work with executives and professionals to confidently lead in the face of uncertainty and complexity with greater agility. Together we build trust, and cultivate leadership and organizational effectiveness to create a better future today. To learn more visit here.

Let’s create a better future today!

Set the Right Frame for Resolving Problems

3/20/2017

March 20, 2017
Clear Confident Leader Weekly Observer, Issue #30
From the Greenbelt of Boise, Idaho, Spring awakening

I’ve often noticed that we are not able to look at what we have in front of us, unless it’s inside a frame. – Abbas Kiarostami

It’s important to be precise about words, because of the thought value of them – they frame and shape so much of the way we understand things. – Michael Nesmith

There is no single right answer or path forward, but there is one right way to frame the problem. – Clayton Christensen

Executives and professionals are very good at solving problems. We have to be amidst the non-stop flow of challenging situations we face. The ability to make decisions and get things done propelled us into our current positions.

The issue is, we’re not able to perceive all that is in front of us and the teams we lead. In addition, patterns and language that made us successful in previous situations are used unconsciously, filtering how we see and understand what is happening now. Our problem-solving strengths when overused can lead to giving “answers as direction”.

Setting the right frame for making sense of a situation, is one of the most important skills to lead effectively. The frame set and the words used to describe it can provide clear focus and engage people to act confidently, or lead to disengagement and lack of resolution.

How do we set the right frame?

First, we need to realize not all situations are the same. Traditional management science assumes we operate in a predominantly ordered environment with a certain level of predictability. This simplifying assumption falls apart in an increasingly complex world.

The Cynefin framework, developed by David J. Snowden and Mary E. Boone, enables people “to see things from new viewpoints, assimilate complex concepts, and address real-world problems and opportunities.” (Cynefin, pronounced ku-nev-in, is a Welsh word that signifies the multiple factors in our environment and our experience that influence us in ways we can never understand.) Their November 2007 HBR article, “A Leader’s Framework for Decision Making” provides a lens for categorizing situations in five different domains with different models of analysis and decision making. The domains are:

Obvious (simple) – solutions are self-evident to reasonable people based on the evidence (e.g. requests that fit existing skills and/or known processes).
Complicated – solutions can be determined by analysis and/or evaluation by experts (e.g. responding to requests where an answer is unclear, or resolving an unknown breakdown in a previously effective process).
Complex – many plausible solution directions to consider, however, the solution outcomes are not yet known, they emerge over time. (e.g. improving trust and collaboration within a team, or which investments to make to grow a business).
Chaotic – things have broken down, and decisive action is needed fast (e.g. a fire in the building, or an emotionally charged situation on the verge of being explosive).
Disorder – not knowing which of the other domains we’re in.

Using this framework we can consciously explore what we’re facing by asking:

How do I see the situation?
What do other people involved and/or affected see?
What would an independent observer see?

We may discover conflicting objectives that raise a paradox, dilemma or unsolvable problem, resulting in polarity system to manage and leverage.

As we build a common understanding of the situation, we can ask how do we frame this in a generative way to enable achieving the outcome(s) we desire?

Finally, we can identify all those to involve in pursuing resolution, and who would be best to facilitate and/or lead the work?

Before reacting to challenging situations by giving direction, I encourage leaders to focus on setting the right frame.

I work with executives and professionals to confidently lead in the face of uncertainty and complexity. Together we build trust, and cultivate leadership and organizational effectiveness to create a better future today. To learn more visit here.

Let’s create a better future today!

Illusions of Plans, Art of Creative Planning

3/11/2017

March 11, 2017
Clear Confident Leader Weekly Observer, Issue #29
From the Greenbelt of Boise, Idaho, Spring emerging

If you do not change direction, you may end up where you are heading. – Lao Tzu

Plans are nothing; planning is everything.
– Dwight D. Eisenhower

Be quick, but do not hurry. – John Wooden

Freedom is the ability to act both with confidence and a full knowledge of uncertainty. – Peter Schwartz

I’ve spent most of my life planning and then adapting when the plans I make do not fit with the reality I face. We all do, whether it’s the places we live, the jobs we take, raising children, supporting parents, taking vacations, etc. we’re making plans and adapting as life comes at us in often surprising ways.

We have an innate human desire for a semblance of certainty and stability. We create plans to support us. Unfortunately, holding tightly to our plans can lead to illusions:

That we know all we need to know.
That we can predict the future accurately.
That we can justify our actions.
That “the problem” is outside of us.

These illusions can quickly turn into delusions. When faced with uncertainty and complexity we often react by locking ever more tightly to the plan we know. We end up in the weeds or worse, just because that was the way we were heading.

Our opportunity is to hold our plans lightly, and develop our capacity for planning to act quickly without hurrying. Planning prepares us to respond with presence in the face of volatility, uncertainly, complexity and ambiguity. Planning helps us create a better future today.

We are wired for predicting. Neuroscientists have concluded that our brains are predictive, not reactive. According to Lisa Feldman Barrett, “Our neurons are firing constantly making millions of predictions of what we will encounter next in the world, based on our lifetime of past experience.”

Our development challenge is to expand our capacities for perceiving and meaning-making, rather than relying on only past experiences. Creative planning enables clear, confident leadership. It helps us:

Examine and adapt our mental models to shift thinking in ways that better serve us.
Facilitate conversations that enable team and organization learning.
Generate new insights through systems thinking, modeling and mapping.
Envision future possibilities by exploring uncertainties through scenarios.
Manage paradox to foster creativity and high performance.

Here are a couple of questions to consider:

What helps me respond with presence in the face of uncertainty and complexity?
How do I approach planning to facilitate learning and growth?

I work with executives and professionals to use creative planning to confidently lead in the face of uncertainty and complexity. Together we build trust, and cultivate leadership and organizational effectiveness to create a better future today. To learn more visit here.

Let’s create a better future today!

Use Intuition over Impulse to Creatively Lead

3/2/2017

March 2, 2017
Clear Confident Leader Weekly Observer, Issue #28
From the Greenbelt of Boise, Idaho, Spring’s warm sun, cold wind and rain

When the mind is in doubt it is driven this way and that by a slight impulse.
– Terence

Intuition becomes increasingly valuable in the new information society precisely because there is so much data.
– John Naisbitt

We have no reason to expect the quality of intuition to improve with the importance of the problem. Perhaps the contrary: high-stake problems are likely to involve powerful emotions and strong impulses to action. – Daniel Kahneman

There is no logical way to the discovery of these elemental laws. There is only the way of intuition, which is helped by a feeling for the order lying behind the appearance. – Albert Einstein

Impulses are fundamental to how we live and work, yet we rarely consider how they help us, and how they can send us off course.

Impulse operates unconsciously and without reflective thought, providing us with a sudden strong urge or desire to act. Impulses keep us safe, for example when ducking our heads to miss a swinging branch.

Impulses move us toward what we want more of, and away from what we want less off. Combined with strong emotions such as surprise, fear, anger, disgust, sadness, or happiness, impulses can accelerate us into action before we’re aware of them.

Terence reminds us when in doubt our impulses drive. Looking at the image on the left, what’s your impulse for which way to go?

When we’re moving quickly, driving a car or in a rush to meet a deadline, we’re prone to operate on impulse alone. The problem is, when driven by impulse we override other people and overlook important information.

Today it is easy to be overwhelmed with data, making it ever more important to access our intuition when facing important decisions. The challenge Daniel Kahneman describes is, when faced with high-stakes problems we often think we’re using "Intuition" not realizing our "Emotional Impulses" have taken over.

Impulses compel us to act with what we already know, rather than considering creative new opportunities. New discoveries provide the seeds for innovation and growth in organizations. Yet so often conversations and exploration are cut off too soon, in order to be productive we stay on the "road we know”. We may think we’re reducing risk, while really increasing risk.

No wonder organizations driven by quarterly earnings or annual budget cycles, often lose their way and are replaced by those with greater flexibility to create. Doing what we know reinforces the status quo. To achieve breakthroughs and transformations we need to access the intuition and collective genius of teams.

Intuition gives us insight from our instinctive feelings and the processing of our unconscious mind without conscious reasoning. As Einstein describes “there is no logical way to discovery … there is only the way of intuition”. By following our intuition, “helped by a feeling for the order lying behind the appearance” we reach new discoveries.

In Originals: How Non-Conformists Move the World, Adam Grant states, “Originality itself starts with creativity: generating a concept that is both novel and useful. But it doesn’t stop there. Originals are people who take the initiative to make their visions a reality.”

Developing our intuition facilitates new discoveries and builds conviction to act on them. It requires being open and curious, listening for insights from other people, using systems thinking to explore underlying order, and allowing time for own insights to emerge.

Grant writes, “we think of procrastination as a curse. … But while procrastination is a vice for productivity, I’ve learned – against my natural inclinations – that it’s a virtue for creativity.” He continues “When you procrastinate, you’re more likely to let your mind wander. That gives you a better chance of stumbling onto the unusual and spotting unexpected patterns.”

Consider when has using Intuition over Impulse helped you creatively lead?

I assist executives and professionals to creatively lead. Together we build trust, and cultivate leadership and organizational effectiveness to create a better future today. To learn more visit here.

Let’s create a better future today!

Struggling with Change

Set the Right Frame for Resolving Problems

Illusions of Plans, Art of Creative Planning

Use Intuition over Impulse to Creatively Lead

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