The FireFly Whiteboard

Engage Your Team in More Effective Decision Making

Tue, 21 Apr 2026 20:52:26 GMT

"None of us is as smart as all of us." - Ken Blanchard

Greetings!

Step 1: Decide how much participation is needed for this specific decision. Who needs to be included in the decision making process? How critical is the quality of the decision? How urgent is the decision? The Vroom-Yetton Decision Model provides a powerful continuum of decision options for addressing these key issues.

Step 2: Use an effective, proven process for making critical decisions. In a prior newsletter , I outlined my "Wisdom of the Crowds" approach to ensuring every member of the group is given equal voice, without any one person dominating. For decisions that are truly challenging and strategic with long-term implications, I recommend teams use my " 3 Stage Decision Making Process ".

Step 3: Decide how you will reach agreement and ensure the decision is executed with excellence. Once you have diverged to consider several options, you need to have a clear and effective process for vetting those options and converging on a decision that all participants will support and fully execute.

Let's set up a complimentary call to discuss your team's unique needs. Want to learn more right away? Click the link below for Chapter 12 from my book, The Firefly Effect (Wiley) or visit my blog for more decision-related content by clicking here.

The Power of Appreciation

Wed, 05 Nov 2025 21:00:51 GMT

"When people are financially invested, they want a return. When people are emotionally invested, they want to contribute." - Simon Sinek

Greetings!

Let's dive into the numbers:

Improved job satisfaction and reduced turnover. According to a Glassdoor survey, 81% of employees said they are more motivated to work harder when their boss shows appreciation for their work. Research by Deloitte showed that organizations with a strong recognition culture have 31% lower voluntary turnover rates. According to a survey by the Society for Human Resource Management, recognition programs are the number one driver of employee retention.

Increased innovation and productivity. Appreciated employees are more likely to share ideas and contribute to innovation and creativity within the organization, as they feel their input is valued. A Forbes article reported that appreciation and recognition can increase an employee's productivity by up to 50%. A study published in the Journal of Occupational Health Psychology found that employees who felt recognized and appreciated had better psychological well-being and job performance.

Enhanced engagement and team collaboration. Gallup's State of the Global Workplace report has consistently shown engaged employees are more committed to their work and company. Research published in the Journal of Applied Psychology found that when supervisors express gratitude, it strengthens their relationships with employees and boosts employees' perception of supervisor effectiveness. And when employees feel appreciated, they are more likely to support and help their colleagues

I sincerely thank you for our colleagueship and collaborations over the years - and I look forward to continuing our partnership in the future.

Wishing you a very happy holiday season,

Kimberly

P.S. If you believe this information might be of interest to others, I thank you for sharing it.

Is your team ready for the finish line?

Wed, 05 Nov 2025 20:59:22 GMT

Is your team ready for the finish line?

Greetings!

I am happy to share they both finished strong!! So why am I telling you all this? Because I think there are clear lessons you can apply to your own team:

Pull the team together. Now that summer is over, gather the team together - ideally in person - to rebuild and reinforce the sense of cohesiveness and camaraderie that might have been lost in these hybrid times filled with zoom fatigue.

Ensure clarity on the finish line. Review and reconfirm the team's goals and priorities. Make sure everyone has a clear line of sight for how each person contributes to the team's success. Get excited about how you will celebrate as a team when you cross the finish line.

Track your progress - and course correct. Conduct regular meetings to assess how the team is performing against the key measures. Collaboratively and creatively brainstorm solutions to any challenges ahead. Make sure these team meetings are productive by finishing with clarity on who will do what by when to execute on all decisions made.

If I can support you and your team in finishing this year strong, then reach out to me for a complimentary consultation so I can share customized tips to address your team's unique needs.

Wishing you continued success,

Kimberly

P.S. If you find this information of value, I invite you to share this newsletter with your teammates and colleagues.

So proud of Maddi and Kenzie for finishing their race strong!

Thanksgiving - An Opportunity for Spirited Debate

Wed, 05 Nov 2025 20:45:57 GMT

“The absence of conflict is not harmony, it’s apathy.” - Adam Grant

Greetings!

Take on the "Mindset of a Scientist. Doubt what you know. Be curious about what you don't know. If someone says something you disagree with, ask "Can we debate that?" instead of "pushing back" which can come across as argumentative.

Be "Actively Open-minded". See yourself as someone who values curiosity and learning. Search for reasons you might be wrong...not for reasons you must be right.

Embrace the "Joy of Being Wrong". When you find you've made a mistake, take it as a sign you've just discovered something new. Focus less on proving yourself...and more on improving yourself.

Wishing you all a wonderful Thanksgiving,

Kimberly

P.S. If you find this information of value, I invite you to share this newsletter with your teammates and colleagues...and maybe even your friends and family!

Strategic Planning Road Map for Success in 2026

Tue, 23 Sep 2025 20:47:13 GMT

"Vision without execution is hallucination.” - Thomas Edison

Greetings!

As the end of the year nears, one of the most frequent facilitation requests I am receiving is for a strategic review and operational planning session in preparation for 2026. These sessions are designed to meet each organization's specific needs, ranging from 1 to 2 days in-person and can even be conducted virtually in 2 to 3 sessions over Zoom.

Some common deliverables for these sessions include:

Conduct an "after action review" to understand what we have done well this past year executing on our plan, what challenges we faced, and how we might overcome those going forward.
Given those learnings, and with a view to the broader organization and the external environment, reach agreement on our highest priority areas for the coming fiscal year.
For each priority area, determine what success looks like on 12/31/26 and how we will measure it.
Develop an action plan with clear milestones, due dates, and accountabilities.

To ensure your session is as productive and engaging as possible so that you maximize the ROI of everyone's time, I recommend you keep these 3 key points in mind:

Preparation. In advance of the session, determine and share the key session deliverables, the agenda, and what is expected of the participants so they will fully prepare and bring their best thinking to the session.

Facilitation. Engage an experienced facilitator so that you can fully participate in the session. It is very difficult to be neutral if you are vested in the outcomes. A professional facilitator can provide advice and counsel in the design of the session and ensure that you get everyone's best input and achieve your session deliverables.

Accountability. The first 30 days after this session is the most critical. If the team leader doesn't maintain focus and hold people accountable for their commitments, then you will surely lose the momentum for change as "the tyranny of the urgent" takes over. Keep the commitments visible through your staff meetings and your one-on-ones.

Once you have had a chance to review our e-book and apply your thoughts to the templates provided, I invite you to call or email me to discuss your strategic and operational planning objectives and how I can help guide you to achieve them as you look ahead to 2026.

Wishing you and your team success,

Kimberly

P.S. If you would also like to increase the cohesiveness and effectiveness of your team, let's discuss incorporating that objective into this strategic planning session. In my experience, teams that come together to collaboratively create their vision and plan ultimately are much more successful in the future.

What can Churchill teach us about Strategy

Wed, 23 Apr 2025 20:48:22 GMT

“However beautiful the strategy, you should occasionally look at the results”

- Sir Winston Churchill

As always, I invite you to call or email me to confidentially discuss your team's goals and any challenges - then together we can find ways to ensure your team's success.

Kimberly

P.S. If you find this information of value, I invite you to share this newsletter with your teammates and colleagues.

What does ChatGPT think of team effectiveness?

Sat, 08 Feb 2025 15:36:27 GMT

"The collective wisdom of a diverse group of individuals is often superior to that of any single expert." - Malcolm Gladwell, author of "Outliers"

Perhaps like many of you, I was curious to learn more about the recently released and strangely fascinating AI program ChatGPT. This free program provides answers to questions, writes questions, and can actually have a conversation with you, all resulting from a compilation of data gathered from the internet using artificial intelligence. Now suddenly, a tidal wave of information is instantly available. I share my very interesting experience below.

I registered for the service two days ago, and my first query was "Why is team effectiveness important for business?" This was the exact answer I received:

"Team effectiveness is important for business because it can lead to increased productivity, better decision making, improved communication, and higher job satisfaction among team members. This can result in higher quality work and greater success for the company. Additionally, effective teams are better able to adapt to changes in the business environment, which is crucial for long-term success." Amazing!

I then asked... "What data supports this position?" ...and received this answer:

"There is a significant amount of research and data that supports the importance of team effectiveness in business. Some examples include:

A study published in the Harvard Business Review found that teams that score high on measures of psychological safety, dependability, and structure and clarity have significantly higher levels of productivity.
According to a study published in the Journal of Applied Psychology , teams that have high levels of cohesion and communication have higher levels of job satisfaction and lower turnover rates.
Research from McKinsey & Company found that teams that have a mix of diverse perspectives and backgrounds make better decisions and are more innovative.
A study published in the Journal of Management found that teams that have a high degree of trust and cooperation are better able to adapt to changes in the business environment, which is crucial for long-term success.

These are just a few examples, but there is a wide body of research that supports the idea that team effectiveness is critical for business success. "

And finally I asked... "What steps can I take as a manager to achieve team effectiveness?" and received this guidance...

Clearly communicate the team's goals and objectives : Make sure that everyone on the team understands the purpose of the team, what is expected of them, and how their work contributes to the overall goals of the organization.
Build trust : Encourage open communication, transparency and honesty within the team. This will help build trust among team members and foster a positive team culture.
Encourage collaboration : Promote teamwork and cooperation among team members. Encourage team members to share ideas, knowledge, and skills.
Foster a positive work environment : Create an environment that is supportive, inclusive, and respectful. This will help team members feel valued and motivated to contribute.
Provide regular feedback : Regularly provide feedback on performance, both positive and constructive. This will help team members understand what they are doing well and where they need to improve.
Empower team members : Give team members the autonomy to make decisions, take ownership of their work, and be creative. This will help them feel more invested in the team and more motivated to contribute.
Encourage diversity and inclusivity : Create an environment where team members with different perspectives, backgrounds, and experiences feel welcome and valued. This can help drive innovation and better decision-making.
Continuously monitor, evaluate and improve the team's performance and dynamics : Regularly check-in with team members, analyze team metrics and address any issues that may arise in a timely manner.

And ChatGPT's parting words of wisdom... "Keep in mind that achieving team effectiveness takes time, effort and constant improvement, but by following these steps, you can set your team on the right path to success."

Helping leaders like you not only retain but also engage and empower your best resources is my passion...all resulting in higher-performing teams!

If you would like to speak with an expert with 25+ years of experience working with hundreds of leaders, then reach out to me for a complimentary consultation so that I can share customized tips - many of which ChatGPT outlined above - to address your team's unique needs.

Wishing you and your team success,

Kimberly

P.S. If you find this information of value, I invite you to share this newsletter with your teammates and colleagues.

Would you like more tips, tools and techniques to help your team succeed in 2023?

Elevate your organization's engagement in these hybrid times!

Fri, 24 Jan 2025 15:36:27 GMT

Introducing … Our FireFly Flash 90-minute virtual workshops,
designed and customized to meet your organization's unique needs.

As we all move to fully embrace the new hybrid work environment, I am passionate about sharing best practices with my clients in a focused, customized format.

Our FireFly Flash 90-minute virtual workshops are designed for leaders, supervisors, and individual team members. We can accommodate up to 50 people per workshop.

We begin your workshop design with a survey of 7-10 topics sent to your group of participants, asking them to rank order the top 3 challenges they're currently experiencing since hybrid work has become more commonplace. We then develop a unique learning experience for the participants, based on the latest research and best practices.

What could we possibly accomplish in 90 minutes, you ask?

It's why we call it FireFly Flash . In 90 minutes, we cover the 3 topics your group selected when registering for the workshop. The 90 minutes are then broken into 3 separate segments of equal time to cover each topic.

A 10-minute discussion of best practices, tips, tools, and techniques related to the first topic providing clear, take-away action ideas to work more effectively.
Breakout rooms for 10-minutes to discuss key learnings and potential action steps.
Return to the main room, type into chat the one action step you heard in your breakout group that you are ready to take action on.
Begin your personal action planning.
The program includes a Personal Action Plan, Session Summary Sheet, and other handouts specific to the sessions.

Here are the highest ranking topics we addressed in our most recent virtual sessions:

Effective communications - both within and across teams.
Leveraging the strengths of the team without risking burnout.
Prioritizing and effectively managing individual/team workload and time.
Handling difficult conversations with staff and management in a virtual environment.
Get more participation in virtual meetings (especially those less likely to speak up).

I welcome discussing your organization's greatest hybrid challenges and how we can help you to resolve them through these customized virtual facilitated learning sessions. In addition, I'd be happy to share a sample handout participants receive at the end of the 90 minute workshop to demonstrate the depth of learning they will experience.

As always, I invite you to reach out to me to confidentially discuss your goals and challenges - then together we can find ways to ensure your success.

I look forward to hearing from you!

Kimberly

P.S. If you find this information of value, I invite you to share this newsletter with your teammates and colleagues.

Let Kimberly Douglas put her 20+ years of strategic planning expertise to work
for you and your organization.

Strategic Planning Road Map for Success in 2025

Mon, 23 Sep 2024 21:01:45 GMT

"Vision without execution is hallucination.” - Thomas Edison

Greetings!

As the end of the year nears, one of the most frequent facilitation requests I am receiving is for a strategic review and operational planning session in preparation for 2025. These sessions are designed to meet each organization's specific needs, ranging from 1 to 2 days in-person and can even be conducted virtually in 2 to 3 sessions over Zoom.

Some common deliverables for these sessions include:

Conduct an "after action review" to understand what we have done well this past year executing on our plan, what challenges we faced, and how we might overcome those going forward.
Given those learnings, and with a view to the broader organization and the external environment, reach agreement on our highest priority areas for the coming fiscal year.
For each priority area, determine what success looks like on 12/31/25 and how we will measure it.
Develop an action plan with clear milestones, due dates, and accountabilities.

To ensure your session is as productive and engaging as possible so that you maximize the ROI of everyone's time, I recommend you keep these 3 key points in mind:

Preparation. In advance of the session, determine and share the key session deliverables, the agenda, and what is expected of the participants so they will fully prepare and bring their best thinking to the session.

Facilitation. Engage an experienced facilitator so that you can fully participate in the session. It is very difficult to be neutral if you are vested in the outcomes. A professional facilitator can provide advice and counsel in the design of the session and ensure that you get everyone's best input and achieve your session deliverables.

Accountability. The first 30 days after this session is the most critical. If the team leader doesn't maintain focus and hold people accountable for their commitments, then you will surely lose the momentum for change as "the tyranny of the urgent" takes over. Keep the commitments visible through your staff meetings and your one-on-ones.

Wishing you and your team success,

Kimberly

High Potential Leaders Can Surely Lead Teams, Right?

Mon, 24 Apr 2023 14:45:57 GMT

"Coming together is the beginning. Keeping together is progress. Working together is success." - Henry Ford

As I was researching ideas for my last newsletter , I came across a compelling article from the Harvard Business Review that I found very interesting but also surprised me. Harvard Business School has been conducting a High Potentials Leadership Program for nearly 20 years. Researchers analyzed the leadership challenges and development opportunities facing the more than 3,000 high potential employee applicants.

Consistently over the 20 years analysis, the 5 leadership challenges included leading teams, leading change, leadership style, leading at scale, and driving results. The six opportunities were strategic management, communication, leading teams, relationship management, emotional intelligence, and leading at scale.

Lack of trust in the team can lead to unproductive conflict.
Confusion regarding roles/responsibilities and decision-making authority process.
Lack of clarity and alignment of team purpose, priorities, and/or goals.

And in today’s work environment, we have the added challenge of managing teams virtually, which adds complexity to the process.

For these reasons and many others, it’s often time to call in a professional facilitator who can smoothly guide the leader and his team through the rough patches while learning how to work through the challenges of team cohesion.

As CEO of FireFly Facilitation, I can honestly say I love this work! This is the time when I see everyone come together and start connecting, communicating, and understanding the roles, responsibilities, and values each person brings to the team.

What did Harvard discover was the #1 leadership challenge?

Fri, 14 Apr 2023 18:04:37 GMT

"Coming together is the beginning. Keeping together is progress. Working together is success." - Henry Ford

As an avid reader and curator of information, I always hope to somehow inform or inspire my clients and colleagues so they become just as excited as I do about the opportunities it may present. For example, in my last newsletter , I shared the importance of team effectiveness to organizations and the research provided by well-respected institutions that support this point (courtesy of Chat GPT).

Most recently, I recently came across very interesting research from the Harvard Business School regarding the leadership challenges and development opportunities facing high-potential employees. Researchers analyzed more than 3,000 applications to their flagship "High Potentials Leadership Program" over a nearly 20-year period.

I invite you to reach out to me for a complimentary 20-minute conversation so that I can share customized tips to address your team's unique needs.

I look forward to speaking with you!

Wishing you and your team success,

Kimberly

P.S. If you find this information of value, I invite you to share this newsletter with your teammates and colleagues.

Would you like more tips, tools and techniques to help your team succeed in 2023?

Why Your Team Needs a Strategic Planning Roadmap for Success in 2023

Mon, 12 Dec 2022 20:28:03 GMT

"Vision without execution is hallucination."

~ Thomas Edison

As the end of the year nears, one of the most frequent facilitation requests I am receiving is for a strategic review and operational planning session in preparation for 2023. These sessions are designed to meet each organization's specific ne eds , ranging from 1 to 2 days in-person to a series of 2 to 3 virtual sessions.

Some common deliverables for these sessions include:

Conduct an "after action review" to understand what we have done well this past year executing on our plan, what challenges have we faced, and how we might overcome those going forward.
Given those learnings, and with a view to the broader organization and the external environment, reach agreement on our highest priority areas for the coming fiscal year.
For each priority area, determine what success looks like on 12/31/23 and how we will measure it.
Develop an action plan with clear milestones, due dates, and accountabilities.

To ensure your session is as productive and engaging as possible so that you maximize the ROI of everyone's time, I recommend you keep these 3 key points in mind:

Preparation. In advance of the session, determine and share the key session deliverables, the agenda, and what is expected of the participants so they will fully prepare and bring their best thinking to the session.
Facilitation. Engage an experienced facilitator so that you can fully participate in the session. It is very difficult to be neutral if you are vested in the outcomes. A professional facilitator can provide advice and counsel in the design of the session and ensure that you get everyone's best input and achieve your session deliverables.
Accountability. The first 30 days after this session is the most critical. If the team leader doesn't maintain focus and hold people accountable for their commitments, then you will surely lose the momentum for change as "the tyranny of the urgent" takes over. Keep the commitments visible through your staff meetings and your one-on-ones.

Once you have had a chance to review our e-book and apply your thoughts to the templates provided, I invite you to call or email me to discuss your strategic and operational planning objectives and how I can help guide you to achieve them as you look ahead to 2023.

Wishing you and your team success,

Kimberly

P.S. Just in case you missed it, here is a link to my last newsletter. .. "Beat Burnout - Ask Your Team to Do Less"

P.S. If you find this information of value, I invite you to share this newsletter with your teammates and colleagues.

Let Kimberly Douglas put her 20+ years of strategic planning expertise to work
for you and your organization.

Beat Burnout - Ask Your Team to Do Less

Thu, 27 Oct 2022 17:53:39 GMT

"More businesses die from indigestion than starvation."

~ David Packard, Hewlett-Packard

Like you, I have been reading multiple articles about the increasing level of employee burnout, the "great resignation" and, the latest headline grabber, "quiet quitting".

So, how can you - as a leader who wants to do the right thing for your team and your organization - manage more effectively in this challenging time of remote work and hybrid office environments?

"Too many leaders think the key to success is to pile on staff, technology, meetings, training, rules and more. The opposite is true.", says Dr. Robert Sutton of Stanford University in his excellent Wall Street Journal article, Why Bosses Should Ask Employees to Do Less - Not More. The result: "Organizations become too complicated, their people get overwhelmed and exhausted, and their resources are spread so thin that all their work suffers."

Dr. Sutton offers great examples in this article of what leaders can do to rectify the situation. Below I highlight two and share my own suggestions for quick and easy steps you can take right now to re-engage and re-energize your team starting this week:

Meetings A Harvard Business School research team found employees attended 13% more meetings after the pandemic. Solution: Conduct meeting audits to determine if recurring meetings are still valuable, align on the purpose of the meeting, and then evaluate what is working well and what can be improved. And for those clients of mine who use the Herrmann Brain Dominance Instrument (HBDI), we then redesign their meetings from a "Whole Brain" perspective to ensure everyone is engaged and finds value in the meeting.

"The Subtraction Game" Dr. Sutton recommends you take 30 minutes to ask your team to individually list then share their ideas in response to this question - "What was once useful in our organization, but is now in the way?" Then pick a favorite target or two the team agrees to focus on improving over the coming 30 days. Track your progress, and if successful, repeat the process with a new target. I often take a similar approach by asking team members to confidentially share with me in advance of our session, "What makes your job harder than it needs to be?" I synthesize their responses into key themes that we then creatively problem-solve in the meeting.

If these challenges and ideas resonate with you, I welcome the opportunity to discuss how I can help you to resolve them through customized facilitated sessions. In addition, I have 90-minute virtual facilitated learning sessions on this and many other current topics that I would love to share with you.

I look forward to hearing from you!

Kimberly

P.S. If you find this information of value, I invite you to share this newsletter with your teammates and colleagues.

Let Kimberly Douglas put her 20+ years of strategic planning expertise to work
for you and your organization.

I'm Listening... Effective Hybrid Communications

Tue, 13 Sep 2022 14:32:41 GMT

When people talk, listen completely. Most people never listen...

-- Ernest Hemingway

We all know effective communication in our organization is critical, and now that we’re all working in a hybrid environment it can be more challenging than ever.

In my last newsletter , I introduced my FireFly Flash 90-minute team and individual work-effectiveness virtual workshops. In these sessions, I share the latest information and best practices with my clients in a focused, customized format to help them overcome the challenges they face in today’s hybrid workplace.

In this newsletter, I want to give you a sneak peek into one topic we used with a client where many participants were excited to begin putting their action steps to use after the session. Effective Communications – both within and across teams.

As mentioned before, I spend 10-minutes discussing best practices and offering tips, tools , and techniques related to communicating with your team members with takeaway action ideas to work more effectively and efficiently. Then participants head into breakout rooms to discuss the ideas they’re most excited about.

Participants in the sessions were engaged, and their energy was contagious as they shared their thoughts on how to get started.

Other workshops ranked highly are:

Leveraging the strengths of the team without risking burnout.
Prioritizing and effectively managing individual/team workload and time.
Handling difficult conversations with staff and management in a virtual environment.
Get more participation in virtual meetings (especially those less likely to speak up).

As I mentioned in my previous newsletter, all of our FireFly Flash 90-minute virtual workshops are designed for leaders, supervisors, and individual team members and can accommodate up to 50 people per workshop. Look for a summary on one of my other workshop's next newsletter!

I welcome discussing your organization's greatest hybrid challenges and how we can help you to resolve them through these customized virtual facilitated learning sessions.

I look forward to hearing from you!

Kimberly

P.S. If you find this information of value, I invite you to share this newsletter with your teammates and colleagues.

Let Kimberly Douglas put her 20+ years of strategic planning expertise to work
for you and your organization.

Is your Team Gathering Wood or Longing for the Sea?

Wed, 27 Oct 2021 14:46:57 GMT

"...teach them to long for the endless immensity of the sea."

--Antoine de Saint-Exupery

You may recall in a prior newsletter I focused on the topic of Positive Accountability and the QBQ (Question Behind the Question). I also included a link to an infographic that seemed to resonate with clients, perhaps because so many organizations are still figuring out how to approach this new hybrid work environment.

This prompted a few to reach out to me to discuss their unique needs, especially regarding issues that had recently surfaced in their employee engagement survey results. Based on our conversations, I designed and facilitated a series of customized workshops. For one group of 30 leaders, we held the workshops virtually over two half-day sessions. For another client, I am currently conducting in-person sessions for two full days, with the participant group expanding from senior leadership for the first workshop to including the next level of managers for the second.

We took a different approach to accountability for these workshops. In advance of the session, the managers completed the online Herrmann Brain Dominance (HBDI) assessment. We debriefed their results in the session, with each manager identifying their individual areas of strength and opportunities for development, specifically as it related to our topic of accountability.

It was important that we first focused these leaders on the positive impact of helping their team members to fully understand the purpose of their work - as Simon Sinek says..."Finding their Why" . With this as our foundation, we engaged these managers in learning and practicing the skills needed to successfully set clear expectations for their team - and then how to effectively hold them accountable. In HBDI language, we used a "Whole Brain" approach to accountability.

Do you need a little more information on accountability? I have written several blogs over the years on this topic, and I’d like to share just a few of them with you here:

FireFly's Links to Great Information on Accountability!

Is it time to look at how leadership and employee accountability is working in your organization? I invite you to reach out to me to discuss your needs - and let's explore together customizing a workshop for your unique situation.

It's always great to hear from you,

Kimberly

P.S. If you find this information of value, I invite you to share this newsletter with your teammates and colleagues.

Let Kimberly Douglas put her 20+ years of strategic planning expertise to work
for you and your organization.

Why Your Team Needs a Strategic Planning Roadmap for Success in 2022

Thu, 16 Sep 2021 16:30:14 GMT

"Vision without execution is hallucination."

~ Thomas Edison

How are you and your team positioned strategically for 2022? Have you started developing your plan? As we near the end of this fiscal year, many of my clients are seeking out resources and support for navigating the uncertain road ahead. And if you haven’t started yet, I’d like to help give you guidance.

Some common deliverables for these sessions include:

Celebrate our successes and understand our challenges in accomplishing this year's objectives to use these learnings in planning for the future.
Given those learnings, and with a view to the broader organization and the external environment, reach agreement on our highest priority areas for the coming fiscal year .
For each priority area, determine what success looks like on 12/31/22 and how we will measure it.
Develop an action plan with clear milestones, due dates, and accountabilities.

To ensure your session is as productive and engaging as possible so that you maximize the ROI of everyone's time, I recommend you keep these 3 key points in mind:

Preparation. In advance of the session, determine and share the key session deliverables, the agenda, and what is expected of the participants so they will fully prepare and bring their best thinking to the session.
Facilitation. Engage an experienced facilitator so that you can fully participate in the session. If you have a vested interest in the outcomes, it is very difficult for you to be neutral. A professional facilitator can provide advice and counsel in the design of the session and ensure that you get everyone's best input and achieve your session deliverables.
Accountability. The first 30 days after this session is most critical. If the team leader doesn't maintain focus and hold people accountable for their commitments, then you will surely lose the momentum for change as "the tyranny of the urgent" takes over. Keep the commitments visible through your staff meetings and your one-on-ones.

Once you have had a chance to review our e-book and apply your thoughts to the templates provided, I invite you to call or email me to discuss your strategic planning objectives and how I can help guide you to achieve them as you look ahead to 2022.

Wishing you and your team success,

Kimberly

P.S. If you find this information of value, I invite you to share this newsletter with your teammates and colleagues.

Let Kimberly Douglas put her 20+ years of strategic planning expertise to work
for you and your organization.

Positive Accountability = Greater Productivity & Engagement

Wed, 25 Aug 2021 20:21:10 GMT

“Responsibility equals accountability equals ownership.

And a sense of ownership is the most powerful weapon

a team or organization can have.” ~ Pat Summitt

In my May newsletter and follow-up blog , I focused on the hybrid workplace and the trends and concerns both employers and employees are addressing as the future work environment - and even the team composition itself - continues to evolve.

For many managers, the most challenging part of their job is dealing with employees and effectively holding them accountable when they aren't achieving their goals. In fact, it is one of the key barriers I heard most often from organizations about why they didn't want to allow remote work...and then the pandemic hit and there was no option.

When faced with a challenge or frustration of some kind, we each have a choice to make at that moment. In this downloadable infographic, I share with you the positive accountability framework I have successfully used with my clients for more than 15 years.

Based on the book, QBQ! The Question Behind the Question by John G. Miller, you will learn how to ask yourself better questions that lead to more productive decisions, better results, a better sense of well-being, and a feeling of control over the situation. For example, which question would lead to a more positive outcome: "Why don't others work harder?" vs. "How can I support others?"

P.S. If you find this information of value, I invite you to share this newsletter with your teammates and colleagues.

Need more tips, tools and techniques for creating a culture of accountability?

Check out our accountability blog posts on our fully updated website!

Let’s rebuild and rejuvenate your team into high performers!

Tue, 20 Jul 2021 14:33:13 GMT

"Not finance. Not strategy. Not technology. It is teamwork

that remains the ultimate competitive advantage,

both because it is so powerful and so rare."

~ Patrick Lencioni, author of The Five Dysfunctions of a Team

In my last newsletter and follow-up blog , I focused on the hybrid workplace and the trends and concerns both employers and employees are addressing as the future work environment - and even the team composition itself - continues to evolve.

Now is your perfect opportunity to rebuild and rejuvenate your team into high performers who have learned to collaboratively and creatively tackle organizational goals together. So how do you do that?

You use FireFly Facilitation and Dr. Bruce Tuckman's Stages of Team Developmen t as your guide! With my master's in industrial/organizational psychology, plus having worked with hundreds of teams at all levels for more than 25 years, I am very familiar with his model. It is widely recognized by business leaders and organizational psychologists alike.

His team development model describes, in easy-to-understand terms, the phases in which teams typically progress from formation to hardship and ultimately (with dedicated time and sustained commitment) to the desired end-state of high performance execution.

My top 2 tips for jumpstarting this stage:

Use the Herrmann Brain Dominance Instrument (HBDI) to understand your own and each other's thinking and communication preferences. I have used the Whole Brain® Model and this assessment with teams for over 20 years. Everyone finds value in learning their strengths and blind spots, how their behavior shifts under pressure, and potential sources of conflict due to interpersonal differences. We then use the HBDI team results to discover and capitalize on the diversity of thought on the team and promote "creative abrasion" in tackling the toughest team challenges.
Reassess and redesign your team meetings to ensure full engagement in the new hybrid environment. One of the most visible signs of the cohesion and effectiveness of a team is how much you accomplish when you come together. First and foremost, find out if there is common agreement on the purpose of your team meetings...
i.e. Why do you meet? You may well find significant differences in what each of you hope to get out of these meetings, especially between the team leader and team members. Then, use what you learned from the HBDI debrief to redesign your meeting to fulfill your agreed purpose and to ensure all team members' expectations are met. For more ways to turn your team meetings into "can't miss events", check out my blog post !

Effective team development enhances collaboration, productivity, and motivation among individuals. While this work may be accomplished through an ongoing, focused effort by the team leader, our experience shows that having an expert facilitator external to the team can be incredibly valuable for guiding your organization through the 4 stages.

I welcome the opportunity to discuss how I might help you rebuild and rejuvenate your team into even higher performers.

Kimberly

P.S. If you find this information of value, I invite you to share this newsletter with your teammates and colleagues.

Would you like more tips, tools and techniques to help your team to succeed?

Check out the rest of my fully updated website with free downloadable e-books a nd infographics!

Are Your Employees Ready for Hybrid Work?

Sun, 04 Jul 2021 19:22:56 GMT

Are you ready for the hybrid workplace? Are your employees? Read on for how this may impact your team.

In my last newsletter about team effectiveness in the Hybrid Workplace , I provided information that organizations may need to consider when preparing for the hybrid workplace. While researching for that newsletter, I also gathered information from the employee perspective of hybrid work. In this blog, I wanted to follow up on that newsletter by providing the views, concerns, and overall preparedness employees feel in today's post-pandemic environment.

You may also recall my Turnover Tsunami newsletter, where I shared the report that a large number of employees may be looking for new positions once companies reopen again. So, let's take a look at what may happen in the upcoming months from an employee standpoint.

In two recent surveys of employees, almost 30% of those surveyed reported that they would consider switching employers if their organization returned to entirely on-site work. The second survey said that 41% of employees were considering leaving their current employer this year, with 46% of them likely to relocate because they can now work remotely.

Companies would do well to use sound change management principles as they approach this evolving hybrid work environment. By embracing the flexibility employees want to retain and learning from the past year's challenges, organizations will positively – or negatively – impact who stays, who goes, and who ultimately seeks to join your company.

How have employees been handling working remotely for the past 18 months?

Multiple surveys indicate productivity had increased with employees working from home. And while employee productivity may have remained the same or risen over the past year, at what cost? According to the 2021 Work Trend Index Survey conducted for Microsoft by an independent research firm, nearly one in five global survey respondents said their employer doesn't care about their work-life balance, 54% felt overworked, and 39% felt exhausted. Many employees reported feeling anxious and burned out, resulting in job dissatisfaction, negatively affecting interpersonal relationships with colleagues, and decreasing work performance. All of which dramatically affects team effectiveness in your organization.

Once the Covid-19 pandemic set in, many employees were required to leave their offices with little equipment for setting up offices at their homes. In addition, research showed many people still without the essential supplies and adequate internet connection to be successful working from home. This especially affected the 18 to 25-year-old age bracket (Gen Z) since they are early in their career. Going forward, companies will need to take more responsibility for employee home offices for those continuing to work remotely. From a team development perspective, this will be essential to making remote workers feel included — particularly for those early in their careers and those with fewer resources.

However, on the positive side of remote work, most employees stated better work-life balance is the number-one benefit by far, selected by nearly two-thirds of respondents. Other benefits included having more control, less stress, more time with family, lower commuting costs, fewer interruptions and distractions, and location independence.

Has their company decided on hybrid work?

My research showed that in some cases, employees have yet to hear employers' plans for post-COVID-19 working arrangements. In the McKinsey & Company’s Survey on what employees are saying about the future of remote work, 40% of employees say they've yet to hear about any vision from their organizations, and another 28% say that what they've heard remains vague. Organizations may have announced an intent to generally embrace hybrid work going forward, but too few have shared any guidelines and approaches. And the lack of remote-relevant specifics leaves employees anxious even if their plans have yet to fully solidify. Organizations that communicated more specific policies and guidelines had seen employee well-being and productivity rise. Employees who feel included in more detailed communication are nearly five times more likely to report increased productivity, consistent with proven change management principles.

What are employee preferences or concerns about hybrid work?

The 2021 Work Trend Survey reported a resounding 73% of workers want flexible remote work options to continue, while at the same time, 67% percent are craving more in-person time with their teams. Across all surveys, employees (working remotely) consistently stated that what they most missed was the loss of collaboration and connection with colleagues.

Employees want the flexibility of control of where, when, and how they work and expect businesses to provide options. For example, more than half of government and corporate workers reported that they would like to work from home at least three days a week once the pandemic is over.

Across the board, employees are eager to see organizations put a greater emphasis on flexibility, competitive compensation, and well-being once the pandemic is over—and conversely, they're concerned that future work, regardless of whether it is on-site or remote, will negatively affect these needs.

Potential exposure to Covid-19 was the top cause for employee anxiety about returning to the office. This was followed by worries about losing flexibility and needing to commute again. These last two anxieties indicated a concern about the loss of autonomy as people transition from fully remote work to some sort of office hybrid schedules.

We at FireFly Facilitation know this is a complex topic – and we are here to help you navigate building and retaining your team effectiveness to ensure you keep your top talent. Let’s set up a 20 minute complimentary conversation to discuss your current state and brainstorm solutions.

“Employees' desire for greater control, flexibility, and freedom in where and when they work
is at the very core of hybrid. It may have taken a pandemic to reveal that giving workers what they want
is actually beneficial for the bottom line - but now that companies have taken the leap, the future of work is bright. And the future is hybrid.”
~~ WeWork x Workplace Intelligence Research Study

4 Key Stages of Team Development Leading to High-Performance Teams

Wed, 30 Jun 2021 18:01:12 GMT

What makes great teams so successful? Is it the individual? A charismatic team leader?

The answer: it's each individual contributing their unique strengths and skill sets to achieve positive outcomes for their team and ultimately the overall organization. At least this is the goal of any sensible team development process.

Having worked with hundreds of teams over the past 25+ years and with a master’s in industrial/organizational psychology, I'm very familiar with Dr. Bruce Tuckman's 4 Stages of Team Development. His model, developed in 1965 and widely recognized by businesses and organizational psychologists alike, describes the phases in which teams typically progress from formation, hardship, development, to the desired end state of high-performance execution.

The 4 Stages of the model consist of Forming, Storming, Norming and Performing. As you can see from the graphic below, at each stage the team experiences changes in level of trust, knowledge sharing, and ultimately their level of cohesiveness and effectiveness. Read on for my quick tips for getting your team started on the right foot (Forming), navigating those challenging waters (Storming), and enhancing your team’s “psychological safety” for full team synergy (Norming).

Stage 1: Forming

The Forming stage is the period of social orientation where team members initially get acquainted with each other. Uncertainty is high at this stage. Team members may be asking such questions as "What does the team offer me?" "What is expected of me?" “Will I fit in?” The principal objective for this stage is for the team to create a clear structure, direction, and roles, like who the team leader may be, so that members begin to build trust. My tips for this stage:

Use the Herrmann Brain Dominance (HBDI) to understand how each other prefers to think and communicate. I have used this assessment with teams for over 20 years. People learn their own and each other's strengths and blind spots; how they change their behavior under pressure; potential sources of conflict; and how to use "creative abrasion" to capitalize on the diversity of thought on the team.
Redesign the team staff meeting for greater impact. It is very important that when the team comes together, great things get accomplished. Unfortunately, many staff meetings are not living up to their full potential. I often ask the team to first share their perspective on the purpose of their staff meeting. We then use a "Whole Brain® Thinking" approach (based on the HBDI) to redesign the staff meeting to fulfill that purpose and to ensure all team members’ expectations are being met.
Clarify each member's role and contribution. Great teams are clear about what constitutes success and how each member contributes to that success. Building on the knowledge from the HBDI, we will explore what each team member does best and how to leverage that to ensure the team achieves its goals.

Stage 2: Storming

The Storming stage is the most critical and challenging stage to pass through. As the team begins to move towards its goals, members may encounter unprecedented conflict and competition as individual personalities more fully emerge. The team discovers that they can't live up to their early excitement and expectations. Frustrations and unproductivity brought on by disagreements surrounding team goals may emerge as well as the formation of subgroups and cliques around areas of agreement. My tips to help in this stage:

Assess the current situation . Don't rely on your own perspective; get a broader view of the situation. Have someone external to the team conduct confidential interviews of the team members and other key stakeholders. Ask questions about the current team dynamics, critical business challenges facing the team in the coming months, and expectations for what needs to be accomplished during the next few team meetings.
Bring the team together for a one-day meeting with a clear purpose. Use what you learned in the interviews to design an impactful agenda. My experience is that people are more engaged when they see "their fingerprints" on the agenda.
Monitor progress and hold people accountable. It's true - what gets measured gets done. At each staff meeting, follow-up on the status of commitments and decisions made at the offsite. The greater the clarity of commitments, the greater the likelihood you will be able to hold each other accountable.

Stage 3: Norming

The Norming stage is when teams begin to develop close relationships, and the group demonstrates cohesiveness. With a better grasp of shared goals and solidified group structure, members will feel a more profound sense of camaraderie and shared responsibility for the project.

Getting over issues and discrepancies in individual expectations and the reality of the team's experience from stage two allows members an increased sense of comfort in expressing their "real" ideas and feelings. The team may find that this is an appropriate time for genuine evaluation of team processes and productivity without risk of social ridicule. My tip for stage 3:

Now is a good time to address the topic of psychological safety if your organization has not already. In Amy Edmondson’s highly-acclaimed book, The Fearless Organization , she makes a clear case for why every organization today competes on knowledge and creativity. Innovation demands a climate of psychological safety, which she defines as employees...
Feeling comfortable sharing concerns and mistakes without fear of embarrassment or retribution.
Knowing they can ask questions when they are unsure about something.
Trusting and respecting their colleagues.
To read more on this topic, we invite you to read our 2 newsletters:
“Does your team have "Psychological Safety"?
“How do I build "Psychological Safety" on my team?

Stage 4: Performing

And now you know the secret to high performing teams. The four team development stages we mapped out provide the perfect framework to achieving high performing teams.

Let’s recap: In the Performing stage of team development, consensus and cooperation have been well-established, and the team resembles a mature, organized, and well-functioning machine. With a clear and stable structure, members can fully commit to the team’s objectives and constructively address problems and conflicts when they arise.

With deeper insight into personal and group processes, members can recognize strengths and weaknesses amongst individuals and within themselves. This understanding heightens overall productivity and satisfaction in the team's results.

Remember, over time as new team members join and others leave, this 4-stage cycle starts all over again. This is especially true in our current hybrid work environment – exacerbated by the turnover tsunami that is on the horizon. Click here for our compilation of the research and guidance on preparing for the hybrid workplace…and click here to assess whether you are ready the tsunami ahead.

To ensure a new foundation of trust and inclusion is built across the team, new members should complete the HBDI as soon as they join. The team can then gather to review and discuss the collective HBDI results and the implications – i.e. the new strengths added and what might have been lost with any departing team members.

Improve Team Performance with FireFly Facilitation

Effective team development enhances collaboration, productivity, and motivation amongst individuals. While this work can be accomplished through ongoing, focused effort by the team leader, our experience shows that having an expert facilitator external to the team can be incredibly valuable for guiding your organization through the 4 stages.

Kimberly Douglas, FireFly Facilitation Inc. CEO/Founder, has more than 25+ years of experience jumpstarting and sustaining the effectiveness of teams at all levels of the organization and across a wide array of industries. In addition, she also has in-depth experience with strategic/operational planning for teams and entire organizations. To capitalize on FireFly Facilitation’s professional team development services and innovative techniques, contact FireFly Facilitation and start developing your high-performance team today.

Is your organization prepared for the new "hybrid workplace"?

Wed, 16 Jun 2021 19:17:38 GMT

"The 9-to-5 workday is dead.”

Brent Hyder, Salesforce Chief People Officer

In my last newsletter , I shared the concerning statistic reported by SHRM that more than 50% of employees intend to look for a new job this year.

With nearly 50% of the US population fully vaccinated, companies have begun urgently focusing on how to safely re-open their offices and manage their new "hybrid workplace" while ensuring they retain their best talent - whether they are on-site or remote.

I am an avid reader and synthesizer of content on key business topics on behalf of my clients.

In preparing this newsletter, I ran a Google search on "hybrid work"...and was amazed to find 903 million results and counting. Based on my research, I have identified these 5 key questions below...and our answers...that I hope will help you and your organization in your decision-making.

We are all in this together. I will continue to research this topic and encourage you to keep checking our blog page for the latest research highlights and my insights on this critical topic of hybrid work.

And if I can serve as a resource to you personally, please send me a quick email, and let's find 20 minutes to talk.

The 5 Key Questions Companies are Asking Now:

When are offices opening up?
How are hybrid schedules being determined?
How will the hybrid work schedule impact office space?
Will remote employee location impact compensation?
What are companies requiring regarding vaccination?

Answer #1: Office Openings.

Many companies have been working in some form of hybrid work for a few months with employees occasionally going into the office if necessary. Large firms like the New York Times said the company planned to reopen its main offices in September. The insurer Prudential Financial expects most of its roughly 42,000 employees to work in the office half the time starting after Labor Day. So the consensus seems to be most offices will begin their 'new hybrid norm' in September once summer is over and children are back in class.

Answer #2: Hybrid Schedules.

The majority of companies are embracing a 3/2 hybrid workweek - three days in office, two days remote. The schedule is either being mandated at the corporate level or decided at the team level based on the nature of their work, while others are taking into account individual circumstances (e.g. length of commute, type of job, seniority). I also saw some extremes - either requiring employees to fully return in person or allowing people to work remotely forever. There is an interesting disparity in the key rationale for returning to the office. In one survey, 65% of executives wanted this for increased employee productivity...while employees find the key benefits of the office is collaborating with colleagues.

Answer #3: Work Space.

Adobe plans to allow employees to make reservations for desks when they will be working in the office. Prudential is not only reducing its physical footprint, it's also redesigning its office space floor-by-floor and repurposing most of it for meeting rooms (and adding more video technology), collaboration, and open space to promote interaction. They are also Expedia is trying to figure out how to have in-person meetings so that they don’t disadvantage those who aren’t in the room.

Answer #4: Compensation Impact.

According to WorldatWork's Geographic Pay Policies Study when asked about reducing an individual's cash compensation if they move to a lower-cost geographic area and work from home, just 4.3% said they would do so, while 56.5% said they would not, and the balance were uncertain or would decide on a case-by-case basis. Research conducted by Harvard Business School's remote work guru, Prithwiraj Choudhury, found the best geographic dividing line over pay is national vs by state.

Answer #5: Vaccination Requirements.

Littler’s COVID-19 Vaccine Survey Report finds employers still largely encouraging their employees to get vaccinated, with 84% providing information to employees about vaccinations and 48% offering paid time off to employees to receive the vaccine and/or recover from its side effects. Given the potential privacy and discrimination liabilities, employers are moving forward with caution: 41% of respondents say they will ask employees to voluntarily disclose, while 32% say they will not, and 27% are still unsure. The Executive Networks COVID-19 Virtual Roundtable discussion identified the most common approach was to educate, and encourage, but do not mandate.

Again, if you would like to discuss how to interpret and take action on these trends for your organization, I would be happy to give you 20 minutes of my time. Let's talk.

Kimberly

P.S. If you find this information of value, I invite you to share this newsletter with your colleagues.

Would you like more tips, tools and techniques to help your team to succeed?

Check out our fully updated website with free downloadable e-books and infographics!

The 3 P’s of Engagement and Empowerment

Thu, 13 May 2021 00:00:00 GMT

"Average managers play checkers, while great managers play chess." Marcus Buckingham

We’ve already established that engaged employees are exceptional employees, more productive and profitable than those who don’t feel connected . The role of a leader is to connect strategy to people, acting as the connective tissue. In this post, we’ll discuss how leaders can facilitate the engagement of the work force, including the building of an actionable 30-day plan.

Marcus Buckingham said: " Average managers play checkers, while great managers play chess." What does this mean? In checkers, each piece is the same - they’re all interchangeable. In chess, each piece is unique, and understanding the nuances of the game means using each piece to its advantage, making the most of its distinctive qualities. In the same way, the best managers respect, value, and capitalize on the unique strengths of every member of their team .

Think about one of your best bosses – what did they do differently? How did they make you feel? How did they help you to grow? One of the best ways of looking at how great managers inspire their teams is to break it down into the three P’s of engagement and empowerment.

The first P stands for Purpose . What is the purpose of your team? In order to reach a destination, you must know where you’re going. Determine your team’s purpose, and you’ll be better equipped to utilize your team members.
The second P is Passion . Also essential to management, it’s knowing that helping to motivate and communicate with your team is what you want to do with your life. A manager who is passionate about connecting with the team will inspire team members.
The final P is Productivity. By making a clear connection between Purpose, Passion, and Productivity that positively impacts the business results, you will more easily sustain your team’s success. Rather than the high of superficial, trust-fall types of team-building exercises that will soon fade, building real connections means a team that’s engaged and productive.

How will you form your 30-day plan? Work together to identify your team purpose, and where you are falling short. Capture at least three specific reasons why you and the management team at your location need to focus on employee engagement.

In our next post, we’ll discuss actionable methods of bringing together your purpose, passion, and productivity, to inspire your team to greatness.

If you find my Blogs interesting, you should read my Newsletters! Scroll down to the bottom of this page to sign up for monthly FireFly insights.

Turnover Tsunami ahead - Are you ready?

Tue, 11 May 2021 18:21:06 GMT

SHRM just reported that more than 50% of employees intend to look for a new job this year. Two key reasons for this pent-up turnover demand... disengagement & burnout .

Want to ensure you keep your best resources? Based on my 25+ years of experience working with hundreds of leaders, I’d like to offer these specific actions... FireFly's 3 P's of Engagement and Empowerment:

Purpose

Aim for commitment, not just compliance. Have your team reflect on and celebrate what they accomplished in a very tough year. Make sure everyone clearly understands how their individual work supports the most critical priorities and goals of the team and the overall organization. Remember what Simon Sinek says about how great leaders inspire action by finding your "Why".

Passion

Recognize the unique value of each person on the team. Help your team to discover the power of "creative abrasion" (i.e. different viewpoints rubbing against each other to create a more powerful outcome). I have found the Herrmann Brain Dominance Instrument to be the most helpful and validated assessment for teams to identify and capitalize on their diversity of thought. As Marcus Buckingham says, "Average managers play checkers, great managers play chess."

Productivity

I don't believe in the sustainability of "kum-bah-yah, walk on hot coals, trust fall kind of team building" events. Instead, I help leaders make a clear connection between building the strength of their team and delivering on key business results. We engage everyone in creatively solving the greatest challenges facing the team, using the Impact vs. Effort Grid to prioritize their brainstormed ideas and develop their team action plan.

If you would like to learn more about FireFly's formula for inspiring employee engagement...

Purpose + Passion = Productivity

Then reach out to me for a complimentary consultation so I can share customized tips to address your team's unique needs.

Wishing you continued success,

Kimberly

Would you like more tips, tools and techniques to help your team to succeed?

3 Specific Steps for More Effective Decision-Making

Tue, 13 Apr 2021 18:20:57 GMT

"None of us is as smart as all of us."

~ Ken Blanchard

At the onset of the pandemic, many leadership teams quickly came together to make urgent, important decisions. They had no choice.

As time has gone on, the strategic impact and level of difficulty of these decisions have increased. I am finding there is a key challenge in the teams I work with...how to ensure they are making the right decisions that will be successfully executed.

To help these teams, I developed 3 specific steps they were able to take immediately to start making more effective decisions.

Step 1: Decide how much participation is needed for this specific decision.

Who needs to be included in the decision making process? How critical is the quality of the decision? How urgent is the decision? The Vroom-Yetton Decision Model provides a powerful continuum of decision options for addressing these key issues.

Step 2: Use an effective, proven process for making critical decisions.

In a prior newsletter , I outlined my "Wisdom of the Crowds" approach to ensuring every member of the group is given equal voice, without any one person dominating. For decisions that are truly challenging and strategic with long-term implications, I recommend teams use my " 3 Stage Decision Making Process ".

Step 3: Decide how you will reach agreement and ensure the decision is executed with excellence.

Once you have diverged to consider several options, you need to have a clear and effective process for vetting those options and converging on a decision that all participants will support and fully execute.

Let's set up a complimentary call to discuss your team's unique needs. Want to learn more right away? Click the image of my book below for Chapter 12, The Firefly Effect (Wiley) or visit my blog for more decision-related content by clicking here.

Kimberly

3 Key Insights to Prepare for What's Next

Tue, 16 Mar 2021 16:13:45 GMT

"Learning and innovation go hand in hand. The arrogance of success is to think that what you did yesterday will be sufficient for tomorrow.” ~ William Pollard

Our daughter just skydived for the first time (she called to share the exciting news after she was safely back on the ground!). Her adventure and this metaphorical picture to the right of a high-performance team made me think of the many other "leaps of faith" I have seen clients and colleagues take over the last year.

As we all prepare for what might be around the corner, I thought it would be helpful to share 3 key insights I gained from some of my most recent client engagements...

Insight #1 - Keep what's working virtually

Two weeks ago, I facilitated a 25-person, three-day leadership development course for a client using ExperiencePoint's innovation and change management simulations, reimagined for a virtual setting. It was incredibly well received, as we pivoted to doing over Zoom in 11 hours what I had conducted in-person for this client over two full days in years past. This virtual format (and the associated travel cost savings) allowed them to broaden their reach and include many emerging leaders further down in the organization, who would not have been eligible to participate previously. The pent-up demand for these sessions was evident - the 50 total slots for the March and May sessions were filled up in 5 minutes, with a waiting list of 50+ people. Given the positive session evaluations and the speed and scope that we can add new sessions, this is one the client is likely to keep virtual for the foreseeable future. Click on these links to learn more about these virtual innovation and change management simulations.

Insight #2 - Safely gather in person when its critical to success

Last week I facilitated an in-person strategic planning session for a 6-member executive team with full safety precautions in place. This client is at a pivotal point in its growth trajectory and critical discussions and decisions needed to happen as they built their multi-year plan. This group of highly intelligent, highly engaged leaders held strong points of view that all needed to be heard, challenging enough for an in-person session, nearly impossible for a virtual meeting with everyone remote (and likely multi-tasking). They found the two-day session invaluable for clarifying the issues, developing their aligned vision for success, and creating a one-year roadmap to get there (25 flip chart pages later). When it absolutely positively needs face-to-face for a successful outcome, design the session for maximum impact and engage a strong, unbiased facilitator who can ensure all viewpoints are heard and valued. To read more about my customizable strategic planning process, click here .

Insight #3 - Take a both/and mindset

I have been working with a great team of 16 people for over a year now, first in person, then in virtual half-day sessions each quarter. We've taken a unique approach to designing these. First we explore areas of need and interest from the full team, then I co-collaborate with two volunteers to develop the content and the session design. Thus far we have explored Lencioni's model for high-performance teams, built a strong foundation of trust using the Herrmann Brain Dominance Instrument, developed virtual facilitation skills, and learned how to have more productive challenging conversations, such as giving and receiving constructive feedback. As the team is soon to grow exponentially, we are now developing a series of virtual and in-person sessions to ensure we maintain the strong positive culture they have been so focused on, while still being inclusive of the many new perspectives soon to be added. For a sample agenda for jump starting your team on the path to high-performance, click here .

If you would like to see other sessions and customized training I have designed and facilitated to meet each team's unique needs and set them up for success in 2021, check out my newsletter archive and Firefly Effect Blog.

I look forward to the opportunity of helping you and your organization prepare now for what's around the corner tomorrow!

Kimberly

Achieve Team Improvement in 12 Hours

Tue, 16 Feb 2021 19:21:04 GMT

"Coming together is the beginning. Keeping together is progress. Working together is success." ~ Henry Ford

I'm so impressed with how my clients have been able to adapt to the "next normal". I love serving as their teams' collaboration and accountability coach as they continue to achieve outstanding results in today's challenging reality.

I too have adjusted my approach to helping leaders and their teams to succeed. Instead of full-day in-person sessions, we have now pivoted to half-day virtual Zoom sessions spaced apart by a week, a month or a quarter, driven by the unique needs and challenges facing that team.

Today, I wanted to take this opportunity to share the resources and tools that I use in my facilitated sessions so that you too can achieve measurable, sustainable team improvement in just 12 hours (3 half-day virtual sessions). Here we go:

Session 1 - The Foundation

As pre-work, all team members take 20 minutes to complete the confidential online Lencioni team assessment, which will serve as a baseline for measuring team progress. In addition, everyone takes the Herrmann Brain Dominance Instrument (HBDI). In the session, we use both assessment results to increase the level of mutual understanding and trust on the team, capitalize on the diversity of thought, and create an action plan for team success. Between sessions, I serve as a coach to the team leader to brainstorm solutions to challenges and ensure progress on the team continues. To see a sample Lencioni Team Assessment Report, click here .

Session 2 - Building Momentum

Prior to the session, I conduct 30-minute confidential phone interviews of the team members to learn what has been accomplished since Session 1, what are the current challenges, and what they would like us to focus on in this next session. The key learnings from these interviews, along with input from the team leader, helps me to design the customized session agenda and specific targeted exercises to meet the team's most pressing needs. To see a sample of FireFly's virtual team exercises connected to Lencioni's model, click here .

Session 3 - Delivering Success

Prior to this session, team members will take 20-25 minutes to complete the Lencioni comparison assessment. This will allow us to quantitatively measure the progress made since Session 1. I can also conduct another round of confidential phone interviews if the team leader determines we need additional qualitative research. In this third session, we will review the Lencioni comparative results, assess progress against commitments, brainstorm solutions to challenges, course correct, and develop a new plan of action to ensure the positive results we have achieved are sustained. To read my blog posts with more recommendations for improving your team, click here.

If you would like to see other sessions and customized training I have designed and facilitated to meet each team's unique needs and to set them up for success in 2021, click here for my last newsletter.

If you feel the process I outlined about might help improve your team's results, let's schedule a no-obligation, complimentary call to discuss your unique needs and how I might best serve you. Simply send me an email or call 678-388-0448.

I look forward to the opportunity of helping you and your organization achieve success!

Kimberly

Are you prepared for organizational success in 2021?

Tue, 12 Jan 2021 19:21:01 GMT

I hope that you are doing well, both personally and professionally. In these challenging times, I am focused on my core passion of helping organizations find tangible ways to not only endure...but to thrive.

In the past 60 days, my clients have engaged me to facilitate a wide variety of virtual and in-person sessions to help them achieve success. Below I have outlined a few that have proven to be especially impactful.

Team Effectiveness

In advance of each session, I conduct 30-minute confidential phone interviews of key stakeholders. This needs assessment ensures that each team's unique objectives guide the customized design of the agenda. These engagements have ranged from 2-hour Herrmann Brain Dominance Instrument (HBDI) debrief and application sessions to half-day team building sessions to full-day team effectiveness + organizational success sessions. To see a sample one-day virtual agenda, click here .

Strategic & Operational Planning

These sessions help the organization to 1) create an aligned vision for success 18 months into the future, 2) identify the forces working for and against us achieving that, 3) reach agreement on the top 3-4 critical priority areas of focus, and 4) develop a 1 year concrete road map of deliverables with due dates and primary accountabilities. They have taken many forms - from full-day in person (masked and safely distanced) to virtual sessions that ranged from a one-day meeting for a small organization of 6 people to a series of 2-hour sessions over multiple days that included a global group of 180+ participants using all the powerful and engaging technology that Zoom had to offer. To see a sample one-day virtual agenda, click here .

Customized Training

I designed three very different training sessions - for three different clients - all focused on helping their leaders to more effectively manage through change and uncertainty. One session was a half-day virtual training focused on leadership communications. Another was a full-day in person change management simulation. The third was a series of 90-minute virtual modules focused on the human side of change and effectively dealing with resistance. An additional client asked me to teach them how to lead more engaging and productive meetings by fully using Zoom's advanced tools such as breakout rooms, annotation, stamp voting, and virtual brainstorming. To see a sample half-day virtual training agenda, click here .

If you are ready to bring your team together to create a shared picture for success in 2021 or you want to help your leaders more successfully manage in these times of rapid change, let's schedule a complimentary call for us to discuss your unique needs and how I might best serve you.

I look forward to the opportunity to help you and your organization achieve success!

Kimberly

Aligning Your Team for Success

Tue, 15 Dec 2020 19:20:55 GMT

"A goal without a plan is just a wish."

~ Antoine de Saint-Exupery

In these challenging times, I have been hearing positive stories of teams coming together to navigate this crisis. Frequent meetings, rapid fire decisions, and team cohesion have helped many companies manage...for the short-term.

In my last newsletter , I shared my top 3 easy-to-implement tips for what leaders can do now to prepare your teams for a successful re-entry into the "new normal".

In addition, many organizations are realizing they need to plan for different scenarios and likely make some very difficult decisions. In facilitating recent strategic alignment sessions for my clients - both virtually and in-person/safely-distanced - I have found these to be the keys to our success:

Preparation .

Ask your team to come prepared to share their point of view on what success looks like on 12/31/20 and what is working for and against us in achieving that. Send out foundational information on the current state of the business and any trends/best practices for your industry in these times of COVID.

Agenda.

Ensure you allow time for active discussion to explore alternative courses of action. Hear each person's perspective then build an aligned plan with clear milestones, due dates, and accountabilities. Determine how you will measure progress and course correct. Consider redesigning your team meeting structure to meet these new demands. Click here for FireFly's sample strategic alignment agenda.

Accountability.

The first 30 days after this session is most critical. If the team leader doesn't maintain focus and hold people accountable for their commitments, then you will likely lose the momentum you just created for this aligned plan. Keep the plan visible and alive through all your communications, such as staff meetings and one-on-ones.

To help you and your team prepare for making - and executing - those tough decisions that might lie ahead, read on for FireFly's 3 Stage Decision-Making Process ...

Kimberly

Top 3 Tips for Team Success in the "New Normal"

Tue, 10 Nov 2020 18:18:10 GMT

In my last newsletter , I shared 5 practical tips for more effective remote team meetings. I hope that you found those to be helpful.

To build on that, I just read and highly recommend Harvard Business Review's excellent article: "8 Questions Employers Should Ask About Reopening" . It includes detailed guidance from experts on such things as when to return, who should return, and how to protect your employees.

With that information as a foundation, here are my top 3 easy-to-implement tips for what leaders can do now to prepare your teams for a successful re-entry into the "new normal"...

#1 Celebrate what you have accomplished

My experience has been that most teams don't stop to celebrate when they have come through a difficult time or achieved something significant. Ask your team members to come to the first meeting after "normal" operations resume prepared to share what they are proud to have achieved over these last 3+ months - personally, as a team, and as a company. Share a pizza and a moment of celebration.

#2 Clarify the new team norms

Begin discussing now what the new norms and expectations will be before you are back to "normal". What do we now expect of each other and the team as it relates to the meetings, working hours, communications response times, etc. What worked well over the last 3 months that you want to keep doing? What will need to change once everyone returns to "normal" operations? Everyone is much more likely to support and hold themselves and each other accountable for norms/expectations that they helped to create.

#3 Chart your course for the next 30 days

I would normally recommend a 90-day planning cycle, but things are changing too fast. Take 30 days at a time, assess progress, identify challenges, and problem solve as a team. Be sure everyone is clear on what the team priorities are - and aren't - and that everyone knows how each person contributes to your shared success.

I am passionate about helping leaders improve the engagement and productivity of their teams. For questions or suggestions to address your unique needs, please email me today and let's find solutions together.

Kimberly

A Pro Bono Offering for You - Personalized Insights to Improve Your Remote Meetings

Tue, 20 Oct 2020 18:20:53 GMT

“Coming together is a beginning; keeping together is progress; working together is success.” Henry Ford

In my last newsletter I shared 5 easy-to-implement recommendations for productive, engaged team meetings.

Based on the response that I received, I felt inspired to find new ways to support teams and team leaders during this challenging time.

I would like to offer you a pro bono assessment of your team meeting in order to help you stay connected and productive while remote.

Here's how this Remote Team Meeting Assess and Advise pro bono offering works:

In an upcoming team meeting of your choice, I will act as a "firefly on the wall", listening and observing.

At the end of the meeting, I will share my expert insights on what the team did well and areas for improvement.

Recommendations could include how to redesign your agenda, best capture action items, and improve engagement through proven exercises.

This offering also includes a one-on-one brainstorming session for the team leader to share additional suggestions tailored to their specific needs and goals.

If you think this could be beneficial to you and your team, please email me with some options for times for us to connect. Let's get started finding ways to increase your team's productivity.

Wishing the best to you and your team,

Kimberly

5 Practical Tips for Remote Team Meetings

Tue, 13 Oct 2020 18:20:51 GMT

In today’s environment, everyone is working hard to maximize their remote meetings. Here are my top 5 easy-to-implement recommendations for productive, engaged team meetings…

#1 Optimize the agenda.

Be clear on the purpose and desired deliverables from each meeting…then design the agenda to achieve those. Keep a tight rein on the number of items on the agenda and put the most critical topics first. Time box the agenda topics (i.e. assign specific times with limits). Build in breaks after 90 minutes. Be clear on the expected outcome from each agenda element. Team leaders should engage others in taking responsibility for some of the agenda items. This helps the other team members to see “their fingerprints” on the agenda – thus they are more committed to making it a productive meeting.

#2 Preparation is critical.

After you design the agenda, send it out at least 24 hours in advance of the meeting. Include any information for participants to read beforehand and ask them to come prepared to share their perspective. This ensures time isn’t wasted reading documents during the meeting. Because they’ve thought about it in advance, everyone’s time is spent productively discussing the topic – increasing the likelihood of achieving all your critical agenda outcomes. Use your available collaborative platforms (such as Google Docs or Microsoft Teams) where everyone can view and add to team documents prior to the meeting.

#3 Active, productive engagement is essential.

Overcome the “wallflower phenomenon” by engaging everyone in some small talk at the start of the meeting. Hearing your voice in the room early on gets people poised to contribute during the meeting. Add a visual component – i.e. ask people to turn on their cameras but warn them in advance so they can prepare themselves and their space. Use a variety of techniques to encourage everyone to contribute. For example, conduct a round-robin, taking turns hearing each person’s perspective on a particular topic. This also reinforces the expected prep they did for the meeting. Change the person you start with each time and be creative – alpha order by first name, by birthday, or by geographic location. And don’t tell them in advance where you will begin. This really keeps people alert!

#4 Create some agreed-upon ground rules for your meetings.

Ask team members to share what ground rules will be most helpful to ensuring these meetings are a productive use of everyone’s time. This should be the critical few of 4-5 that this group believes are needed for them in this remote environment – and that they will actually commit to. For example, establish a rule that prevents multitasking, such as not using the mute button. Multitasking is one of the biggest distractors for virtual participants. The mute button severely limits participation. People will constantly be debating with themselves as to whether what they want to say is worth un-muting – and then the moment for participation has passed. Allow limited exceptions for participants with an unanticipated or unavoidable noise problem in their “home office”.

#5 Capture action items real time.

As you move through each agenda item, find a way to visually capture the action items, ideally in a shared document. I use Who, What, and By When. People care a whole more about the What and By When if their name is the Who. By visually capturing it, people can ask questions for clarification real-time. This action item list can then be updated by people between meetings with the status. At the end of every meeting, ask “Who wasn’t on this call that needs to know what we just decided?” Then figure out how they will get up to speed. Record meetings if there are some who can’t be on the call and yet need to know the content/decisions – plus anyone can go back and review critical discussions/topics.

Bonus Tip: Evaluate and course correct.

Save 3 minutes at the end of the meeting to do a Plus/Delta Evaluation. Plus – what worked well in this meeting and we should keep doing. Delta – What can we improve for next time. Ask everyone to provide their input in the chat window and the team leader can review it either on the call or afterward – and course correct in the design of the next agenda.

My goal is provide leaders at all levels with concrete actions they can begin implementing immediately to create a more engaged, creative - and now remote - workforce. For questions or suggestions to address your unique needs, please email me today and let's find solutions together.

Kimberly

How productive and engaging are your virtual meetings?

Tue, 15 Sep 2020 18:20:59 GMT

"The majority of meetings should be discussions

that lead to decisions." ~ Patrick Lencioni

Everyone is working hard to make this new virtual reality as productive and engaging as possible. As a professional Certified Virtual Facilitator™ , I am constantly researching and applying new best practices for how to design and conduct even more effective virtual meetings. Ones that ensure everyone's time is well-spent.

Here are my top 3 actionable tips for immediately improving your virtual meetings:

#1 Be clear on purpose and prepare participants.

Begin with the end in mind - i.e. be clear on "the critical few" meeting deliverables. Think about who needs to attend this meeting. Along with sending out the agenda in advance, what pre-reading can you send to help participants prepare and bring their best thinking? If you are clear on the meeting purpose and you have the right people in the (virtual) room, you significantly increase the likelihood of a productive discussion that will lead to actionable outcomes. At the close of each meeting, ask "Who wasn't here that needs to know what we just decided?" - and figure out how you will get them up to speed.

#2 Use every engagement tool Zoom has to offer.

Research shows you need to find a way to actively engage virtual participants every 3-5 minutes. Based on the platforms I've seen, Zoom offers the absolute best and most user-friendly tools for increased virtual meeting effectiveness. They are also constantly upping their game and adding new features - with an incredible online support system of quick video tutorials and articles. From simplest to more complex, my favorites include polls, breakout rooms, and annotation. Manually created breakout rooms help to reinforce a clear purpose. Annotation allows participants to engage through stamp voting and adding their own input to a virtual whiteboard.

#3 Effective facilitation is even more essential in a virtual environment .

During the virtual meeting, be sure everyone is clear on the purpose of each agenda element. Give people a moment to think individually about the topic or a key question. Then invite them to type their input input into chat - but wait to hit send to avoid "groupthink". Or conduct a round robin to ensure you hear from each person. Make sure the meeting has actionable outcomes by deciding Who will do What by When after each topic. At the end, take 5 minutes for a Plus/Delta Meeting Evaluation - what worked well that we want to keep doing; what can be improved for the next meeting?

In these challenging times, I believe we all need to support each other. I truly enjoy helping people take their meetings from good (or perhaps sometimes not so good) to great.

If your meetings are not as effective as you think they could be, I invite you to email me today to set up a complimentary 30-minute virtual brainstorm for overcoming one of your top meeting challenges.

Or, if you really want to accelerate improving all of your meetings, let's discuss a customized, cost-effective half-day workshop for you and your team(s).

I sincerely look forward to hearing from you,

Kimberly

How do I build "Psychological Safety" on my team?

Tue, 14 Jul 2020 18:20:49 GMT

“I'm not pro failure, I'm pro learning."

Astro Teller, Google X, quoted in The Fearless Organization

In my last newsletter I shared the key concepts and research behind award-winning Amy Edmondson's groundbreaking work on the topic of psychological safety..."a belief that one will not be punished or humiliated for speaking up with ideas, questions, concerns, or mistakes."

Here are 3 actions every leader can begin to implement right away to establish psychological safety, since, as Amy says, "No twenty-first century organization can afford to have a culture of fear."

Setting the stage.

Get everyone on the same page with common, compelling goals and reframe failure. One hospital COO instituted "blameless reporting" and introduced new language - from "investigation" to "study". Deviations from best practice are "a good catch". She helped people shift from a belief that incompetence (rather than system complexity) was to blame - which helped people feel safe to speak up about the problems, mistakes, and risks they saw.

Inviting participation.

This same COO asked a simple question: "Was everything as safe as you would like it to have been this week with your patients?" This question was asked with a learning mindset, which blends humility and curiosity, recognizing that there is always more to learn. It also invited people to think in aspirational terms. These actions by the leader were supported by structural interventions, including setting up a core change team, a confidential reporting system, and focus groups to share concerns and experiences.

Responding productively.

Speaking up is only the first step. The true test is how leaders respond when people actually do speak up. The leader's response must be appreciative, respectful, and offer a path forward. Bring people together after a failure, not to fight about who was right, but rather to identify contributing factors with the goal of improving the system to prevent similar failures in the future.

In the coming weeks, I will be writing blog posts to share additional highlights and examples from Edmondson's leader's toolkit - and her Leadership Self-Assessment - as well as my own learnings from facilitating team effectiveness sessions over the last 20+ years.

My goal is provide leaders at all levels with concrete actions they can begin implementing immediately to create a more engaged and creative workforce. If you would like to be added to my monthly newsletter, simply click here to join.

Kimberly

Does your team have "Psychological Safety"?

Tue, 16 Jun 2020 18:20:47 GMT

“No twenty-first century organization can afford

to have a culture of fear."

Amy Edmondson, author The Fearless Organization

I have been a passionate follower of award-winning Amy Edmondson's groundbreaking work since I first read Teaming in 2013. I learned then about her powerful and compelling concept of "psychological safety", which she described as "a climate in which people feel free to express relevant thoughts and feelings".

I was again inspired by Amy (and wrote a newsletter ) when I read Charles Duhigg's NYT article, "What Google Learned from Its Quest to Build the Perfect Team". Google realized that today's employees spend 50% more time collaborating than they did 20 years ago.

Google's Project Aristotle was born. Over several years, the researchers analyzed 180 teams on a variety of variables - personality types, skills, backgrounds, etc. There was no pattern that indicated why some teams failed and some thrived. Then, they discovered Edmondson's concept of psychological safety "and it was as if everything suddenly fell into place".

In her latest highly-acclaimed book, The Fearless Organization, she makes a clear case for why every organization today competes on knowledge and creativity. Innovation demands a climate of psychological safety, which she defines as employees...

Feeling comfortable sharing concerns and mistakes without fear of embarrassment or retribution.
Knowing they can ask questions when they are unsure about something.
Trusting and respecting their colleagues.

How do you know if your organization or team has psychological safety? A 2017 Gallup poll found only 3 in 10 employees strongly agree with the statement that their opinions count at work. Edmondson says: "If leaders want to unleash individual and collective talent, they must foster a psychologically safe climate where employees feel free to contribute ideas, share information, and report mistakes."

In my next newsletter in January, I will share highlights of Edmondson's leader's toolkit with three simple (but not always easy) activities that leaders at all levels can begin implementing immediately to create a more engaged and creative workforce.

Kimberly

Which Vroom Yetton Level is Right for your Team?

Sun, 08 Sep 2019 00:00:00 GMT

Use these criteria to decide the right level of team involvement for your critical decision.

In last week's post we discussed Vroom Yetton, a powerful tool for determining how groups will make decisions. By providing the leader with a thought process for determining the optimum level of involvement of others in the decision, this process allows the leader to make the rationale behind level of involvement clear to the team.

But how can a leader decide which level of involvement is the right one? Whatever choice is made, the reasoning behind it should be based on certain factors, including:

Need for complete buy-in: The more commitment needed from the team to ensure effective execution, the more involved they should be.

Learning opportunity for the team : If the team can use this problem to improve its capacity for making effective decisions in the future or to gain greater knowledge of the issue at hand, then ask them for more input.

Criticality of the decision: If the decision is extremely critical, the leader may not have the freedom to allow very much involvement. On the other hand, the leader may decide that the importance of the decision warrants greater involvement by the team to ensure that they’ve fully vetted all options. Be sure to explain the rationale for whichever choice you make, and if you decide upon limiting team involvement, then identify other ways of gaining their commitment to executing this critical decision.

Breadth of impact of the decision: The broader the impact, the broader the involvement should be. This will give you a greater opportunity to take all of the critical constituents’ viewpoints into account when you develop the solution, and when you plan implementation of the decision.

Difﬁculty of execution: The more difﬁcult the execution, the greater the need is to get the entire team involved. It may not possible for one person to foresee all of the things that will need to be done if you make the decision alone, and you don’t want to count on others’ engagement if they didn’t have skin in the game when the decision was made.

Complexity of the problem : This factor can prompt you to go either way. One might argue that the issue is so complex that you need to get the full involvement of the team because no one person can have the necessary knowledge and breadth of understanding to make this difﬁcult decision on their own. On the other hand, this very complexity may make it too difﬁcult for the leader to explain the situation to the rest of the team, and thereby give them a credible role to play. This would require the leader to make the decision individually.

Individuals’ knowledge or credibility on the topic: If the leader has limited knowledge on the topic, then bringing the rest of the team into the equation obviously makes great sense. If a member of the team was the one who lacks knowledge, then I would still recommend including that person in the discussions for two reasons. First, it will broaden their understanding of the topic; and second, a certain amount of ignorance about an issue can sometimes be a great vehicle for challenging the assumptions that everyone else accepts as true.

Timing: If speed is of the essence, then the leader may not be able to involve the whole team. When the building is burning, you don’t want to be debating alternative escape routes if one person absolutely knows the one best way. Be careful, however, not to use this need for speed as an excuse for expediency versus effectiveness.

How Do You Effectively Communicate Your Strategic Plan?

Thu, 05 Sep 2019 00:00:00 GMT

Creating your Communication Matrix - Who, How, and When

If you thought the hard part was over once you created your strategic plan...think again. As Thomas Edison said: " Vision without execution is hallucination." How do you ensure that everyone is on the same page and pulling in the same direction? Through effective communications.

What should you be communicating about your plan, and to whom, how, and when? To answer these questions, when working with teams, I facilitate the creation of a communication matrix that captures all of this information in one easy document:

Column One: List all of the various audiences with whom your team must communicate.

Column Two: List each of the key messages and the purpose of the communication for each audience —to inform, to engage, to implement some aspect of the plan, to inﬂuence, to solicit funding or other resources, to gain their input, and so on.

Column Three : Here, you want to list the top vehicles of communication for each audience —those that are most impactful for each audience and message. Be sure to include both one-way and two-way communication methods , and see if you can locate any internal surveys that might have been conducted that show how people in your organization value these different methods. This information can be very helpful in the planning phase.

Column Four : Decide on the timing for each communication vehicle for each audience. Remember: you can ’t just say it once in one format and think that everyone will get the message the ﬁrst time out. If you truly must get everyone on the same page, then you will likely need to communicate the same message at least three different times in three different formats over an extended period of time for people to take seriously any shift in direction or focus.

Column Five : This column captures the person or people accountable for each of these messages , and who needs to approve, provide input, or respond to the drafts before sending them out.

If your strategic plan was created by a leadership team, but needs to be executed by a much larger team of people who were not present during its original creation, then you must develop an approach to share and gain the executors’ input on the strategic mission, vision, priorities and dashboard. In fact, you might not even want to determine the milestones and create the timeline in the small leadership session. Instead, bring the team together to gain buy-in and/or create the above strategic plan elements, reality test them, identify key challenges, and engage everyone in solving them. This is true, two-way communication, and it is vital to helping everyone connect the dots between what they do on a daily basis and how that activity contributes to the overall success of the organization—in other words, that what they do really matters.

In his book The Three Signs of a Miserable Job , Patrick Lencioni makes a very strong case that employees who don’t know how their work impacts the lives of others will experience irrelevance, and will not be fulﬁlled in their jobs. Similarly, everyone coming out of this session should have a clear line of sight into at least one metric to which they can directly contribute. This information will then allow them to take it all the way down to determining their individual objectives and setting budgets. All that’s left now is to follow up, celebrate successes, and course correct…which will be discussed in the next post!

Innovation Begins with "I"

Wed, 04 Sep 2019 21:41:25 GMT

Everyone has the ability to be creative.

"Limitations live only in our minds. But if we use our imaginations, our possibilities become limitless." ~ Jamie Paolinetti

One of the most frequent questions I am asked related to innovation is, "How can we develop a culture of innovation in our organization?"

In my experience, the company must first recognize that everyone has the capacity and capability for creativity within them . To inspire organizational innovation, you must begin at the individual level.

So, what's holding us back? I have found there are 3 myths that keep companies and individuals from tapping into their true creative potential:

Our definition of creativity. We have a tendency to think that the word "creativity" only applies to artists and musicians. While it's true they may be artistic, they don’t corner the market on creativity. What about using this as your definition...“To be original. To do something no one else would think of.” Now who's creative?
We think of creativity in absolutes – you either have it or you don’t – versus a continuum. When I work with teams to discover their untapped creative potential, I often ask them to remember back to a time in their youth. When you were younger, what came easily to you? What is your own unique brand of creativity? How could you apply that natural talent to a challenge facing your organization today?
The lone creative genius. Consider Thomas Edison, who some think of as the prototypical lone genius. In actuality, he worked with a broad creative team in Menlo Park. He called it "the invention factory” – because they were always working on several different inventions at any one time. Together they were more creative than Edison could have possibly been on his own. Together they found success – and over 400 patents.

Each of you have a critical role to play in creating a culture of innovation. Here are my top two recommendations to get you started:

All of us are smarter than any one of us. When working with my clients, we often use an assessment called the Herrmann Brain Dominance Instrument (HBDI) to learn and capitalize on each other's thinking preferences and how they can uniquely contribute to the innovative process. How might you discover the untapped creative potential of each member of your team?
See the world from a different perspective. Marcel Proust said it best: "The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes." I use ExperiencePoint's proven learning and development offerings to teach design thinking to my clients. They then use these tools to "see" the unmet needs and desires of their customers, be they internal or external, as well as how to conduct more creative brainstorms and rapidly prototype solutions. How might you use the design thinking approach to see your business through new eyes?

A culture of innovation begins by discovering and fostering individual creativity. FireFly is ready to share our expertise to help you become more innovative today so you can deliver better results tomorrow.

Dive into Successful Conflict Management

Wed, 04 Sep 2019 00:00:00 GMT

Use the Vroom Yetton framework to help you decide how to decide.

I had the wonderful opportunity to work with an amazing group of leaders at a highly-regarded school. They spent a great deal of effort to overcome their natural tendency to gloss over conﬂict. The norms they created were very effective, because they reﬂected what they most needed to keep in mind and improve upon when making decisions. For more information on creating conflict norms on your team, read this post.

About a month later, one of the staff members reported, “We just had a great ﬁght in our staff meeting this morning. You would have been so proud of us!” The leader confirmed, with a rueful smile, saying, “Well, the team is certainly more animated than they’ve been in the past!” These team members were now able to express a sense of passion about their work with which they had never before been comfortable; one that would help them face and resolve their most pressing issues.

Now, here is the second important point: there needs to be an agreed upon process for making the decisions. Not every decision will truly be a team decision. However, almost every decision could beneﬁt from receiving robust team input. In some instances in which the leader should decide alone, but this should very much be the exception rather than the rule.

In deciding the best approach to take for decision making, many teams find Vroom Yetton, a decision-making framework named for its creators Victor Vroom and Phillip Yetton, to be simple yet invaluable. Vroom Yetton is a powerful tool for determining how groups will make decisions , providing leaders not only with a thought process for determining the optimum level of involvement of others in the decision, but also a way to make that rationale explicit to the team.

Most team members know that they won’t be making every decision, and they don’t mind not having this authority, as long as they understand the decision process up front and view it as fair. Teams do not appreciate thinking that the leader wants them to make the decision, and then having that authority taken away. When a manager takes the decision back, it can leave members feeling as though they did something wrong, which seems like failure to the team, and this doesn’t foster commitment to the ﬁnal decision.

The leader can use Vroom-Yetton to help decide which level of input is wanted from the team, before engaging them in the discussion of the issue. Thus, it is much less likely that the authority will be taken back, and expectations will be clearly explained, from the outset. The levels of the Vroom Yetton Decision Making Model are as follows:

Autocratic:
- A1: Leader solves the problem alone using information that is readily available.
- A2: Leader obtains additional information from group members, and then makes decision alone. Group members may or may not be informed of the ﬁnal decision.

Consultative:
- C1: Leader shares problem with group members individually and asks for information and evaluation. Group members do not meet collectively, and leader makes decision alone.
- C2: Leader shares problem with group members collectively, but makes decision alone.

Group Based:
- G2: Leader meets with group to discuss situation. Leader focuses and directs discussion, but does not impose will. Group makes ﬁnal decision.

So with all of these levels to choose from, how can a manager decide which is the most appropriate for each decision? There are several factors that affect this decision, which must be made by someone with an understanding of both the team and the project. In our next post, we’ll discuss ways to determine which level is right for your team.

FireFly’s Top 3 Tips for Effective Change Management Communications

Wed, 04 Sep 2019 00:00:00 GMT

What is one of the top keys to successful change? Communications!

When I am facilitating a change leadership workshop, I often ask participants to think of their top lessons learned from (successful or unsuccessful) change initiatives they have led or been a part of. Invariably, many of the lessons focus on one topic: Communications.

And in a time of change, I like to say, however much you are currently communicating, multiply it by 100...and it's still not enough.

Given that, I thought it might be helpful for me to capture my top 3 tips related to effective communications that I have learned and seen successfully executed over the last 20+ years - to help you in your critical role as change champions.

Here we go (along with clickable links to the three prior posts on this topic)…

Tip #1: Be clear on the “why” of the change. Your view of change is a matter of perspective - 30,000 feet or on the ground? Your job, as an effective leader and communicator in a time of change, is to make meaning for your employees of all these changes. Read on for insights on how to create an inspiring message that helps your organization make sense of all the changes they see around them.

Tip #2: Clarify the behavioral changes you expect to see. How do you know if your change message is getting through? You can’t see a change of mindset; you can only see changed behavior. Does leadership know what old behaviors they expect their employees to leave behind…and what new behaviors they expect them to adopt? Read on for recommendations to help bridge this gap.

Tip #3: Communicate your change message in a Whole Brain ® Way. First understand how people prefer to be communicated with using Whole Brain® Thinking...then use the "Optimal Flow" to create a powerful message everyone can hear. Read on for clues to understand your employees' preferred way of receiving the message - and then how to structure it so that it appeals to everyone.

For more tips, tools, and techniques for engaging employees in a time of change, simply click here to go to The FireFly Whiteboard - my blog with over 100 posts on such topics as Innovation, Team Effectiveness, Strategic Planning, and Change Management.

Have questions? Simply email me at KDouglas@FireFlyFacilitation.com . I would welcome the opportunity to be of service to you.

How to Promote Engagement & Learning from Each Other

Tue, 03 Sep 2019 20:33:27 GMT

A simple open-ended question led the way to deep connection.

As a facilitator, I always strive for maximum engagement and shared learning among participants (even when I'm the subject matter expert and presenter). How do I promote this. Sometimes, it's as simple as asking one question .

Recently, I was asked to make a presentation to a group of CEOs who had gathered specifically for the purpose of networking and learning and sharing best practices. Over the months since their inception, they had seen a series of presentations on a variety of topics, followed by Q&A—followed by less than satisfied CEO's at the end of the session. The sponsor of this group asked me to try to increase the meeting’s level of interaction , since they were trying to create a place where these executives would feel comfortable sharing and seeking advice from each other.

This request was music to my ears. I am a firm believer that there is already a great deal of knowledge when I enter most rooms where I will make a presentation. As far as I’m concerned, my role is simply to facilitate their recollection of this knowledge and their ability to share it with others in a way that can be heard.

For this particular group, my assumption was true—in spades. The CEOs very much longed to interact with and learn from one another. The title of my discussion was "High Performing Teams Start at the Top" , so I asked them to think for a moment about a leader who had a profound impact on them. Their answers to this question became each CEO’s introduction to the group that morning.

With each story that was told, you could see people becoming more engaged—with each other, with the learning opportunity, with the connections to the issues that they faced at their own organizations—all because each person had allowed others a glimpse into what their unique view of what a leader is . There was so much communication during the introductions, in fact, that I ended up having to make some time adjustments for the rest of the presentation.

At one point, I offered the group a choice— to either break into smaller groups to discuss a series of questions, or to stay together. The response was a resounding demand to stay together. They had bonded so well and learned so much through the memorable stories they had shared that they didn’t want to lose that sense of cohesiveness.

Moreover, the sponsors couldn’t have been happier; this is exactly what they had envisioned when they had formed the group months ago.

What can you do to enable your group or team to learn, bond and grow stronger?

Innovation - What's in a Word?

Sun, 01 Sep 2019 00:00:00 GMT

Innovation….when you hear this word, what comes to mind? When I pose this question to a group, I often hear "Apple", "Something new", or similar response.

If you look it up in a standard dictionary, like Websters or American Heritage, the definition is simple and straightforward: "the introduction of something new." If, however, you look it up in Business Dictionary.com, you get a very different result: "The process by which an idea or invention is translated into a good or service for which people will pay. To be called an innovation, an idea must be replicable at an economical cost and must satisfy a specific need."

The "regular" person’s definition is so much better and more freeing than the business minded one. I call this the difference between innovation with a little “i” – innovation for everyone – and innovation with a big “I” that stands up to the very tough scrutiny of the business world. We wonder why we see innovation as a slogan by top execs instead of something that actually gets done. How do you know if something is going to make money unless you give it a chance? In many companies we cut new ideas off at the knees because we can’t see right off how it can possibly be profitable.

Let me tell you the story of Alexander Fleming. It's 1928 and apparently Dr. Fleming is a pretty messy scientist. One day he's cleaning out the petri dishes he had been using to grow bacteria. Something catches his eye. Something had contaminated one of the staph cultures – in fact it had killed the bacteria.

Do you know what he had discovered – penicillin --- by accident! "When I woke up just after dawn on September 28, 1928, I certainly didn't plan to revolutionize all medicine by discovering the world's first antibiotic, or bacteria killer," Fleming would later say, "But I guess that was exactly what I did."

A huge success, right? Wrong! There were so many difficulties associated with producing penicillin in mass quantities, it would be another 12 years before the world realized what he had created. We need the broader definition of innovation...so that we can celebrate the learning…not just the end result.

What "discoveries" - no matter how small and seemingly insignificant - have you made recently? What can you find to celebrate – not just the end result but what you learned from it – and how you can apply those learnings?

For effective decisions, first decide how you will decide.

Sat, 31 Aug 2019 12:21:05 GMT

Simple, yet useful, tips for using the Vroom Yetton Decision Model

The Vroom Yetton Decision-Making Model is a technique for determining how much participation is needed or desired to make a specific decision. For a handy one-page overview of the model and how to use it, click here .

When you sit down to make a decision, your style, and the degree of participation you need to get from your team, are affected by three main factors:

Decision Quality – how important is it to come up with the "right" solution? The higher the quality of the decision needed, the more you should involve other people in the decision.
Subordinate Commitment - how important is it that your team and others buy into the decision? When teammates need to embrace the decision you should increase the participation levels.
Time Constraints – How much time do you have to make the decision? The more time you have, the more you have the luxury of including others, and of using the decision as an opportunity for team building.

Instructions for using the Model:

Articulate the decision or decisions to be made.
Outline the Vroom Yetton Decision-Making Model to your meeting group. There are five distinct methods for making decisions. These methods are categorized below.
Lead a group discussion on how to address the decisions under consideration based on the choices laid out in the chart below.
After the discussion, ask the participants to vote for what they each consider to be the best choice within the model for the specific decisions to be made. (Note: they can vote by putting tick marks on a chart or by secret ballot.)
Proceed accordingly. Create a communication plan, including time frames, especially if the entire meeting group is not involved in making the decision.

Vroom Yetton Decision-Making Model
1 Leader makes decision alone without input.
2 Leader informally requests information or opinions from group members (may not tell them the problem) then makes decision alone.
3 Leader informally requests information or opinions from group members in one-on-one meetings then makes decision alone.
4 Leader holds group meeting to discuss the issue then makes decision alone.
5 Leader holds group meeting to discuss the issue and group makes the decision.

In general, a consultative or collaborative style is most appropriate when :

You need information from others to solve a problem.
The problem definition isn't clear.
Team members' buy-in to the decision is important.
You have enough time to manage a group decision.

An autocratic style is most efficient when:

You have more expertise on the subject than others.
You are confident about acting alone.
The team will accept your decision.
There is little time available.

Don't Let Your Strategic Plan Be an Hallucination!

Thu, 29 Aug 2019 00:00:00 GMT

Tracking progress, celebrating success, and course correcting.

At this point, we’ve discussed how to determine your action plan’s areas of strategic priority, measure your teams’ successes, and communicate effectively. The ﬁnal step in the process is to ﬁgure out how to follow up, celebrate successes, and course correct . In this post, you’ll learn to accomplish all of this in order to move forward with your plan.

There will need to be regular and consistent progress tracking on the team dashboard and on the milestones in meetings. This needs to be an area of focus, employing a genuine, problem-solving mode. In addition, it’s good to plan at least one half- to full-day session after three months, and again after six months.

As I am sure you well know, what gets measured gets done. The purpose of these sessions is for the leader to keep everyone, including themselves, focused on the right things. Making it clear that these sessions are on the calendar and will not be canceled ensures that everyone understands the high priority of executing the plan.

The team should accomplish the following critical undertakings during these sessions:

Celebrate success. One of the chief complaints I hear from team members is that they don’t stop to truly rejoice in what they have accomplished together. Engage the team in ﬁguring out how to really reward and recognize what they have done. Your team might celebrate with company-bought pizza in the conference room for a Friday lunch, or perhaps everyone takes off for a team outing at a bowling alley or for putt-putt golf. Remember to keep the focus on a team celebration—not everyone simply getting off early for the day and going their separate ways; you want to reinforce the excitement and reward of a true team accomplishment.

Identify where the reality is falling short of plan, and why. If you don’t know what got you here, you won’t be able to course correct. Were the assumptions too conservative or too extreme? Was the data faulty, or was the wrong data used? Have there been unforeseen circumstances that negatively impacted the plan? Has it been a case of bad execution? If so, what was the cause? This is not a time to assign blame, but rather to truly learn from what has occurred and agree on a course of action to make sure that the same mistakes aren’t repeated again.

Replan as required . You must keep the plan real, or people lose the motivation to carry it out. Neglecting to openly acknowledge the changes that need to be made is a slippery slope down to a disengaged team that will not be so quick to participate the next time you want to hold another off-site!

And your work doesn't stop there. Imagine you are on the shoreline of the beach, watching the waves come in. You see a big one approach, and crash to shore. And then . . . nothing. Calm waters behind it. This illustration can be used to explain that as soon as you are getting close to the end of your vision horizon, you must begin to plan for the next one. If there is too much time between one big wave and the next, you can grow complacent and get bored. Keep the team engaged and always focused forward.

How Does Your Team Define Productive Conflict?

Thu, 22 Aug 2019 00:00:00 GMT

FireFly's proven process for developing conflict norms for effective decisions.

In my experience, people on teams come with their own expectations and definitions of what conflict means -and, more often than not, it rarely is defined as productive. I have had the opportunity over the last several years to work with dozens of teams in discussing and reaching agreement on their unique conﬂict norms that will guide their debate/discussion and ultimately an effective decision all can support. In fact, this process itself becomes an example that we can refer to for how they discuss and decide.

An important factor to consider is that cultural differences may exist within a group , particularly in relation to individual levels of comfort with conﬂict arising during a team meeting. A variety of reasons can inﬂuence people’s perceptions of the value of and the appropriate way to handle conﬂict, such as the country or region in which they were born, their nationality or ethnic makeup, how they were raised, and various other life experiences that have shaped them.

It is critical to reach an agreement on the norms that dictate how the team will deal with conﬂict, because neglecting to address conflict in a straightforward manner, increases the risk of gaining compliance, but failing to achieve any true commitment to these team decisions. Even if some members may not have joined the team with a high level of comfort with conﬂict, the team as a whole must become adept at facing and managing it. There is an impressive impact on teams who make the courageous choice to embrace conﬂict.

FireFly Facilitation's Process for Developing Conflict Norms

I begin the process by giving everyone their own handout with the list below of categories and sample norms. I then give them these instructions (which they are to complete individually before the group discussion):

Choose 4 to 6 conflict norms that you think would help your team have productive conflict and make more effective decisions.

Feel free to alter the wording or write in your own conflict norm.

Common Goal:

Establish a common goal that the group fully understands
Ground the group by stating the objective of the discussion
Define the topic, problem, or opportunity

Environment:

Provide an opportunity for every voice to be heard
Ensure open and respectful dialog – do not belittle people or their ideas
Create an environment in which team members feel safe to question and/or challenge

Participant Behavior:

Speak so others can “hear” your message
Remain engaged and attentive, and consider everyone’s input
Inquire first before advocating

Decision Parameters:

Acknowledge the necessary speed or timeline in which a decision needs to be made
State the decision-making process before starting the discussion
Provide guidelines and boundaries for each decision to be made

Decision Process:

Provide information in advance of the meeting so everyone can actively participate in the discussion and decision-making
Act on facts and data without analysis paralysis – don’t get stuck “studying” the problem
Clarify pros, cons, and risks of options or potential solutions

Commitment to Outcome:

Be decisive and make certain that all members commit to a decision
When we leave this room, we all speak with one voice
Although consensus is not necessary, full support of the decision is required

For more information on this collaborative approach to developing team conflict norms, read this post .

Effective Change Communications...Tip #3: Communicate your change message in a Whole Brain® Way.

Tue, 20 Aug 2019 00:00:00 GMT

First understand how people prefer to be communicated with...then use the "Optimal Flow" to create a powerful message everyone can hear.

In my last post on effective change managementcommunications, I focused on Tip #2 – beingclear about the behavioral changes expected of the people in your organization.(For Tip #1 – creating your “why”message of the change, click here .)

Now that you have a clear message about the why of thechange and what behaviors are expected, how do you ensure that you are actuallycommunicating your message in a way that your employees can hear it? I like tosay – if you have 10 people in the room, you should assume you have a WholeBrain® present!

I have been certified to use the Herrmann Whole Brain® Model and the Herrmann BrainDominance Instrument (the HBDI®,what I call “the user-friendly Myers-Briggs”) for more than 20 years since I firstdiscovered it when I was an organization effectiveness leader at Coca-Cola.

The HBDI®helps people to understand their preferred way of thinking. As you can see from the chart above, eachquadrant also has a preferred way of communicating.

So how do you ensure your change message is meeting the needsof all listeners? By using the Whole Brain® “Optimal Flow”…

Yellow/Strategizer What’sthe “why” behind the change? How does this change fit into the big picture? Describe(and justify) the change clearly in a statement lasting no longer than oneminute – without the use of jargon.

Blue/Analyzer What’sthe logic behind the decision? What’s the goal or objective of the change? Whatare the facts? “Sell the problem before you try to sell the solution.”

Red/Personalizer Whatis the impact on me? What is expected of me? What are the implications for mycustomers? For the people on my team? Get clear on what people are being askedto let go of, to give up - relationships, current methods, values,expectations.

Green/Organizer Whatare the specifics of the change? What are the risks to me? Understand what thechanges will mean in behavioral terms (e.g. answering customer complaints in 24hours), as well as structural (e.g. realigning teams by product instead ofregion). Be as specific as you can.

If you would like tolearn more about Whole Brain Thinking , the HBDI and how I have used thisassessment to help leaders learn their own and their team's thinking and communication preferencesto ensure a more successful change message, then send me an email at KDouglas@FireFlyFacilitation.com or call me at 678-388-0448.

Top 3 Creativity Myths That Hold You Back --- Myth #3

Mon, 19 Aug 2019 00:00:00 GMT

The Lone Creative Genius

In my last two posts, I covered Myth #1 (how we define the word creativity) and Myth #2 (we think in terms of absolutes).

I saved this one for the last, because I find it can be the most pervasive on teams and across organization --- Myth #3: The Lone Creative Genius.

For example let’s take this fellow here – all alone, it would appear, in his lab. Want to take a guess as to who this inventor is? (If you give up, look at the big light bulb over his head for a clue.)

That’s right… Thomas Edison !

Many people think of him as a lone creative genius, but even he said “Genius is 1 % inspiration and 99% perspiration."

Let’s just stop and think about that a moment. Although in cartoons we might see something like a light bulb showing up over someone’s head or a bolt of lightning out of the blue – and boom a brilliant idea is born.

But that’s not how it works in real life. You have to nurture a brand new idea.

He also said another great quote – that I absolutely love and think can be instructive for all of us… “Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work.”

You might have thought that Edison worked alone ---- developing all those patents, but that’s not the case. In fact, he worked with a broad creative team.

Here they are in 1876 on the site of their industrial research laboratory in Menlo Park , Pennsylvania. He called it “the invention factory” – because they were always working on several different inventions at any one time.

Together they were more creative than Edison could have possibly been on his own. Together they found success – and over 400 patents.

Just like on your team – each one of you have a critical role to play to bring out the best in your team.

Because all of us are smarter than any of us.

For more on this subject, check out my August 2019 Newsletter on "the wisdom of the crowds".

Effective Change Communications...Tip #2: Clarify the behavioral changes you expect to see.

Mon, 19 Aug 2019 00:00:00 GMT

Do your employees know what you expect them to do in support of the change?

In my last post on effective change managementcommunications, I focused on Tip #1 – being clear about the “why” message ofthe change, how to “sell the problem beforeyou sell the solution” (thank you, William Bridges ) .

Now, how do you know if your change message is gettingthrough? You can’t see a change of mindset; you can only see changed behavior. Does leadership know what old behaviors they expect their employees to leavebehind…and what new behaviors they expect them to adopt?

I have taken many change leadership teams through this veryexercise – and it is always enlightening. Oftentimes, they are not really clearon what they are expecting their employees to do differently to demonstratetheir support for the change.

For example, if we say we want our people to be more “innovative”or more “customer focused”, what does that specifically look like, behaviorally-speaking?For innovation, I often tell teams to “look for the second right answer” to theproblem they are trying to solve. Don’t go with your first instinct or the easyanswer. For customer focused, perhaps we now expect someone will respond to a customerrequest or complaint within 12 hours.

This makes it measurable and visible – and thus you can holdpeople accountable for living up to these behavioral expectations. I alwayssay, “accountability holding is a whole lot easier if you do a really good jobwith accountability setting”.

And if you have people in the organization who are notliving up to these behavioral expectations (in spite of your training and yourcoaching), you can help them to move on with dignity, knowing that you haveclearly communicated the why of the change and the behaviors expected.

Change Is Not a Four Letter Word!

Sun, 18 Aug 2019 22:47:07 GMT

An excerpt from my book, The Firefly Effect (Wiley)

There is a story that I occasionally tell to leadership teams about an executive who took his best performer out on the mountaintop and said to him, Do you see that mansion in the distance? Do you see the four-car garage . . . the swimming pool . . . the tennis courts? Well, if you work very, very hard, one day that will all be . . . mine!

The response to this story is usually laughter at first, and then the flash of recognition—Thats what weve been doing, isnt it? I have met so many executives in my work who try to sell their vision to employees. The approach that you should be taking, however, is attempting to inspire them to care as much about this picture of success as you do and vividly seeing how they can directly contribute to the results of the team, department, and company.

My passion is helping leaders to instill a creative, collaborative culture on their teams—one where everyone is actively engaged in driving the objectives of the business. Change must take place for any new strategic direction to be fully executed. If this vision for the future remains solely your own and not that of your teammates, then it cannot possibly be fully accomplished. As Peter Senge so simply stated it: People dont resist change. They resist being changed!

What if you were to treat the very talented people working for you as volunteers who have options about where they choose to donate their time? Because in good times—and even in bad times—your best employees do. They have the best resumes, the best track record of success, and the best network. They need to be re-engaged and inspired weekly (perhaps even daily), and this is especially true in a time of change. They need to believe that senior leadership has the right vision for the future - and they need to know what is expected of them to be successful and to support the change.

One of the most profound ways that you can impact the success of a critical change initiative is by crafting and communicating a compelling case for transformation. For more on this important topic, I encourage you to read my Top 3 Tips for Effective Change Communications.

What's the Deal with all These Change Models?

Sun, 18 Aug 2019 22:16:07 GMT

How to use your change model to maximize buy-in and minimize resistance

In an earlier blog post , I shared highlights of the change model from the Heath brothers' very popular book, Switch . That got me thinking of the various models I have incorporated into my clients' change management workshops over the last 15+ years.

ExperiencePoint , an expert learning and development company focused on innovation and change management, has written a very provocative and enlightening article on this very subject - "What's the deal with all these change models?" ( Download Here ) This article also lays out the ExperiencePoint model that incorporates the very best thinking of all the change gurus.

As ExperiencePoint says... "With so much overlap between models and such low rates of adoption within organizations, it is our view that it is less important which model is chosen than it is to choose one and use it."

Since 1996, they have been refining their change management model and simulation to maximize buy-in and minimize resistance. It incorporates the very best learnings and best practices from such thought leaders/change models as: John Kotter, ADKAR from ProSci, CAP from GE, Kurt Lewin, William Bridges, and Switch.

Does your organization have a change management model that it strongly advocates? No problem. I can easily incorporate your company's model into a customized workshop.

Or, does your organization have a change management model "in name only" or has no model? Let's talk about an approach for utilizing this easy-to-learn, easy-to-apply model for your next critical change initiative. And then give your leaders an opportunity to test their knowledge in a safe environment using the ExperiencePoint simulation.

Three Simple Questions to Help Your Change Initiative Succeed

Sun, 18 Aug 2019 21:46:03 GMT

What William Bridges, author of Managing Transitions, can teach us

Many of us are familiar with John Kotter's 8-step change model from his book, Leading Change . For those in the critical position of leading a change initiative, I would also like to recommend you consider reading William Bridges' book, Managing Transitions . He makes a compelling case for the "right brain" side of change.

Read his three thought-provoking questions below to learn more.

What is changing?
Describe (and justify) the change clearly in a statement lasting no longer than one minute - without the use of jargon. "Sell the problem before you try to sell the solution."
What will actually be different because of the change?
Understand what the changes will mean in behavioral terms (e.g. answering customer complaints in 24 hours), as well as structural (e.g. realigning sales teams by product instead of region).
Who's going to lose what?

Get clear on what people are being asked to let go of, to give up - relationships, current methods, values, expectations. Be as specific as you can.

Contact me and together we will explore how to use the best thinking and best practices of change management gurus such as Kotter and Bridges to ensure the success of your next critical change initiative.

The Secret Game Changers Know

Sun, 18 Aug 2019 21:28:45 GMT

Game Changers - both companies and individuals - know the secret to enduring competitive advantage.

As ExperiencePoint describes it, Game Changers "...consistently put out offerings that tap into the desires of their audience. They're agile in the face of relentless change and complexity. It's like they have the magic touch, an uncanny ability to turn ideas into impact, and in the process, rewrite the rules of their industry."

I am passionate about helping leaders and their teams successfully innovate and navigate change. Over the last 8 years, I have been proud to partner with ExperiencePoint , an award-winning training company that develops innovation and change management workshops that are transforming the way people learn, manage change and solve complex problems.

During this time, I have facilitated more than 75 sessions with 1800+ participants in organizations as diverse and global as Coca-Cola, AT&T, Johnson & Johnson, Cox, Wharton, Hitachi, the CDC, Microsoft, Emory, the USDA, Dell and Home Depot. I have served as their "Sherpa" to guide them on their journey of discovery.

My goal is to make the tools of innovation and change accessible and actionable as soon as they leave the training session. I have seen first-hand the power when they discover within themselves the instincts to create great solutions and the reflexes to make them a reality. For as Thomas Edison says, "Vision without execution is hallucination."

Two Key Disciplines of Game Changers
There are two disciplines that make up the journey to impact: innovation and change. It's no coincidence that Game Changers are great at both.

Whether they're facing a tough problem or looking for ways to capitalize on new opportunities, Game Changers know how to create great solutions.

Innovation is the collection of tools, techniques and mindsets that help organizations create great solutions that are desirable for users, technically feasible and financially viable.

Change as a discipline of organizational effectiveness refers to the collection of tools, techniques, and mindsets that help organizations ensure their people are ready to engage, willing to commit and able to do what it takes to realize the full potential of great solutions.

Rather than viewing these two dimensions as sequential phases in a journey, Game Changers know that innovation and change are most effective when they happen in concert, with different levels of focus at different times. Change demands new ideas and great solutions - ones that are desirable, feasible and viable - while new solutions require effective change - the readiness, willingness and ability to translate ideas into impact.

The secret to organizational effectiveness isn't reserved for the lucky few. Your organization can adopt the innovation and change mindsets of the Game Changers to create groundbreaking solutions and realize your full potential.

Once you do, you'll unleash new ways of thinking, which will result in new offers, operational efficiencies and increased customer and employee engagement.

If you are ready to accelerate this journey by preparing your organization to successfully innovate and navigate a critical change, I would welcome the opportunity to serve as your "Sherpa."

Effective Change Communications...Tip #1: Be clear on the "why" of the change.

Sun, 18 Aug 2019 19:56:38 GMT

Your view of change is a matter of perspective - 30,000 feet or on the ground?

Organizations today are undergoing constant change – or at least the successful ones are. To the people in the organization, it seems relentless, never ending and often disconnected. And my experience has shown me that it is a whole lot easier to be "the changer" than "the changee".

Have you ever been in a plane and looked out the window at a rain cloud? If you look towards the ground, there is a great deal of structure to the rain storm; it is tightly clustered and organized. You are senior leadership at this 30,000 foot level – and this is how you view the changes going on in the organization.

Now imagine you’re on the ground and that rain storm is overhead. All you know is it’s constantly coming down and there is no end in sight. These are your employees in the organization – and this is how they view all the myriad changes going on all around them, all the time.

Your job, as an effective leader and communicator in a time of change, is to make meaning for your employees of all these changes. William Bridges , author of Managing Transitions, has a simple, yet powerful, way of capturing the “why” of change: Describe (and justify) the intended change in a statement lasting no longer than one minute – without the use of jargon. “Sell the problem before you sell the solution.”

Can you clearly and succinctly describe your key change initiative(s) this way? If you can, you have given your employees a virtual “umbrella” under which all the changes make sense. And you are much more likely to get their buy-in and commitment to the change – not just their compliance.

How Can We Reach Better Team Decisions through Productive Conflict?

Thu, 15 Aug 2019 00:00:00 GMT

A step-by-step collaborative approach to creating conflict norms.

We’ve already addressed generating guidelines for team decision-making, and how important it is to get your team involved in making these rules. What better way could there be for a team to begin making decisions together, than by collaboratively setting up conflict norms. Read on for a step-by-step approach for accomplishing this important goal.

You might begin by asking each member to write down three to ﬁve norms that would lead the group as a whole to more productive conﬂict and make better decisions ; that is, conditions that would need to be in place for this to happen. Don’t worry about the exact wording at this point; just get the gist of an idea. If the team has many members—or if the environment doesn’t make this kind of open, candid discussion realistic quite yet—then have members create small groups of three to four people to share what they wrote down. They then can discuss and agree upon the suggestions that they think are best for this team at this stage in their growth.

Again, don’t worry about wording at this point; we are simply looking for trends across the various groups. Are you seeing any kind of pattern? Are you hearing the same repeatedly? If so, then you know you have hit on something. Another way to approach this step is simply to hand each person ﬁve sticky notes and a black marker, and then ask them to jot down one idea per note. There is great anonymity in the same color notes and markers. You can then group together the notes that seem to be addressing the same issue.

You have now identiﬁed some general themes or concepts for what these norms might be. What next? While you could keep the whole group together to wordsmith each one, I prefer a simpler and more engaging approach. Let people form small groups to work on the single theme about which they feel most strongly. This incites the favorable consequence of having internal champions who will ensure that others adhere to these norms, since they were so deeply involved in their very creation.

After about 15 minutes of work, ask the groups to share their draft norms. You want people to react to these by asking them questions such as: “What do you like about it? What would you change? Will we be able to know if someone is living up to the norm—that is, can we see it in action?” This last point is very important. Beware of vague mom-and-apple pie norms like “Show respect.” After all, how will you really know if someone is showing respect? The very deﬁnition of the word respect can vary greatly from one person to the next. As much as possible, leave little room open for interpretation, and make each rule measurable and actionable.

I have had the opportunity over the last several years to work with dozens of teams in creating these conﬂict norms. In our next post, we’ll address some of the general categories into which they tend to fall, and offer examples of each.

My Top 5 Strategic Planning Process Improvements

Wed, 14 Aug 2019 00:00:00 GMT

20+ years of strategic planning facilitation experience captured in a blog post...

In my last post, I shared my strategic planning metaphor . In this post, I will share my top 5 strategic planning process improvements.

In my 20+ years of facilitating strategic planning and team development sessions for all types of organizations, I have refined my thinking and my process in these five key areas:

Change #1: Open it Up

It is more important than ever to get as much involvement as possible from the entire organization. Strategic planning should not be the sole province of the executive leadership. The more you can involve—and I mean truly involve—in the creation of the plan those who will be accountable for actually executing it, the more commitment (as opposed to mere compliance) you will obtain. People like to see their “fingerprints” on something they are being charged with carrying out.

Change #2: Plan for Less, Get More

Do you still use a five to ten year cycle for your planning horizon? I now recommend that my clients look only three years into the future to set their vision. Change is happening much too quickly for there to be accuracy in planning beyond that. There isn’t “visibility,” as you might hear the pundits say. People truly can’t envision a longer future. Twelve months ago, could you—or anyone—have predicted the world we find ourselves in today? Set the vision two to three years out; then couple that with a very concrete, practical action plan for the next twelve months.

Change #3: Hone on the Range

Instead of talking about a mountain for the vision, I should really call it a mountain range . The vision for future success is rarely a singular point in the future. I used to spend quite a bit of time during and after a strategic planning session working with the board, senior team, or a sub-committee to refine a mission and/or vision statement that would be “suitable for lamination.” I think it is much more important that everyone in the organization be in agreement directionally and less to be in agreement literally. I have found that the conversation sparked is more important than the actual statement we developed (which always ended up reading as though it had been created by a committee … because, in fact, it had!).

Change #4: Begin at the End

I was trained as an organization effectiveness leader at Coca-Cola to begin a strategic planning session with reaching agreement on a very clear picture of where you are today. “How can you effectively plan for the future without the hard, cold reality of your current state?” some ask. I say that most teams are acutely aware of the difficulties of their current state. My experience has shown that they are better served to think aspirationally first. Now, in almost every case (the exception being when there are extremely divergent views of the current state), I begin with the end in mind, creating the vision for the future. Once this picture is clearly in each person’s mind, I assure you a more targeted, accurate assessment will follow.

Change #5: Swat the SWOT

This may be heresy in some strategic planning circles, but I have switched from the conventional SWOT (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats) analysis to the lesser-known but much more effective Force Field Analysis for assessing the current reality . I simply facilitate the identification and discussion of those forces working for and against our success in making this vision a reality. Too often with the SWOT (and I know you have all been there), what should have been a healthy dialog denigrated into unhealthy conflict over which box to put something in . Was it a strength or an opportunity? A weakness or a threat? Instead, through a deeper level of conversation, we found that in fact the same factor could be both positive and negative, and thus we could focus the majority of our attention on how to address it.

By making these changes to your annual strategic planning session, you will develop a plan that gets the whole organization aiming in the same direction and catapults your results to even higher levels of success!

Engaging Disconnected Team Members by Managing Team Dynamics

Tue, 13 Aug 2019 00:00:00 GMT

Team building using Legos to build a helicopter and escape the monsoon!

In my last post , I shared ideas for dealing with team members who are disengaged and drain the group of positive energy. This isn’t always just one person—sometimes the disconnection is the result of a wider problem with the company dynamic. Usually, I’ve seen these disconnected team members actually become involved once they feel valued. They may, in fact, be the very people who are the team drivers, but have not been valued before.

Some team building exercises are not worth much, but one that I’ve found effective is the Jungle Escape simulation. We used it with our entire Coca-Cola North America HR team so that we could be guinea pigs to test it out ourselves before we used it on our internal client groups.

In essence, each team gets a bag of helicopter parts made up of various size Lego pieces. The teams then need to build the helicopter in order to escape from a monsoon , using only a black and white picture and an actual model hidden behind a screen. The activity is intense enough to truly engage people—or bring their disengagement to light.

I had the opportunity to use this simulation with an accounting team at a regional bank . The leader had informed me prior to the session that his team was having a real issue with a division, based on ﬂoors. You see, one part of the team was on the ﬁrst ﬂoor, along with the leader, while another was separated by just one level. This second-ﬂoor group truly felt like "second-class citizens" , which shows how signiﬁcant a gap one ﬂoor can be!

As this team was putting together the helicopter, I noticed that Suzanne, one of "the second-class ﬂoor teammates", was busily working away, using the model to write in the colors of the parts on the black and white picture. When she returned to the group to show them what she had done, they barely looked up from their work. Barbara, another member of the less popular ﬂoor, sat there with a propeller in her hand, twirling it between her ﬁngers, a look of complete disdain on her face. It was amazingly clear to me to see what was going on. Three people, including the leader, were huddled over the helicopter; the three from the other ﬂoor were on the outskirts.

Once the group had completed the building of the helicopter, it was time for the real learning to begin. I asked a few softball questions, and then I asked the participants how well they felt that they used all of the team members’ talents, and whether everyone had felt engaged. The three who had been actively working on the building avidly agreed that, yes, everyone had been really involved. I decided to address the proverbial elephant in the room. “Tell me, Suzanne and Barbara, did you both feel like your talents were used?”

Soon, it all began to pour out. The second-class group came to realize that the neglect was not intentional; the ﬁrst-ﬂoor group came to realize no matter how unintentional, it was still painful, and caused them to lose an incredible asset to their team. The action planning that followed these team epiphanies was just as critical to the team’s future success. Although combining the two ﬂoors into one was not an option, there were several seemingly insignificant changes that combined to make a large impact. The location of staff meetings alternated between the two ﬂoors. Members of the different ﬂoors sought out and found opportunities to collaborate on cross-functional projects. The leader personally made an extra effort to reach out to those on the other ﬂoor, since he was now well aware of the negative impact that came when they didn’t truly feel although they were a part of one team.

So ask yourself—in addition to encouraging team members to open up about their personal lives, eliminating the sarcastic humor that keeps everyone’s armor on, and dealing directly with the disengaged and disenfranchised— what are some other ways that leaders can have a profound and positive impact on conﬂict within the team? What can you do to ensure that conﬂict is productive not only at the team level, but also in one-on-one interactions and between a leader and a subordinate?

Top 3 Creativity Myths That Hold You Back --- Myth #2

Mon, 12 Aug 2019 00:00:00 GMT

We think of creativity in absolutes – you either have it or you don’t.

In my last post I discussed Myth #1 - the impact of how we define creativity.

Let's now turn our attention to Myth #2: We think of creativity in absolutes – you either have it or you don’t – versus a continuum.

While it's true you might not be able to compose like Mozart or paint like Monet, don't you think you have a little bit of creativity within you?

What about that time you moved into a new role and had to develop a process to address a particular business challenge? And what if you customize a process you created at another company – but apply it differently at your new company? Doesn’t that fit our more expansive definition of creativity?

When I work with teams to discover their untapped creative potential, I often ask them to remember back to a time in their youth. For me, I showed early signs of my love of facilitation when I was 8. I loved directing plays in our garage with all the neighborhood kids (at least those that were younger and shorter than I was). It was fun bringing together a diverse group of kids, convincing then to play together nicely, and having a successful outcome (a play that we could perform for our parents). I didn't need to be the star of the play - it was more fun for me to be behind the scenes, making things happen.

And so now I will ask you... when you were younger, what came easily to you? Maybe you even got a nickname for it.

What is your own unique brand of creativity? How could you apply that natural talent to some personal or professional challenge facing you today?

Strategic Focusing - The New Approach to Strategic Planning

Wed, 07 Aug 2019 00:00:00 GMT

"Vision without execution is...hallucination." Thomas Edison

With a company named FireFly Facilitation and a book called The Firefly Effect, as you might imagine, I am very fond of fireflies.

And, believe it or not, I think there is a lot we can learn from the simple firefly .

Did you know that one of the reasons the population of fireflies appears to be diminishing is because of ambient light or “light pollution” ? There are too many distractions . All these other bright lights keep fireflies from performing at their best.

How similar and true for the people on our own teams, if we don’t have a common vision of success to focus our time, attention, and resources.

Scarcity of resources—both human and financial—demands that we focus our efforts. The value of strategic planning is not only deciding what you will do, but also deciding what you will not do. When done well, strategic focusing can be one of the most exciting and effective team development tools available to a leader.

There is a well-known saying: “If you don’t know where you’re going, any road will take you there.”

I have found that the most effective teams are exceptionally clear on two things—where they are going and how they must work together to get there.

In taking hundreds of teams through the strategic focusing process , I have found this metaphor (represented by the drawing above) really resonates with people:

The road we are on is our mission . If this organization ceased to exist, what would the world lose?
The mountain in the distance is our vision for success . Three years into the future, how will we know if we have been successful in living up to our mission?
Mile markers are the key milestones . How will we measure our progress against the vision and course-correct if needed?
The guard rails are our guiding principles . How will we commit to work with each other to reach that mountain?

Next post...the top 5 ways my approach to strategic planning has changed over the last 10 years.

Do you know how to flip the "Switch" to change human behavior?

Wed, 07 Aug 2019 00:00:00 GMT

Change is hard - but Switch authors Chip & Dan Heath have some great advice to make it a little easier.

Here is their simple metaphor. The brain has two sides: the emotional side (Elephant) and the rational side (Rider) . Imagine a Rider sitting atop an Elephant. Individual change (and thus organizational change) happens when the Elephant and the Rider move in the direction you want. Shaping the Path means making the change easier by removing barriers to change.

Not only is the metaphor powerful and easy to understand, but so are the steps you can take as a change leader to put these ideas into practice.

Here are the three main components of the Switch model - and how you can apply these powerful lessons:

Direct the Rider: Find the "bright spots" (what's working) and clone it. Don't think big picture, think in terms of specific behaviors . Change is easier when you know where you're going and why it's worth it.

Motivate the Elephant: Knowing something isn't enough to cause change; make people feel something. Build a sense of momentum through early, visible successes; create "mini-wins". Cultivate a sense of identity and instill the growth mindset.

Shape the Path: When the situation changes, the behavior changes; so change the situation. When behavior is habitual, it's "free" and doesn't tax the Rider. Look for ways to encourage habits. Behavior is contagious; help it spread.

The Problem of Employee Disengagement

Tue, 06 Aug 2019 00:00:00 GMT

Disengagement – a barrier to trust and a source of conflict on the team.

We’ve been talking about conflict and its impact on teamwork , specifically whether it’s creative abrasion or the type of conflict that diminishes the team . We’ve discussed team members who are unable to share, and the use of humor as a weapon against each other. In this post, we’ll address the thread of disengagement.

Disengagement by one or more members of the team can be another signiﬁcant barrier to trust within the team , and a tremendous source of conﬂict. When I was young in my career, only at my second job out of grad school, I was the director of Human Resources for a large, entrepreneurial, fast-food franchise. I started taking on other areas of the company to manage facilities and administrative services.

Unfortunately, I learned something about myself: I liked the exciting project work of creating new programs a lot more than I liked maintaining them. I came to really dislike the work, and it showed. I was becoming toxic, and poisoning everyone around me about the work, my boss, and my co-workers.

I will always be grateful to my boss for what she did: She ﬁrst counseled me, pointing out my negative behaviors and the impact they were having, and then encouraged me to turn things around. I tried to have a more positive outlook; I really did. But I was stuck in a sour mindset and no amount of effort on my part or hers could change that. Mind you, I was not grateful then, but I can now look back on it and say that it was a gift to give me 60 days to begin to look for other work, which, thankfully, I successfully did (and loved my job for 7 years as an external consultant).

To this day, I keep this personal experience in the back of my mind when I coach leaders to do what was done to me. If you have an employee that you think has some potential for success, then you have a responsibility to do what you can to help them change, or regain, their effectiveness. Put forth your best effort to help the problem employee who is no longer engaged or performing up to standard to turn the situation around, and make it clear what behaviors and results need to change.

Then, if the employee is not able to deliver, and you can honestly say that you have done your best as a leader and coach to help them succeed, it is time for that person to move on. The most critical point here is to let them leave with dignity , for their own sake, and so that you don’t alienate the other members of the team. This sends a clear message to the people who are left behind that you value and expect results, but you will treat with respect those who cannot meet these standards.

Sometimes disengagement is not limited to just one person. Occasionally, real or virtual distance keeps members from building the bond of trust, and I am often there to facilitate a session to bring this very lack of engagement to light. If this is a challenge for your team, let's connect and identify some options.

Rewarding A Job Well Done

Mon, 05 Aug 2019 00:00:00 GMT

The power of a simple thank you note to reinforce the right behaviors

We’ve been talking about accountability, and in our last post we addressed the topic of employee appreciation. In this post, we’ll look at an example of a team that took the issue of employee appreciation to heart , making a plan to reward the right kind of behavior in an effective way. The leaders of this team learned that using positive reinforcement is a great way to strengthen personal accountability.

This particular IT team had been notorious for not recognizing team members for a job well done, something that was obvious in their low employee engagement scores . They realized, in fact, that they were rewarding and holding people accountable for the wrong things . They called their culture a hero worshiping one; for example, you were a hero if you worked all night or all weekend to fix a problem. Even if you were the very one who caused the error in the first place, you were the one held up as exceptional. They knew they were operating in a fire-drill mentality, and that this pace was not sustainable.

They needed to force themselves to engage in the longer-term advance thinking that would allow them to find more holistic solutions, and prevent any further emergencies. Yes, they needed to deal with the fire, but they had to work hard as a team afterward in order to keep the flames from igniting in the future. They needed to look at the bigger picture to discover the problem patterns and then brainstorm solutions, instead of staying stuck in an action-oriented mode. They needed to send a new message.

Now, this leadership team did not have strong interpersonal interest and skills, but they started writing thank-you notes for those individuals who had truly demonstrated the right behaviors – the kind they actually wanted to reinforce, such as working collaboratively across departments to resolve issues before they became full-blown forest fires, and taking more time to do the necessary up-front planning. Each senior leader brought their handwritten note to the staff meeting, and spent the first five minutes sharing these success stories, and passing the cards around for all of the leaders to sign. When the leaders saw these individuals after the meeting, they would reinforce the positive message and its impact by specifically thanking them for what they had done.

Well, the word spread, and not just about the thank-you notes and long-awaited recognition that they symbolized, but also about what was being recognized. You could literally see change happen among the leaders as they really thought about what they should be rewarding and among the employees as they received the recognition they had been missing.

Hopefully, you’ve realized by now the importance of personal accountability, and how leaders can reinforce it in one-on-one situations that will lead them to reward and recognize success. In our next post, we’ll turn our attention to the leader’s role in reinforcing responsibility at the team level.

Top 3 Creativity Myths That Hold You Back --- Myth #1

Mon, 05 Aug 2019 00:00:00 GMT

Changing how you define "creativity" may be the key to finding yours.

When I tell a group of people that they are creative, I have some that knowingly smile back, and some that look me at me like this...and say "Who? Me?"

Why is that? In my experience there are 3 myths that many of us hold about creativity that keep us from tapping into the true creative potential inside us - and in my next 3 posts I will share and debunk each one. Here we go...

Myth #1: Our definition of creativity

We have a tendency to think that the word "creativity" only applies to artists and musicians . While it's true they may be artistic, they don’t corner the market on creativity.

When I was writing my book, The Firefly Effect (Wiley), I told my husband that I thought everyone had creativity within them. Well, he's a pretty analytical guy – so he just looked at me and said “Do you have any data to back that up?”

I didn’t – so off to the library I went to find some. After a very frustrating day spent reviewing very arcane research from psychology and science journals, I was worn out and not sure if I would find the evidence I was looking for. I wasn’t even sure what creativity was any more.

That afternoon, I’m driving my teenage daughter Maddi to tennis practice. I turned to her and asked: “Maddi, how would you define creativity?” Being a typical teenager her first response was, of course, "That’s random!"

I said – "No, really – how would you define creativity?"

This time her response took my breath away…. “To be original. To do something no one else would think of.” Wow!

Accountability - Tracking Progress & Celebrating Success

Thu, 01 Aug 2019 00:00:00 GMT

Do you know how your employees like to be recognized?

We’ve been talking about accountability, whether personal, team, or leadership. In our last post , we discussed the ways leaders can promote accountability, and touched on progress-tracking. Now let’s turn our attention to what might happen during these tracking sessions.

One of the most frequent and negative ways for someone to lose the trust of their leader and fellow team members is through the element of surprise. Negative surprises like, “I’m not going to hit that target date tomorrow” or “Surprise, this project is going way over budget,” can put you as the team leader in a difficult position. Your first priority is to deal with the situation at hand; the second priority must be to have a candid discussion with the individual.

Try not to jump to conclusions about this person’s intent or motives, because sometimes, “We give ourselves credit for our intentions; but hold others accountable for their results.” In other words, we are always aware of our own reasons for acting as we did, whereas we only see the effects of others’ actions.

Your main goal should be to understand what caused the delay, and why there was not more advance notice about the problem. Explain the ramifications of the employee’s actions – for you personally, for the task or project, and for others on or outside the team. The better you comprehend what occurred, the more you can help them to learn from the situation. Keep your conversation positive and future-focused. On the other hand, if this is a recurring problem, you might need to take further action. Leaving these issues unaddressed and unresolved will likely mean this will happen again in the future.

However, what about the opposite situation, when you need to commend your employees for a job well done? Let’s say you’ve reached the end of the project, and it is a success. How are you going to reward and recognize this accomplishment? Ideally, as a team, you would have already decided this, since it is better to have this reward as an incentive versus an after-the-fact "bonus".

Many books on the market describe a multitude of ways to show your appreciation to employees, but bear this in mind: appreciating differences in others means discovering how individuals like to be rewarded and recognized for their contributions . This is really just an extension of treating each person like a unique individual.

Do you know how your employees like to be recognized? It may be different than you think. Know how to find out? Ask them. You might fear that each of them will say they want money, but it might surprise you to find out that there are other ways to express your appreciation-a day off to spend with their family, a gift card to a movie or local restaurant. It might even be something as simple as a personal, handwritten thank-you note. If you saved at least one note of thanks that you received over the years, then you are like many other people I have asked in my team effectiveness sessions.

In our next post , we’ll look at an example of a team that took the issue of employee appreciation to heart. We’ll see how the leaders of this team turned their team around, by making a point to reward the right kind of behavior, in an effective way. Through this example you’ll learn more about the leaders’ role in using positive reinforcement to strengthen personal accountability.

Are You Getting Enough ROI for your Assessments?

Thu, 01 Aug 2019 00:00:00 GMT

Do you want to know which assessment I call "the user-friendly MBTI?

There are a wide variety of tools and assessments out there— Myers-Briggs, DiSC, HBDI, and Hogan...and I'm certified in all four . Perhaps you are already very comfortable and satisfied with your current assessments. I am not trying to convert anyone to another tool. Instead, I recommend you match the assessment to the purpose/use of the results. In my experience, the HBDI is unequivocally the very best for use with teams - and here's why.

When completing my Masters in Industrial/Organizational Psychology after college, I studied the premier validated assessment of that time - the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI). It wasn't until I became an organization effectiveness leader for the Coca-Cola USA Marketing organization that I was introduced to the Whole Brain Model® and the Herrmann Brain Dominance Instrument (HBDI®).

I had some team leaders who preferred the MBTI and some who preferred the HBDI, based on their familiarity and comfort level with the instruments. While everyone typically felt that it was interesting to learn about their personality assessments on the day of the team effectiveness session, those that used the HBDI continued to apply what they learned long after the initial event. I believe this was due to the HBDI’s ease of use. In fact, I came to call the HBDI "the user-friendly Myers-Briggs" because of the ease of the language it uses to describe our thinking styles, and the many business applications it provides, especially in team settings.

As background on the HBDI, creative thinking pioneer Ned Herrmann created the assessment during his time as head of management development at General Electric. Herrmann was struck by the differences in the “learning styles” of the participants (even before that terminology was in vogue). He examined relevant scientific research about how the brain processes information, and developed a four-quadrant model to explain the differences between left-brained versus right-brained and visceral versus cognitive thinking. He then created an assessment instrument to measure people’s specific thinking preferences in each of the quadrants.

The overarching philosophy that Herrmann put forth as a result of his research is the notion that we all have preferences, none of which are inherently good or bad. We talk in terms of strengths and blind spots, not weaknesses. Because of my background in industrial/organizational psychology, an instrument’s validity was very important to me; and this assessment met that criteria. I also was impressed by the fact that using the instrument required certification—a signal to me of how seriously the assessment and its results are perceived to be.

Think about it - How much are people in your organization actively using what they learned from their assessment debrief (regardless of what instrument you use)? How can you get a greater return on that investment of time and money that you have already made? Keep the learnings alive - and reap the benefits for your team and your organization.

Aim Small; Miss Small

Thu, 01 Aug 2019 00:00:00 GMT

In strategic planning, the sharper your focus, the smaller your margin for error.

When archers draw a bow, they’re far more accurate when they zero in on the bull’s-eye than when they broadly aim to hit the target.

The same applies in golf. When players concentrate on landing the ball at a specific spot near the pin, their shots are more precise than when they target the green in general.

What’s true for archery and golf translates to strategic planning as well. The sharper your focus is, then the smaller your margin for error will be when you execute. Put simply, “Aim small; miss small.”

What can you do practically to shrink the scope of your goals so that you’re laser focused?

If everything is important…then nothing is . Identify the three strategic priorities for your team. Don’t get bogged down on specific verbiage, but make sure everyone agrees with and can articulate your strategic priorities.

Knowing what not to do can be just as important as knowing where you’re going. What distractions will tempt you to veer from your strategic priorities? List them - then openly talk about them. Reach agreement as a team on how you will handle these when they arise - because they likely will.

Decide upon metrics . What is unmeasured goes undone. Set your criteria for success. Don’t feel constrained by numbers—qualitative goals have every bit as much merit as quantitative ones. However, make sure your metrics are simple and concrete.

Track performance together . Evaluating results as a team provides instant accountability—no one wants to look bad in front of peers. Also, talking through results helps you to decipher problems or opportunities buried beneath the facts and figures.

Making Difficult Cuts to Rework Conflict

Tue, 30 Jul 2019 00:00:00 GMT

We’ve been discussing conflict, and how to reframe it to use creative abrasion to achieve true synergy. (See Post #1 on this topic.) It’s up to the leader to make this happen, and sometimes this requires making some difficult decisions. (See Post #2 ) This often includes making some cuts to your team, to allow for the rest of the team to function with greater efficiency.

Some of the hardest team members to eliminate are those who are getting great results for the business, but are doing so in ways that hinder or limit the team’s overall level of trust and capability.

You may not know why these particular members of the team would do things that damage trust on the team, but it is the leader’s job —with the team’s support—to ensure clarity about what behaviors will and will not be accepted. Building a culture of trust demands that everyone accept this as a team value, and not in words only. It must be accompanied by actions.

There are three other ways that I consistently encounter with teams in which trust is damaged or limited, and unproductive conﬂict emerges. These are:

The individual who won’t share personal information
Sarcasm disguised as humor
One or more disengaged members of the team

Sometimes, there’s a team member who may have trouble ﬁtting in and is reluctant to share anything personal, believing that work life is work life, and personal life is personal. Not wanting to mix the two, this type of person will not discuss his or her personal life with co-workers. Often, this causes failure for the team, but sometimes the team can overcome it, especially with a leader who is a great role model.

A team can work very hard to build the trust level for the members of the entire team, incorporating personal information sharing into their staff meetings and seeking out opportunities to collaborate on projects. It is not an easy process, but it can work. If trust is built on a strong foundation, it will be able to sustain the natural human errors that we all make.

For that to happen, though, it must be a priority for both the leader and the team. Is there someone on your team who is holding back; someone with whom others cannot seem to connect? If there is, your team needs to deal with this, because even one closed-off member can distract a team from its primary focus: to use trust to do great work together. The entire team needs to convey the importance of opening up to each other as humans, and make it clear that everyone is expected to work together in this way. It’s important to create a safe environment in which this can begin to happen.

A problem also occurs when one or more members of a team erode trust through their sense of humor . Words matter, and a constant negative exchange can keep a wall between people. This often happens on teams that have been together a long time and haven’t had many members join or leave. They know each other’s weak spots, and they’re used to poking so-called fun at each other. They’ve come to habitually deal with issues covertly through public humiliation versus overtly through direct private conversation.

If this is happening on your team, try to assess how much of a problem it actually is. Watch the faces and body language after a verbal dagger has been thrown, and if you can see the energy being sapped from that person, intervene.

Take a moment and think about it—does this joking make the team stronger? Or, might it keep people from truly opening up to each other? Do you recognize this happening anywhere on your team?

Do Your Behaviors Help or Hinder Team Accountability?

Mon, 29 Jul 2019 00:00:00 GMT

One leader who was a barrier - and then became a champion - of a one-team mindset.

In our recent posts, we’ve been discussing accountability. Now it’s time to talk about how leaders can foster accountability for the team. One of the most important things that a leader can do is keep the team focused on the real competition; those who exist outside the walls of the organization, trying to win their customers over every day.

Team members can unleash their creative juices on solving the real problems of the team and the broader business. Making this the focus keeps people from clashing within the group. When this focus is lost, infighting and bickering among the team members thrives. It’s no longer us against them; it is us against us. We have met the enemy, and they are sitting in the same room as we are.

Once, the leader at the mortgage division of a large regional bank wanted to break down the functional silos that had cropped up on the team. As the external marketplace was becoming tougher, the internal finger-pointing and blame was steadily increasing. The leader wanted to put a stop to it. When individual, confidential interviews were conducted to gather information about the current team dynamics, in order to effectively design and facilitate the upcoming team development session, something interesting was discovered.

Each member of the team knew that the leader wanted to create a one team mind-set. The new business realities required them to work together and support each other in a way they never had before. The leader was under tremendous pressure from corporate officials to hit the numbers. The employees got it. Rather than causing them to band together to achieve these goals, the manager was actually driving a wedge between them. He was so used to driving their individual accountability that he didn't realize that his actions were now out of sync with the team mind-set he really wanted.

During staff meetings, he would single out individuals who had not achieved their targets, and become very accusatory as to why this happened. How did the others react? While they felt for their teammates, they wanted to stay out of the line of fire. If they came to the victim’s aid, then they too might be singled out for blame for the challenges in their own areas. They could see very clearly the inter-dependencies that existed, and how they needed to work together to fix the problems; but the support from the team leader was not there to make this cross collaboration happen.

When I shared this feedback with the team leader, he was not surprised. He knew it was going to be tough to change his behavior. He was committed to making it happen, however, because he had no other choice; not if he and his team were going to continue to be successful in an increasingly unfavorable marketplace. It was time to create some conflict norms, for which everyone on the team promised to hold themselves and each other accountable.

The leader clearly undertakes a critical role by establishing a firm foundation for personal and team accountability to take hold. In our next post , we’ll turn our attention to those times when the team is together, and the potential that meetings have for being a place where the team’s commitment to accountability can truly shine. As you’ll learn, the leader can play an incredibly valuable part in keeping the team focused on crucial business issues.

Accountability: Implementing A New Approach

Tue, 23 Jul 2019 00:00:00 GMT

A story of accountability - the rest of the story

In our last post , we talked about changes recommended to a team that was having trouble with accountability. I’d suggested that a team member, Kathryn, give me a call to talk about how the system I proposed had worked. In this post, we’ll talk about her findings, and then we’ll discuss how these results can help other teams.

The feedback I received, after only two weeks using this new action planning approach, was wonderful to hear. Kathryn told me that her team leader, Bob, had expressed some discomfort when she informed him that he would now be addressing the action items from the previous meeting. (I personally think this was because he hadn’t clearly assigned accountability to specific team members, so holding them responsible would be equally difficult.) She encouraged him, though, by saying that the first time would likely be very difficult and uncomfortable for everyone in the room, but that it would only take one time before people would get the message that he meant it.

And she was right! They had captured the assignments real time during the meeting, and then Bob made his way through the list and asked directly for explanations on why things had not been completed. Although this was uneasy for everyone, the message was unmistakable: People were expected to fulfill their commitments, and lame excuses would not be allowed anymore. The accountability level for the whole team, including the leader, had been taken up several levels. Kathryn also told me that several of the team members had instituted a similar procedure for their own staff meetings , since it had worked so well with the initial group.

One other area of accountability to discuss is the need to take responsibility for team decisions. When you complete a discussion, is there a clear outcome or next step that is understood by all? When two or more members take a conversation off-line, how will the team know if the issue is ever resolved, or learn the results and rationale for any decisions made? Those members need to discuss in detail the decision’s impact, and how they can support its execution, with the rest of team.

There must also be a mechanism in place for tracking the effectiveness of the decisions that have been made.

What can we learn from those situations when a decision wasn’t implemented with excellence?
Was it the wrong decision?
Did the team make faulty assumptions?
Did we not have true commitment?
Were there unforeseen circumstances?

Only by taking the time to conduct this after-action review will the team be able to improve its hit rate and truly raise the bar on its level of effectiveness, and become comfortable revisiting and revising decisions based on new information.

In our next post, we’ll talk more about this accountability, and how to make fixing problems the responsibility of everyone on the team. Then we’ll offer some questions to help you determine your team’s accountability level.

Do You Bury Your Head in the Sand about Conflict on Your Team?

Tue, 23 Jul 2019 00:00:00 GMT

The Leader's critical role in acknowledging conflict to move your team forward.

In this series of posts, we’re discussing conflict and how to use it to benefit your team. Having already talked about changing your mindset to embrace creative abrasion in my last post ( Step One ), it’s time to move ahead.

On to Step Two: Acknowledge and discuss conﬂict that is already occurring, and determine its sources and impact.

Conﬂict is like a 12-step program; you ﬁrst have to admit you have a problem. Putting your head in the sand about whether conﬂict is occurring on the team or not is pointless, because it absolutely exists. I have worked with more than my share of groups with leaders who assure me there is no discord on the team.

I remember reading a survey that asked employees what New Year’s resolution they most wanted their leaders to adopt.

Want to take a guess what it was? Do something about the conﬂict in the workplace!

Just because you don’t see people yelling at each other and overtly expressing their dislike of others doesn’t mean you don’t have some degree of tension. Explicit expressions of anger are not the only way that conﬂict plays out on a team; oftentimes, it has gone underground or been glossed over.

Conflict can surface in many silent, hidden ways: like the passive aggressive person , or the femme fatale. You know the kind of people I’m talking about: they pretend to be your friendly colleague, a real team player who appears to agree with the team’s consensus, but they are truly just feigning their cooperation and support. Instead, they will do just enough to get by, rather than giving their full energy and effort.

It can be very deﬂating to the whole team when one or more members act like they are on board and truly are not. These people use others’ trusting nature against them, and take advantage of the collaborative team in order to avoid responsibility and commitment. Not only does it defeat the person who has been stabbed in the back, it destroys—sometimes for good—that person’s belief in the goodness of others, and the team’s belief that this trust idea will ever ﬂy.

So, who or what is eating your team alive? What behaviors are proving to be toxic to the very trust you are trying to establish? Is someone harming the team and getting away with it?

In next week's post, we’ll talk about various techniques for turning destructive conﬂict into productive conﬂict. Sufﬁce it to say for now that the team leader needs to step up and address this situation head on, as quickly as possible.

Turning Your Staff Meetings into Can't Miss Events!

Wed, 17 Jul 2019 00:00:00 GMT

A story of accountability - by the leader and the team

What do staff meetings have to do with accountability? If the leader is committed to keeping the team focused, the times that the team is together can be used to really let the team’s commitment to accountability shine. Staff meetings can become can’t miss events if people believe that challenges and problems will be discussed and resolved, that decisions and commitments will be made, and that they will be upheld. To illustrate this, let’s look at the experience of a team I once helped.

Bob was a team leader whom I encountered with an accountability problem. His people were not taking action on the tasks to which they had committed during their weekly staff meetings. Bob asked me to come observe their meeting and see if I could give them some advice on how to improve the team’s functioning. The gathering began with a team member named Kathryn briefly reading through the action items from the prior meeting, and getting status updates from people as she reached their name on the list. There seemed to be a lot of hemming and hawing for most of the items. I could see what Bob meant when he said that people weren’t sticking to their commitments, and I had a good idea why. More on that later; now, on to new business.

There was actually very lively debate on several pressing issues. The team was floating around a lot of ideas for solutions to problems; however, it was hard for me to tell when anyone had actually decided anything, or assigned a corresponding obligation. There were some vague comments like, “Sue, that would be a good thing for you to think about following up on with the marketing department.” The meeting ended, and I shared my perspectives with Kathryn (at Bob’s request). I realized she had been taking notes on the ideas that were batted around, and she thought she was clear on who had been asked to do what. I told her it wasn’t so clear to me, and I was in the room, too. I even wondered whether the leader was absolutely clear on when something had been assigned, and to whom it had been allocated.

I recommended some changes for the next staff meeting. First, team leader Bob–not Kathryn–should be getting the status update from each person, since he is the one to whom the team members report. They should be eyeballing him and trying to fluff their way through the answer, since Kathryn couldn’t hold their feet to the fire like he could.

I also suggested that she keep a running list of action items that arose from the discussions in a way that was visible for all to see. Either on a flip chart, or, since they had an LCD projector mounted in the ceiling, as a Word document to be updated and reviewed at the end of each discussion item (or at least at the end of the meeting). As stated before, there is something about seeing your name up there in bright lights with an action step and a due date beside it to make it really real.

People seem to take a lot more interest in what is actually written up there when their name is listed beside it. I asked Kathryn to give me a call after the next meeting to tell me how things went. In our next post , we’ll find out the rest of the story --- how the new system worked how our findings were applied to other teams.

Does Your Leadership Style Reinforce Groupthink or Creative Abrasion?

Tue, 16 Jul 2019 00:00:00 GMT

The leader's role in creating a fertile environment for productive conflict.

In my earlier post , we discussed framing conflict not as something negative, but as creative abrasion. We used the examples of oysters creating pearls and coal turning to diamonds under extreme duress. We concluded with the premise that it’s the leader’s job to create a fertile environment for productive conﬂict, guiding the team to embrace creative friction and achieve true synergy.

Now, we address how that can be accomplished.

Step One : Begin with a philosophical—but realistic—mind-set that conﬂict is natural, expected, and yes, even desired . And, if channeled properly, extremely productive. This is creative abrasion thinking.

Step Two: Acknowledge and discuss conﬂict that is already occurring, and determine its sources and impact. Is it one-on-one, leader and subordinate, or team wide? Is it an annoyance, or is it debilitating?

Step Three: Get serious about addressing conﬂict . Develop a plan and approach for resolving it, and hold people accountable for making this happen.

In this post, we’ll focus on the most difficult step: the very ﬁrst one , which requires you to make what may potentially be a very considerable mental shift in your personal view of conﬂict. The problem is that abrasion is not creative unless a leader makes a conscious effort to make it so—and one necessary component of this is trust. When it comes to viewing conﬂict productively, the leader’s role in creating such an environment is so vital. Then, everyone on the team needs to become more comfortable when conﬂict occurs.

When heated, passionate exchanges ensue about alternative solutions, pros and cons, and choosing the right path, all parties can leave the debate with respect for the others if there is a strong foundation of trust . When trust has been broken, damaged, or never was established in the ﬁrst place, then it is very difﬁcult to engage in a debate about ideas.

Another critical component that a leader can control is hiring and valuing a team that exhibits a diversity of talent and thinking styles. It is hard to encourage different perspectives if they all resemble your own. This is a well-known issue with managers: hiring those people you like and to whom you can really relate can cause you to end up with a uniformly-minded team.

Harvard Business Review reported on a study that clearly demonstrated that teams that were homogeneous in thinking styles were initially very productive . This makes sense, since they all thought the same way, talked the same way, and in fact, could likely ﬁnish each other’s sentences. After a short period of time, however, their level of productivity peaked. Why? For the same reason that success had initially taken hold— they were all thinking, talking, and working the same way . The lack of diverse experiences, opinions, and approaches stunted their growth as a team.

However, the opposite occurred with those groups that were determined to have heterogeneous thinking styles. They were initially dysfunctional and less productive ; but once they learned to value and capitalize on the differences on their team, their productivity level soared past the same-minded teams.

The lesson here is clear: although similar viewpoints may seem to encourage team productivity at ﬁrst, only a wide variety of opinions and attitudes can keep your team thriving in the long run. As Thomas Stewart, former editor of the Harvard Business Review, so aptly put it: “It is often said that sparks from opposing ideas ignite innovation. ” What’s the next step in turning sparks in to a flame?

In our next post, we’ll move on to step two. Still questioning how conflict leads to productivity? Let’s talk, and together we can put together a plan to encourage diversity in perspectives!

Is Conflict a Problem or a Boon?

Wed, 10 Jul 2019 00:00:00 GMT

Do you (or your leader) see conflict as "creative abrasion" or destruction?

When you think about conflict, you probably think of something stressful and problematic. Most of us are non-confrontational, and don’t enjoy the uncomfortable feelings that conflict produces. However, if we look to the natural world, we can see examples of how conflict can be productive . Rather than looking at conflict as negative or destructive, it can be useful to see it as creative abrasion—a very powerful innovative force.

The president of Nissan Design International, Jerry Hirshberg —the man who originally coined the phrase creative abrasion —felt so strongly about the power of this concept that he purposely hired people to design cars in pairs that represented very divergent thinking .

Picture the people on your team. How diverse is their thinking? Are you proactively tapping into that diversity, or do you and your other team members treat it more as an irritant, like the grain of sand in an oyster?

I debated with myself which metaphor to use to describe accurately the fruitfulness I have seen creative abrasion evoke . I began with the oyster. Ah, yes, everyone has heard about that bit of sand that becomes a pearl, but let’s extend the metaphor a little further.

Unbeknownst to many, the oyster’s true function is not to make the pearl. Thus, that grain of sand is pushed to the side and constantly covered with a shiny substance that smooths out those rough edges, making the irritant tolerable - but serving no useful purpose to the oyster. Humans, on the other hand, are more than happy to embrace this by-product of the oyster’s attempts to make his environment more comfortable. Do you view the conﬂict on your team in the way that the oyster sees the pearl—as something to be buried or glossed over?

Let’s take another metaphor—this time, a piece of coal. Do you know how that ugly lump becomes a diamond? Through intense heat and pressure. Is that the kind of environment under which your team works best? Is there always a new ﬁre to ﬁght? Do you suffer through white-hot, high-conﬂict situations, and often ﬁnd it hard to appreciate the diamonds that were produced?

Bear with me for one more metaphor, if you would, and picture two tectonic plates on the earth’s surface—your way and my way , perhaps—grating against each other. Many people know that when this kind of friction occurs between plates, earthquakes often ensue. But what happens when these two plates—or viewpoints—come together? If the environment is right, they create a mountain—a third viewpoint that is a product of these other approaches and that is grander, loftier, and more powerful than either one was on their own. This is true synergy.

It isn’t always easy to create a fertile environment for productive conﬂict, and it certainly doesn’t come naturally. The leader must guide the way, and then every member of the team must follow that path.

In my next post , we’ll discuss the three steps to make that happen.

Let’s Talk Accountability

Mon, 01 Jul 2019 00:00:00 GMT

The three lens of accountability - personal, leader, and team.

In the next few posts, we’re going to be talking about accountability. This is a subject best viewed through three separate lenses: personal responsibility, the role of the leader, and the team’s collective accountability. This post, and the ones that follow, will provide some best practices for positively impacting all three.

Are you as good as your word? Can others trust you to live up to the commitments that you make? What does exceptional personal accountability look like to you? Do you think that everyone sees it the same way? Many team leaders have complaints about a lack of accountability on the team, or a problem with people on the team not taking responsibility, but when asked to describe what this looks like when it’s done well, they find it very hard to do.

It’s much easier, therefore, to ask people to remember a time when they saw an outstanding example of someone taking accountability or being answerable for their actions. I ask each person to describe the situation, what the person did, and why this was a good example of accountability. This can be a very powerful experience for a team, especially when each member is able to see the similarities and the differences in expectations about the individual meanings of accountability.

There is a wonderful book entitled QBQ: The Question Behind the Question , by organizational development specialist John Miller. It is a short, pithy, easy read, but it tackles the tough topic of personal accountability with exceptional clarity and an orientation toward action. It’s almost like giving each member of the group permission–and a guide–to turn their attitudes around, and make positive change happen in their lives.

Miller’s book shows people how to regain a sense of control over their actions and reactions to the world and people around them. It instructs readers not to see themselves as victims who blame others for their circumstances, but instead to take ownership and action by asking the simple yet serious question, “What can I do to improve this situation?” This is what Miller calls “the correct question” versus “the incorrect questions,” such as, “Why does this keep happening to me?” or “Why don’t people just do their jobs?”

Miller provides several easy tips for turning any incorrect question into a correct one. Incorrect questions begin with the words why , when , or who , while correct questions begin with what or how . Incorrect questions contain the words them, they, we, or you, while correct questions simply contain the word I . Incorrect questions dwell on the current situation; correct questions focus on action.

Thus any one of us, when faced with difficult circumstances or demanding people, can choose to change our response from incorrect (“Who dropped the ball on this?”) to correct (“What solutions can I provide?”). The beauty of changing our questions—and thus, our mind-set—is that we’re able to turn laser like focus on our actions and ourselves. We can then use this information to impact the way in which we view and react to the events and circumstances of our lives.

We all know, but always forget, that we can't change other people; we can truly only change ourselves. We can choose to tap into our inherent creativity and turn our energies toward finding solutions that address these issues and problems; and that is the first step toward reclaiming control over our current situation. As Miller says in QBQ : “Personal accountability does NOT begin with you. It begins with me…Personal accountability is about each of us holding ourselves accountable for our thinking and behaviors and the results they produce.”

In our next post, we’ll talk more about accountability, and how managers and leaders can demonstrate and reinforce it. We’ll take a look at what managers can do to be true role models for excellence in accountability. Starting with one-on-one situations, we’ll move on to discussing the leader’s role in driving accountability for the whole team.

The Role of Leadership in Promoting Accountability

Tue, 18 Jun 2019 00:00:00 GMT

Now that we’ve begun talking about accountability, it’s time to discuss it within the framework of leadership roles. While accountability must start at the individual level, those who become leaders must demonstrate and reinforce it. So what can managers do to be true role models for excellence in accountability? First, we will focus on how a leader should behave during one-on-one situations, and then move to discussing his or her role in driving accountability across the whole team or department.

One of the most effective ways to hold someone accountable is to improve your delegation effectiveness. This simply means clarifying what success looks like at the end of the task or project, outlining any assumptions and non-negotiables, and defining any known key milestone dates and targets that must be hit. You should also define quite clearly your team members’ scope of decision-making authority.

Leaders are likely to have greater luck getting their employees to commit to completing a job with excellence if they provide reasons for the particular delegation. By taking the time to explain why they are assigning this responsibility or project to this specific person, they are far more likely to enhance the impact that its success will have on the team and other ongoing projects, and thus achieve some broader departmental or organizational goals. People like to feel that they are in the know. They don’t like receiving a task without understanding how it fits into the larger scheme of things. Ask yourself, if your boss told you today to go gather certain information without telling you what this information was for or how it was to be used, would you want to--and could you even--give it your best effort? Probably not. Don’t expect those who report to you to feel any differently. Such an explanation will likely only take a few minutes more, but can cause a completely different attitude and result for those to whom you are delegating.

Other important points for the leader to consider when allocating responsibility are the resources and support that can be provided to help ensure this task’s successful accomplishment. Do you need to send a heads-up to someone that this work is under way? Is there an influential player who could really help to smooth the way for this individual to obtain the information or cooperation needed? How can you, as the leader, get them on board with this? Think about others who need to know what is going on, and inform them as soon as possible.

Agree on deadlines, and how progress will be tracked. Identify the key points along the way when those to whom you have delegated tasks should check in with you. The less certain you are of their ability to perform the task and/or the higher the criticality-level of the task, the more frequent the follow-up needs to be. If you clarify at the outset when these touch points need to occur, and which of you will initiate them, the less apt this is to be a point of contention later on. Finally, leaders should ask the individual to summarize their understanding of the task or project. Focus especially on what success looks like at the end, key delivery dates and metrics that must be achieved, and the progress-tracking procedures.

In our next post, we’ll dig deeper into what might happen during these tracking sessions. We’ll talk about trust, and how to handle errors when they occur. Stick with us, as we continue our discussion of accountability in order to help you strengthen your business relationships.

Quick innovation insights you can use from Apple, Google, P&G, and Starbucks

Thu, 13 Jun 2019 00:00:00 GMT

Four powerful innovation insights from four powerful companies.

Innovation can be spelled with a capital "I" – culturally embedded across well-known companies such as Apple, P&G, Google and Starbucks – or with a small "i" – going on every day in many less-recognized companies and myriad teams across the country. So what can we learn from the big innovation players?

Apple – Be very clear on your innovation philosophy. Apple has a clear focus on the customer experience; design takes priority. Whenever I ask audiences to share what comes to mind when they hear the word "innovation", Apple is always named. We can also see Apple as a cautionary tale – if innovation is too wrapped up in one person. You saw the stock price dip (not only for Apple, but for the tech sector in general) when the world learned Steve Jobs had cancer – because he is seen as the creative genius behind all their new product development. With his death, I believe that Apple is having a hard time remaining the icon of innovation that they used to be.

Google – Make time for employee innovation. Very different than the perceived “lone creative genius model” of Apple, Google believes in making innovation everyone's responsibility. You have likely heard they allow their employees to spend 20% of their time away from their “real jobs” to focus on their pet projects. You might have just marked that up to their being one of those "weird, California, bring-your-dog-to-work and get-a-back-massage" kind of companies. But you want to know the real reason Google does it? The founders tracked the progress of ideas they had backed versus ones executed in the ranks without support from above. What did they find? There is a higher success rate with ideas that came from lower in the ranks. Maybe the ideas were better or maybe it's just because the commitment to execute was higher. As I understand it, Google has pulled back on this creative practice. What will be the short-term and long-term consequences of that?

Proctor & Gamble – High-tech companies aren't the only innovators. Very different from these other companies, P&G is an old company with (in many cases) "old" brands and products. This company has to find new ways to make money in mature markets. They have an incredible success rate for their new product introductions – but it wasn't always that way. It went from 1 in every 6 new product introductions having a positive ROI when AG Lafley took over as CEO in 2000 (about standard for the consumer packaged goods industry) to 1 out of every 2 new product introductions today. How? Like Jobs, Lafley had a laser-sharp focus on understanding the consumer needs & he established disciplined, repeatable, and scalable innovation processes. He also moved the responsibility and source for innovation outside the walls of R&D, and even outside the walls of their own company. Innovation is now completely embedded in their organization. It is the way they do business. He's no longer there - who will be the indisputable innovation leader at P&G now?

Starbucks – There is room in the innovation tent for both left-brain and right-brain thinking. CEO Howard Shultz had always run the business based on intuition. Now with the tougher marketplace, he’s having to gather more data. During one such deep dive into the data, he discovered they were wasting millions in milk since they don't resteam milk for product safety reasons. Did they go with a high-tech solution? No - one of the employees suggested they simply etch a line on the inside of measuring pitchers versus having the barista's wing it. According to an interview with Shultz, this became an incredible internal success story - and led to more small changes with huge impacts.

Summary:

Be very clear on your innovation philosophy.
Make time for employee innovation.
High-tech companies aren't the only innovators.
There is room in the innovation tent for both left-brain and right-brain thinking.

Operation FireFly: Ignite Everyday Innovation!

Wed, 12 Jun 2019 00:00:00 GMT

Here's how to turn boring, report-out staff meetings into innovation hubs.

As a leader, how can you ignite innovation on your team? Here are three very doable ways to start a fire under your team today - and get better results and more engagement tomorrow!

Make meetings fun, exciting, and inviting. Get team members to bring a creativity toy — interesting enough to engage your hands but not so fascinating that it’s distracting. Use a whiteboard rather than the dreaded flip chart. Try techniques like mind-mapping (for left-brain thinkers) or brain-writing (for right-brain thinkers) to get creativity flowing. Make your team meetings the most engaging and productive time of the week! Don’t laugh – it can happen if you really want it and make it a team priority.

Shine the light of accountability on your team. Even the most energetic, productive meeting means nothing if people don't follow up the decisions they reach with action. As a team, create a common picture of what personal accountability looks like. Then, delegate very specific assignments to very specific people. Finally, set a date for a follow-up meeting in which everyone must report on whether they fulfilled their commitments, and if not, why not.

From time to time, escape the office for a creative excursion. In these stressful times, people need a break from their current reality to think about “what if”. And I’m not talking about the stereotypical ropes course or trust falls. I’ve led and participated in “adult field trips” to a plane manufacturing plant, a zoo, a firehouse, and a jazz jam session. We learned how these unique teams worked together and solved problems – and then applied these lessons to our own team. And they also help you see others on your team in a new light.

After reading this advice, you may be thinking, "Okay, all this talk of toys and trips to the zoo is fine for other companies or maybe other departments, but certainly not for my team. We're struggling to stay alive. We just don't have time for innovation.”

Guess what? You're absolutely wrong. You must make time for innovation. Your survival depends on it.

Start small – just devote one hour of team time to a truly innovative brainstorming session. Not only are you likely to generate one or more immediately usable ideas, you will also have reengaged your people in the excitement of their work. All it takes is for one person to have a bright idea and pass it on to others—like the spark of a firefly that magically illuminates a dark night.

How Conflict Can Illuminate Your Team

Tue, 11 Jun 2019 00:00:00 GMT

How leaders can set the tone for healthy - versus destructive - conflict

Did you know that light originates from conflict? Atoms emit light only after bumping into another particle. The collision adds energy to the atom by momentarily knocking its electrons out of orbit. When the electrons fall back into place the extra energy is released as a photon—the basic unit of light.

I find this scientific metaphor suitable for teams. With a healthy amount of conflict, an entire team becomes brighter. Conflict strengthens our ideas by illuminating their flaws and refines our decisions by shedding light on our blind spots. What we miss seeing with our own eyes comes to light when we bump up against the differing perspectives and opinions of our teammates.

Unfortunately, most people shy away from conflict. Instead of seeing it as an illuminating force, they fear conflict because it’s combustible.

As a leader, your job involves setting the tone for conflict. How can you do this well?

1) Solicit pushback . By inviting others to poke and prod at your ideas, you give permission for your teammates to voice dissent without feeling disrespectful.

2) Epitomize courtesy . While you don’t want to be walking on eggshells with your team, neither do you want people cutting one another down or trading insults. Confront uncivil language and impolite behavior.

3) Demand unity . At the end of the day, you have to make tough choices as a leader, and sometimes your decisions may lack consensus or not even have a majority. Regardless, once you’ve committed to a course of action, no one on the team can be permitted to withhold support. You must agree to disagree, and then unify around what has been decided.

Mind Mapping: A Method For Sparking Your Team’s Creativity

Wed, 15 May 2019 00:00:00 GMT

In our last post, we discussed methods of establishing an environment that is conducive to creativity, in order to help your team generate a great deal of ideas in a short period. Now we’ll talk about the first of two techniques that can help further that idea. The Mind Map is geared toward freeing up the left-brain thinkers.

Mind Mapping is an effective individual brainstorming method to encourage all group members to think freely about the same problem at the same time without fear of interruptions, distractions, or the domination by some members of the group. Many of us are used to making lists of all of the things that need to be done, which is a very left-brained approach, and potentially very constricting when it comes to devising new ideas and solutions to a problem.

Mind Mapping can be used with great success on a wide range of issues, and can even help when you’re feeling overwhelmed with too much to do and anxious about how to get it all done. There is something very freeing and uplifting about getting all of these issues, distractions, tasks out of your head and on the page in front of you so that you can begin to tackle them.

So how does Mind Mapping work? Get out a blank piece of paper and turn it landscape style (horizontally) in front of you. The idea of the blank page can be a little scary, but this tool really works. Write the problem statement in the center of the page and draw a circle around it. This is your central theme. Then, let your mind run free.

As an idea occurs to you, draw a line outward from the center circle, write the thought at the end of the line, and draw another circle around it. Does a related idea come out of that one? Simply draw a line from your new circle and write the idea at the end of that line. Got a new train of thought? Pick another spot on the page, jot down your idea, draw a circle around it, and connect with a line to the central theme. Simply jot down ideas as they come to you. Don't let that analytical logical side of your brain take over—no editing or judging allowed. Keep it free flowing and right-brain-oriented.

Remain relaxed, because there is no right or wrong way to do this. That is the beauty of this tool. Think of it as emptying your brain of all ideas related to the focused problem statement in front of you. Some mind mapping experts encourage you to use colors, drawings, symbols, and other visual techniques, but many people prefer the speed and simplicity of a regular pencil.

Once you have truly captured all of the ideas on the page, it’s time to step back and allow the left brain to work.

What interrelationships do you see?

Are there some patterns that you hadn ’t noticed before?

Do some ideas rise above the rest as being more creative, actionable, likely to solve the issue?

Have fun with it, and let your natural creative instincts take over. They are there just waiting to be released —almost like fire flies from the jar!

Now that you’ve mastered Mind Mapping, freeing up the left brain thinkers on your team, it’s time to turn your attention to the right brained team members. Brainwriting is a tool that’s perfect for helping to bring focus to the right brain thinkers, allowing them to effectively channel their creativity. In our next post we’ll dig into Brainwriting and how to use it.

Igniting And Inspiring That Creative Spark

Wed, 15 May 2019 00:00:00 GMT

Toys are great tools for fostering an environment that inspires creativity, but if you aren’t comfortable bringing toys into the equation, you can create a similar atmosphere using something as simple as a whiteboard. The secret is not really in the toys - it can be anything that fans the flames of creativity by encouraging people to loosen up and think in different ways.

Oh, the magic of a big whiteboard! This one simple tool can transform one’s office into a gathering place for brainstorming and camaraderie. It’s very satisfying to clear off old things and truly starting with a blank slate. You don’t need one of the new fancy ones that are computerized and interactive, or allow you to print out what is written on them. Any simple board where you can post and erase items will do.

It’s exciting to gather in an office or meeting room to whiteboard a problem. There is such freedom in the whiteboard; it is so forgiving of mistakes, much more so than even a flip chart. Teams of people have been known to circle around one, each with marker in hand, contributing their perspective to the discussion. Whiteboards also seem to invite more collaboration than one person at a flip chart or capturing everything on a laptop does. For your next problem solving session, find a room with a whiteboard and bring some new dry erase markers with you. You won’t believe the engagement you just might kick off!

Once you’ve established an environment that is conducive to creativity, you can use one of two tools to help your team generate a great deal of ideas in a short period. The Mind Map is geared toward freeing up the left-brain thinkers; and Brainwriting is designed to give some structure and focus to right-brain thinkers.

In our next post, we’ll further discuss these techniques, their application, and how to implement them with your team.

FireFly's Creative Problem Solving Process

Tue, 14 May 2019 00:00:00 GMT

We've talked about the need to keep the problem solving process simple, since it's important to make it easy for the members of your problem solving team to do their job. In this post, we offer a procedure that makes the problem solving process easier to remember and easier to use .

In a nutshell:

Begin with a very clear, speciﬁc problem statement.
Brieﬂy discuss to make sure there’s common understanding.
Search for solutions.
Evaluate the ideas.
Implement the chosen alternative.
Assess the results and course correct as needed.
Learn from the process, and apply to next problem.

The ﬁrst step is to reach agreement on the problem statement and write it on the ﬂip chart. You would not believe how important it is to write this down for all to see. It is like a guiding light that should be used to remind everyone of the actual problem you are trying to solve, especially when you get into the idea generation stage. It works well to say to everyone, “Okay, let’s formulate a really clear problem statement.”

Make sure that the problem is small enough to solve. Sometimes, the smaller the focus, the better the brainstorming . You might think the reverse is true, and that keeping it wide open leads to a vast array of ideas. However, when the ﬁeld is too wide, this actually hampers good problem solving. Imagine the problem statement, “How can we improve our marketing programs?” There could be any number of directions that the ideas could evolve; so many in fact, that you might get stuck trying to ﬁgure out which way to direct your thinking. If you instead focus this particular problem-solving session on, “How can we increase the number of repeat customers to our website?” then you can actually (and perhaps counter-intuitively) generate better and more relevant solutions.

The second step is to take a few minutes to openly discuss and gain a common understanding of the problem . This will dissuade team members from trying to solve it too quickly, before they even know what the issue really is. It also can head off needless friction. There’s actually a story that proves this point beautifully, one that you have likely heard before, about the three blind men who touched an elephant to learn what it was like . Each man touches a different part of the animal, and then reaches a conclusion on what they felt. When they compare notes, they learn that they are in total disagreement. One, having only touched the squirming trunk, describes the elephant as being like a snake. The second, having touched just the swinging tail, says no, it is like a piece of rope. The third blind man, having only felt the leg of the great animal, says it is truly like a tree. They begin to argue vehemently, each certain of the correctness of their answer.

The moral of the story is obvious: There may be some truth to what others say, and sometimes we can see that truth, but only if we listen to them and hear things from their perspective. Be tolerant toward others and realize that although none of you knows the whole truth, combining your unique experiences might bring you closer to it.

Begin with a curious mindset and seek to learn what they know . Doing so will allow you to build a sense of collaboration and mutual purpose on solving the problem you now all more fully understand. We’ll delve deeper into this, along with the other steps in the problem solving process, in our next post.

The Power of Diversity of Thought

Wed, 08 May 2019 00:00:00 GMT

How can you recognize and tap into the strengths of each person on your team?

Diversity in the workplace goes much deeper than what you can see with your eyes - race, gender, age, job title. The best, most productive leaders discover how their team members think, what drives them, and where their strengths shine. Leaders light the way by making this kind of inquiry a priority, and by creating the tools and processes that allow people to see one another in a new light.

The Gallup organization studies employee engagement and the impact on the workplace. It has been shown that the more your employees get to do the work they do best, the more satisfied, creative, and productive they are - and the more likely they are to be retained by the company.

How do you effectively assess diversity of thought? I use the Herrmann Brain Dominance Instrument (HBDI®) to help everyone on the team understand and capitalize on the work they do best (using the Work Elements component of the HBDI). When we debrief their individual and team results, we discuss how they can use what they have learned to redistribute the work of the team to ensure that everyone gets to do more of the work they do best and less of the work they don't do as well.

And when they are putting together a new project team? Make sure you take into account the work to be done on the team and team members' preferences from the Work Elements.

Don't have the time to have everyone complete the HBDI right now? Here’s a practical application to illuminate diversity on your team and reap benefits from it. At the close of a week, gather your team together. Give each person ten minutes to make two lists :

List #1 - Three work activities from the past week that felt draining or tedious.
List #2 - Three job activities from the past week that felt enjoyable and invigorating.

Briefly discuss the lists as a group. Consider repeating the exercise several more times over the next 30 days to look for patterns.

At the month’s close, convene a team meeting. During the meeting, have them talk about one regular activity they dislike and one they find draining. Discuss ways you may want to reshuffle a few tasks or open avenues for team members to volunteer their strengths in new ways.

Who is Your #1 Team?

Mon, 06 May 2019 00:00:00 GMT

Patrick Lencioni's powerful fable of how to create a high-performance team

In December of 2002, my husband and I were on our way to Costa Rica to celebrate our 10th wedding anniversary. As often happens, he fell asleep shortly after take-off and I pulled out my airplane reading.

This time it was Patrick Lencioni’s newly published The Five Dysfunctions of a Team . I was immediately captivated by this phenomenal book, because I totally believed in and agreed with the author’s model for how an effective leadership team should function.

I had already read so many books that stated if members of a team were not truly interdependent, then they were not a team; they were just a group of people. They also contended that this was even the case for high-level executive teams.

Prior to reading Lencioni’s book, I had always thought companies were paying these leaders too much money to not have them functioning at a higher level than that of a simple group of individuals. They should be expected to act like they care about the success of the whole organization, not just their own silo.

I now had a model to support this theory, in a very well-written story—what I call a page-turner whenever I introduce it to teams. I immediately began sharing this model with the teams that I consulted with, and they too saw the power in it.

Over the following years, as I shared Lencioni’s book and model with numerous teams, I was struck by one common theme from the participants in the session— the paradigm shift of who is your number one team . They had not realized how closely they had been focusing on their own team—that is, the one that reported to them. This had a significant impact on their perspective of the needs of the business, the lack of attention they gave to the problems and opportunities of their teammates, and the power that could be unleashed if they truly began to look at the business synergistically as one team.

Facilitating Conflict Resolution Through Whole Brain® Thinking

Mon, 06 May 2019 00:00:00 GMT

How to present information in a way that it can be heard.

Are you ready to learn how to facilitate conflict resolution? When teams are having trouble communicating with each other, it can lead to conflict and reduced productivity. Fortunately, there’s an effective communication technique based on the Whole Brain® Model and HBDI®, that can help people present information in a way that will result in the intended message and impact. Here’s how it works:

Ask the “why” questions. Why are we here? Why is this important? Give them brief overview of the information you will be presenting. Wherever possible, connect this work to an overarching goal, a long-term strategy, or a broader positive impact on the organization.
Next, explain the “what.” Give them the relevant facts, the current status, how you will measure success, or trends analysis data.
Tell the team “who.” Now that you have engaged their heads, move to connect with their hearts. Open the ﬂoor for questions. If you know what the impact on them personally or other key stakeholders will be, tell them.
Ask “how.” Only after you have engaged their heads and their hearts can you engage their feet. This is where you make it very clear what you need the listener to do when they leave here.

Now here is the real kicker. Even though you present this information in the order outlined above, you create your message in the reverse order. You begin with getting very clear in your own mind about what you want them to know, think, feel, and do differently after your presentation. Then you back up and ask yourself, “What would they need to know in order to accomplish that? “ If you can’t answer that question based on what you know about the audience, then this is the time to reach out to others who might know them better. Finally, ask yourself, “How does this link into something bigger and more important that they would care about?”

Sometimes people jump into informing the listeners of the facts, then moving straight to action planning - what the presenter wants them to do about the facts - without making a strong case for why the listener should care. Other people don’t offer the big picture-how the project will help the organization to achieve some larger strategy or goal. Some only share the facts of the current status of the project, assuming that everyone could see what needed to be done about it and who needed to do it. And many people neglect to address how their project impacts the listener personally, what support is needed from them, what questions they had. It’s important to notice how your communication reﬂects your own thinking and communication style versus reﬂecting what your listeners need to hear.

One good leadership trait is the ability to be multi-dominant, viewing each topic through multiple lenses. Yet, without a leader like this pushing us, most of us — if left to our own devices —would much prefer to run our presentations by someone who is just like us, thinking and communication style-wise! And so, you get what you’d expect...”It’s beautiful. I wouldn’t change a thing!”

Occasionally people ask me the question, “If I know that I am presenting to a bunch of people who think like I do, do I really need to go through all four quadrants? “ My answer is an unqualiﬁed Yes , for several reasons. First, you can’t assume, based solely on a job title or department name, that you won’t have a "whole brain" present. Believe me, in over 20 years of debrieﬁng team HBDI proﬁles, you would be amazed at how much they aren’t like what you think they might be. Second, although you might want to change up the amount of time you spend in each quadrant, the ﬂow still makes sense as it is. Finally, it stretches your thinking to see the situation from all angles, and just might help you to truly have the greater inﬂuence you seek.

So, there you have it. How to make the sparks that ﬂy when two departments with different goals, who might be competing for scarce resources, use that creative abrasion to light a ﬁre that ignites an improved environment not only for these two departments, but also for others to follow in their footsteps. Isn’t that the real calling of leadership?

Accountability Cont’d: Team Responsibility

Tue, 16 Apr 2019 00:00:00 GMT

How would you score the accountability level of your team?

In prior posts, we’ve been discussing accountability, and how it can greatly improve a team’s overall effectiveness. Now we’ll talk more about how to make fixing problems the responsibility of the entire team. We’ll also offer some questions to help you determine your team’s level of accountability --- and tips for brainstorming solutions to any challenges you discover.

In addition to holding themselves accountable for improving decisions and their execution, teams should also hold themselves accountable for improving their overall meeting effectiveness. This can be as simple as conducting a five-minute plus/delta evaluation —what worked well in this meeting versus what can be improved upon for the next one. Pick a few of the most critical items to work on for the next meeting. These will be the ones for which people feel a little bit of improvement will have the greatest impact.

You can conduct a more formal assessment in which you track changes over a period of time (if your team is really into data). Doing this in real time gives everyone a chance to offer suggestions for how to improve the next time; therefore it is not just the team leader’s responsibility to fix it, it is everyone’s.

So, how would you describe the accountability level for your team? How successful are your team members at upholding their commitments? Do individuals realize and own up to how they may be contributing to the problem? I recommend that as the leader, you share with the team the significance of holding oneself and each other accountable.

Assure them that you've established a safe environment in which everyone can comfortably share their honest opinions on this subject, and be sure to stay true to your word. Then, conduct this accountability assessment: ask team members to write down where they would rank their team on accountability—Above Average, Average, or Below Average— and why.

Go around the table and ask each person to share what they wrote down. Be sure to reveal your own thoughts last, so as not to influence others’ responses. If you.re not sure if people will be truly candid, then give them a three-by-five card and a black pen and ask them to submit their evaluation and comments that way.

Once you’ve had a chance to analyze their responses, try to pinpoint some common themes for why the team received the rating it did . If it was low, explore the barriers and challenges— both personally and organizationally— which keep us from being models of personal responsibility and hinder our ability to hold our team accountable for our actions.

Use the information you’ve gleaned to decide on the top three areas where you want to make improvements , and conduct a brainstorming session for how to improve in each area . Reach consensus on what you will actually do, and specifically assign tasks for each team member to carry out over the next 30 days to improve accountability. And while you.re at it, determine how the team will hold itself accountable for actually completing these chosen assignments and course correct as needed.

So there you have it: a framework and process for driving accountability at all levels—personal, leader, and team. What do you think are the positive outcomes of greater accountability in all of these areas?

Perhaps the most rewarding is a sense of direction and empowerment—no more victim mentality or feeling that we are controlled by the external circumstances and actions of the outside world. Everyone is called to step up to the plate and perform at a higher level.

There is a renewed sense of collaboration and commitment to keeping your word to your teammates, and the leader reinforces this behavior at every opportunity. The team’s standards are high, and everyone knows what it takes to be a true contributor to the team’s success.

The words you say are not nearly as important as the actions you take. Your team becomes a role model for what a high standard of accountability looks like, and takes advantage of the tremendously powerful impact this can have on business relationships… and results.

3 Habits of a Deft Delegator

Wed, 10 Apr 2019 00:00:00 GMT

Tighter budgets and fewer staff means rethinking how we delegate work.

With tighter budgets and fewer staff, we could all benefit from a defter touch in the way we delegate. Here are three habits commonly held by effective delegators.

1) They paint a picture of what success looks like at the end of the project .

When delegating, read the final chapter first. Time may prohibit you from explaining the details of how you would like the plot to be written. However, don’t let that prevent you from giving clear direction on how the story should end.

2) They define deadlines and goals .

Vague requests like, “Can you make that happen?” or orders such as, “Be sure it gets done,” are sorry excuses for delegation. The person to whom you’re delegating should know specifically what must done and exactly when the assignment needs to be finished. For the purposes of accountability, it pays to document deadlines and goals in an email.

3) They provide a compelling reason for the particular delegation .

“Because I said so” may work on your 3-year old, but won’t cut it when dealing with a fellow professional. As the leader, it’s your responsibility to articulate the reasoning behind assigning work to your team. Use delegation as an opportunity to affirm both the person you’re delegating to and the value of the task being delegated.

For instance, you may want to point to the assignee’s:

Unique skill or giftedness for the job
Experience and qualifications for the project
Enjoyment or interest in the work
Reliability or trustworthiness

Or, you may highlight the task’s:

Strategic significance
Potential to bring about growth
Importance to you personally

Productive Conflict vs. Artificial Harmony

Tue, 19 Mar 2019 00:00:00 GMT

Do you have a "bobblehead" problem on your team?

We’ve discussed "creative abrasion" and productive conflict , and the importance of making effective decisions as a team . But what if your team doesn’t share the same ideas? I would expect and want people to passionately debate and share their ideas, as long as they don’t denigrate another person’s ideas in the process. You will be able to make better and faster decisions if the team has collectively created an environment where each person feels equally safe to share their honest perspectives, without a sense of the "artiﬁcial harmony" Patrick Lencioni refers to in The Five Dysfunctions of a Team .

This is the way I describe that behavior to teams. Do you remember the bobblehead dogs that people would place in their car rear windows? You get the picture—they nod relentlessly. Well, if you as the leader ask the question, “Is everyone on board with this decision and our plan of action?” and you see anything even slightly resembling a bobblehead from the people on your team and not a question or a word of concern... then you might be experiencing artiﬁcial harmony!

So what do you do if you see this "bobbleheading"? Don’t take them at their word. Ask questions ! Ask them to tell you all the things that could go wrong, all the iffy assumptions that have been built in, who we must convince this is a good idea... and then rely on the renewed energy, candor, and creativity of the team to bear and address those challenges together!

For this process to be truly effective, however, several necessary pieces must be in place for the team to create a fertile environment for productive conﬂict. One obviously critical element is for the team leader to role model what this looks like ; and I will discuss this in more detail in upcoming posts. But what about the rest of the team; what can they do to promote this inviting environment? Well, just like you have ground rules to make your meeting more effective (e.g., start and end on time, limit side bar conversations, forbid multitasking), a team also needs to create conﬂict norms that beget productive discussions that will lead to decisions to which everyone can—and will—commit .

Generating these principles themselves enhances any team’s commitment to uphold them. Even if your team has never used guidelines for decision making, many people on your team probably have some ideas of what the guidelines might be. I suggest that you and your team do the same; don’t get hung up on whether you currently have any rules. Simply move on to create them, and use them going forward.

For hints on how to create your own team conflict norms that will enable more effective decisions, click here for my post on that topic.

Team Building Field Trips - Let's Go Sailing!

Thu, 14 Mar 2019 00:00:00 GMT

How can you build trust and collaboration on your team - in a unique way? Take to the high seas (or just a nearby lake)!

In our previous post, we discussed a field trip that had real meaning for the teams that participated. By allowing them to see how various places functioned- a firehouse, a zoo, a jazz club, and an emergency room- they were able to bring back insight that could benefit the workings of their own company. The same company offered other such impactful field trips, some of which we’ll address here.

One such trip took the organization effectiveness team to a plane-manufacturing plant. There was something so grand in scope about seeing that plane being built piece by piece as it moved down the long assembly line; and the team learned how this group worked together to resolve problems as they arose on this journey.

Another trip involved touring an automobile manufacturing plant and seeing the cords hanging down along the manufacturing line. The ultimate symbol of trust and accountability—waiting there to be pulled by any employee who saw a problem—and decided there was an immediate need to stop production.

Field trips like the 360-degree landscape excursion affected team members positively as well. For this expedition, over 100 members of the sales and marketing teams went out into the marketplace to see how the company’s products were displayed, and how consumers interacted with them. Each sub team went to a different type of delivery channel- grocery store, convenience store, restaurant, and so on- with a series of questions to ask and things to look for and learn about the product. The power of being off and learning together, and the new insights they shared when they returned caused them to be bonded like never before.

Would you like to go sailing, in January, with strong winds, clouds, and 30-degree temperatures? No? Well, the team that went on that field trip was none too excited about the prospect either. Yet when the adventure was over, they felt they had truly beaten the odds and they were emboldened to take on their competitors with new energy and conﬁdence. So how did they arrive at this positive end? Perseverance! These sort of team events had been coordinated with a local sailing captain for a number of years, but never under these severe conditions.

A pre-reading was sent to all the participants to truly familiarize them with how to sail a 30-foot yacht. Terminology, sailing theory, crew assignments were all covered - and expected to be read. This was part of the debrieﬁng after it was all over - how a cavalier preparation for sailing into these uncharted waters might signal a lack of preparation on other critical, business-related ventures.

After a dockside orientation to review the pre-work, it was time for crew assignments, almost always designed with the intention of forming cross-functional, whole-brained teams. It was a great reminder of how people see events, think, and communicate differently. Once on board, they received hands-on instruction from their assigned sailboat captain. They learned how to function as a team in all of the crew positions. Assignments were rotated as each team faced a series of unique challenges requiring problem solving, successful navigation, and sailing skills to reach destinations. The grand ﬁnale was “Blackbeard’s Regatta,” when each team got the opportunity to apply everything they had learned—about sailing and collaboratively working together—as they made their way to shore, beautiful sails full tilt to the wind.

On this particular occasion, there was a temptation to scrap the whole thing, due to the harsh weather and rough seas, but the person in charge really liked the metaphor set before the team: tackling and overcoming tough sailing conditions equivalent to the difﬁcult and unfavorable circumstances in their marketplace . By the time they had successfully completed every challenge thrown at them and collectively and collaboratively sailed for shore, they really did feel like they had conquered tremendous odds—30-degree weather in January, wind blowing, never having sailed before. They were pumped to take on any market challenge that would be thrown at them, and their team leader was extremely proud of what they accomplished, and let them very clearly know how he felt. The result was one of the most powerful sailing outings ever experienced with any team.

What should be done when leadership doesn’t think these team building field trips are worthwhile? How can you convince management to prioritize team building? In our next post, we’ll delve into how to address concerns about the value of taking time for this kind of activity.

Be the Spark that Lights Your Team

Wed, 13 Mar 2019 00:00:00 GMT

“What is life? It is the ﬂash of a ﬁreﬂy in the night. It is the breath of a buffalo in the wintertime. It is the little shadow which runs across the grass and loses itself in the sunset.” – Crowfoot, great Blackfoot warrior and orator

These were the last words of Crowfoot, and they are as true today as when he breathed his last breath in 1890. We are only on this earth for a relatively short time; no one knows which day may be their last. I have a passion for helping people to ﬁnd joy and fulﬁllment in their professional and personal lives, and I truly mean it when I say to them, “Life is too short not to do everything you possibly can to enjoy the life you have now.”

My hope is that you will take these words as a call to action – for you to be the light you want to see in the world. I feel a tremendous sense of urgency to help individuals and team leaders to take a look around at their teammates, co-workers, colleagues, and signiﬁcant others. What is going on right before you that you have not noticed before? Do you believe you are the only one who wants to ﬁnd greater meaning and purpose in your daily moments and your life’s work? The odds are that you aren’t alone.

But you must take the risk of believing that it is possible to make a difference, and that you do have it within you to cause a change, even if it is as small a change as that caused by the proverbial wing of a butterﬂy. For as Mahatma Gandhi once said, “We must become the change we want to see.” You might be the spark that takes hold throughout your organization. There will be many stops on our journey and you will need tools and techniques, which we hope to impart through this blog, to improve your team’s effectiveness.

Do you believe that we all have creativity within us? Do you identify with this new deﬁnition of creativity: “To be original . . . to do something no one else would think of.” If so, then take a risk and ﬁnd your unique creativity—writing, painting, developing a new process, or discovering problems and opportunities that others didn’t know existed. Remember something that made you special as a child. Look for those creative sparks throughout your day, then do something with them.

Do you like the idea of a new role of leadership, which no longer relies on command and control, but involves truly leading through inspiration and collaboration? If so, then look at your current behaviors and determine which are helping you to achieve your vision for leadership through engagement, and which are holding you back. Start small, and stick with it.

In our next post, we’ll discuss how to find the untapped talent in your team.

Improving Your Team’s Decision-Making Ability

Wed, 13 Mar 2019 00:00:00 GMT

5 tips for improving the decision-making ability of your team.

How effectively a team handles productive conflict and makes decision that all will support is a key indicator of the overall effectiveness of the team. Below I offer 5 tips for improving the decision-making ability of your team .

Team decision-making begins with believing that your team can find more creative solutions and make better decisions if they have purposefully created an environment that promotes each person’s ability to bring their unique strengths, offering their diverse perspectives to the team.

Once you are aware that this is possible, it’s time to find an agreed-upon process for making the decisions. The team leader needs to clearly explain this process, along with the rationale for choosing this approach, immediately and up front.

In addition, team leaders need to be mindful of their role in the decision-making process, and must acknowledge that they can be a force for either good or evil. There needs to be a wide variety of ideas freely offered before making a ﬁnal decision.

Next, there needs to be clarity when the team has reached the point where they should make—or have made—a decision; and accept that it is time to move on, getting people to commit to a plan for executing the decision.

Finally, there needs to be a mechanism for tracking the effectiveness of the decisions that the team has made— one that makes members comfortable with revisiting and revising decisions based on new information.

Much of the work we’ve already discussed will guide you in creating this kind of safe environment; one that allows a diversity of opinions to be heard. Team members need to acknowledge that both their own and others’ opinions have value, even if they are vastly different. The team needs to ﬁnd ways to discover and continually emphasize these diverse perspectives. Not only will this stimulate better decision making, it will also, in fact, be better for each person’s individual job satisfaction.

Research shows that when people get to do the work they do best more often, superior productivity, discretionary effort, engagement, joy, retention, and loyalty result . Great teams play to their strengths; they clearly know who the competition is, and keep their sights focused on what they do and how to defeat them. They expend as much effort as they possibly can to being their best as individuals, a team, and an organization.

Impact vs. Effort: Next Steps

Tue, 12 Mar 2019 00:00:00 GMT

How to decide which ideas to move forward

We’ve been discussing Impact versus Effort , and in our last post, we talked about how well it works when all of the ideas that need to be evaluated are already written on sticky notes. Now we’ll talk about how to use the notes to organize the ideas you’ve generated. It’s a good idea to ask a neutral party to conduct the discussion and posting of each idea in whichever quadrant the team feels is most reflective of that idea's impact and effort to execute. The next best option is to mix up all of the ideas and divide them equally among the participants, with each person leading the discussion and placement on the flip chart for the notes they are holding.

What you don’t want to have is someone with an agenda leading the discussion and forcing consensus on what they feel is the right box for each idea. That’s almost as bad as having each person lead the discussion for their own ideas they just worked so hard to create. Who wants to put your own baby in that dreaded fourth box? The easiest approach is to use sticky notes. This allows everyone greater flexibility to move ideas as people begin to get more consistent, and sometimes harsher or more lenient, in their assessment of impact and effort.

A less attractive approach is to write and number all of the ideas on a flip chart, and then write the numbers in the agreed-upon box after discussion. Unless you happen to have some whiteout handy, this can begin to look pretty messy as the team refines their opinions about what warrants placing an idea in each box. It can also be difficult to remember what each number stands for, thereby forcing people to keep going back and forth between the list of ideas flip chart and the impact/effort flip chart and lose their flow of thought.

Two other words of caution: First, some people will be tempted to start combining ideas, saying, “Well, they’re pretty much the same thing.” They may like order, fewer choices, and less work. Any collapsing of ideas needs to be done very carefully. Again, this works best with sticky notes (if everyone agrees) by placing the notes for two ideas that are truly the same directly on top of each other. This creates a great visual effect as well; you can really start to see some of the more frequently mentioned ideas much more easily.

It is perfectly acceptable to tailor the criteria that you are using to your own needs or situation. You could replace impact/effort with important/urgent, cost/value, or two other measures of your own choosing. It is very important to spend a few minutes up front, before any idea placement decisions are made, making sure that everyone has a clear idea about what these standards mean.

For example, impact refers to what achieving this goal or solving this problem would mean to the team, department, or overall organization. When determining the effort required to successfully implement an idea, the problem-solving team should consider everything from dollars spent on new technology to dollars spent on allocation of people resources, from changes in individual human behaviors to changes in the entire culture of the organization. Agreeing upon the criteria’s meaning early, before the discussions even begin, will enable you to avoid a lot of needless, unproductive debate later on.

The Impact versus Effort chart works well because of its simplicity, but sometimes you need a process that works with more complicated issues. In that case, you may need more rigorous and standardized measures. That’s when the Decision Matrix comes into play. In our next post, we’ll discuss the Decision Matrix , and how to make it work for your team.

Dysfunctional Conflict or Creative Abrasion? The Choice is Yours.

Tue, 12 Mar 2019 00:00:00 GMT

Leaders play a critical role ensuring that conflict remains productive. Here's how.

There is minimal wasted energy in the glow of a firefly. Incredibly, 96 percent of the energy that a firefly uses to create light is actually converted into visible light. Compare that to a typical light bulb, which converts only 10 percent into light and uselessly expends the remainder. Fireflies know how to shine without creating heat—without wasting energy on unnecessary conflict.

Leaders are the gatekeepers of conflict—monitoring the degree to which it manifests itself within team dynamics. They allow conflict when it generates light, but defuse conflict when it serves only to raise the tempers and temperatures of those involved. However, what if you, as the leader, keep falling into useless arguments and petty debates?

From a healthy tension, conflict can easily boil over into a destructive war of personalities. Here are three pieces of advice to prevent you from stumbling into wasteful conflicts.

1) Start with the heart . Clarify your goals and intentions up front. Be honest and sincere in your motivations.

2) Innocent until proven guilty . Give the other person the benefit of the doubt. It’s easy to be suspicious of their motives and ascribe negative qualities to them in the heat of the moment. Remain composed and seek their perspective, even when it seems to make no sense.

3) Mirror, mirror on the wall . Evaluate your own motivations when you find yourself ensnared in a fiery debate. Sometimes our prejudices and predispositions make us unreasonable. Looking in the mirror makes us aware of our underlying desires and enables us to communicate in a more levelheaded way.

Team Building Field Trips - What a Zoo!

Mon, 11 Mar 2019 00:00:00 GMT

What can we learn from analogous situations, like the team that cares for the animals at a zoo?

In our last post, we talked about a team building exercise that took place in a large division of a Fortune 500 consumer products company. Participants were divided into cross functional groups, with each assigned to visit a different setting to observe how unique teams function. One team went to a jazz club, another to an emergency room, another to a ﬁre station, and the last team went to the San Francisco zoo.

The challenge was to go and observe how the team worked together, and to observe aspects such as how each member fulﬁlled their individual roles, how they collaborated to get the work done, how they prioritized the work, and what could be applied to the teams. We’ve already discussed the jazz team’s findings, but what of the other teams?

The ﬁrehouse team spent a lot of time preparing for emergencies. Close quarters and constant contact 24/7 for days at a time; these conditions demanded that everyone get over small petty conﬂicts. In fact, their lives depended on it.

And what about the emergency room? Their work was the embodiment of seamless integration. Everyone clearly knew their role and how it contributed to the greater good—saving the patient. Crisis caused complete collaboration.

Those who made the trip to the zoo learned that there was a clear, twofold sense of mission. They needed to please the crowds—letting them get as close to the animals as possible—while also protecting the animals (many of which were endangered) and the humans from each other.

You can’t always give the customer what they want exactly the way they want it, but this perceived limitation had actually sparked real creativity in the way the barriers were designed. These team members had a thorough and intimate knowledge of their "product’s" capabilities and their customers’ needs. They had to communicate continually and clearly—how the animals were behaving, if there were any signs of disease or distress, when to call in experts, and so on.

Aside from the actual lessons that could potentially apply to their real teams back on the job, it was a wonderful way for new employees to get excited about the drive for creativity and collaboration that was apparent in this company. There were a few other ﬁeld trips that had a similar impact, and we’ll discuss them in our next post.

Quick List of Five Delegating Do’s

Thu, 07 Mar 2019 00:00:00 GMT

As a leader, how can you successfully delegate important work?

After delegating to your team, they should feel empowered and essential. However, all too often leaders leave their people feeling dumped on, frustrated, and inconsequential.

Here’s a quick list of suggestions to keep in mind when distributing work to those you lead. By applying these tips, you’ll be able to accomplish more by getting the best from the people reporting to you.

1) Frame the assignment in a positive light

Cast vision for why the project has value, while casting vision for the value the person brings to the assignment.

2) Budget time to teach and train

Hurry undermines your efforts to delegate in two ways. First, when you’re rushed, you’re likely to forget to communicate much-needed instructions. Second, when moving with too much haste, your nonverbal cues tell the person you’re training that they’re not valuable.

3) Give permission for your people to ask questions or request assistance

Don’t assume the people on your team have residency inside of your brain. They don’t share your vantage point or inside information. Pause to bring them up to speed on a project by sharing its background and context, and let them know that you’re available to help if they encounter snags.

4) Avoid micromanagement

You can’t do it all by yourself, so don’t try. Spending time looking over the shoulders of those you lead is not only inefficient, but it also de-motivates your team by discounting their abilities.

5) Provide Accountability

In the words of Ronald Reagan, “trust but verify.” From the outset, make clear the results you’re expecting and the ways you’ll measure them. Then, follow-up periodically to make sure tasks are on track.

The Decision Matrix: “That’s A Wrap!”

Mon, 04 Mar 2019 00:00:00 GMT

Using the Decision Matrix for action planning

We’ve been talking about organizing data your team generates from brainstorming sessions and other creative processes, and how to use the Decision Matrix to do this. In this post, we’ll wrap up the Decision Matrix process. In fact, we’ll pick up right where we left off, at the point where your team had determined criteria to plug into the Matrix.

Once you ’ve identi fied the criteria and made a decision on how to score and rate each one, write this information along the top of the flip chart or the sheet of paper . If you’re feeling ambitious, you might even want to enter all of this information into a spreadsheet- you can find templates for this online.

Next, list all of the ideas in a single column down the left side of the page.

In most situations, the group discusses each idea and reaches an agreement on how to rate it on that particular criterion. Other approaches advocate rating each option or idea on the same criterion at the same time. In this way, the team is better able to compare the various options relative to each other against the same criterion. It can actually be very beneficial, especially in the beginning of the process, for each individual to come up with a rating independently and then to compare scores. This allows each team member to feel more responsible for and take greater care with their initial rating and the rationale for that rating. Sharing these ratings and rationale across the team can create a significant learning experience, if everyone keeps an open mind that their initial perception might not represent the whole story.

If it is likely that a dominant personality may overshadow the will of the people, then you could have each individual anonymously complete his or her own score sheet. You would then tally each of these to arrive at an average. Since the average could significantly misconstrue the true ratings, you would likely want to also track the median score for each one and revisit the items with a sizable difference between these two measures.

Once all of the ratings, check marks, or Yes/Nos have been tallied, and the weightings (if used) appropriately applied, then you can see those ideas or solutions the group thinks have the greatest likelihood for success. It is not necessary for the score to stand as it is, if the team feels that it can benefit from a discussion of the relative scores.

When the assessment and tally is completed, allow everyone to review the information silently first, jotting down their thoughts about those results with which they strongly disagree. Conduct a large group debriefing to see if you can address and resolve these key points of disagreement or concern. See if reinforcing a both/and mindset to take the best parts of several alternatives helps to shore up some solutions that might have scored high overall, but might be missing some critical pieces that other solutions scored more favorably on.

If you are still having a tough time reaching a decision as to which idea/solution to move forward into the implementation phase, then you might want to consider taking on another person’s perspective-such as the CEO or the customer- and see how that lens might impact the ratings these ideas receive. If all team members are not in full agreement, find a definition of consensus that can be fairly used for making the final decision, such as “I can live with that and support it” or “I believe this is the best decision for the organization at this time, and I will support it.”

Just as fireflies flash in patterns that are recognizable to other fireflies, we also can see when someone is on fire with a new idea, a new project, a new job; it is contagious to others. If the light is strong enough, then we become part of this glow.

Remember how creative we were when we were capturing fireflies as children? It was fun to discover new ways to catch them, what to keep them in, and how to keep them from getting out. We felt a greater sense of freedom as children, especially on those warm summer nights when anything felt possible.

Try to reconnect with that magical, creative time- even when you are addressing some of the most challenging problems of the team and the business. The more your mind is open to seeing the creative talents of your teammates, the exciting opportunities for improvement, and the new ways of solving problems, the more effective, collaborative, and engaging the work of your team will be.

Team Building Field Trips - All That Jazz!

Mon, 04 Mar 2019 00:00:00 GMT

Looking for more meaningful team-building events than trust falls? Read on for insights from a jazz ensemble.

When was the last time your team gathered for a purpose other than a regular staff meeting or a budget review? Have you ever gone off-site for a really engaging, exciting, team-building event? This doesn’t mean ropes courses or blindly falling into your teammates’ arms and trusting them to catch you...but, rather, excursions truly create lifelong lessons and connections that you can immediately apply to improve your performance as a team and a business unit.

There are many unique and effective ways in which I have seen teams boost their ability to work together—and tap into each member’s creative talents. In the next few posts, we’ll share a few meaningful experiences in which you may ﬁnd meaning and potential activities for your own team, as well.

One of these events took place in one of the largest divisions of a Fortune 500 consumer products company. After the usual PowerPoint presentations, things really got exciting. Participants were divided into cross functional groups, with each assigned to visit a different setting to observe how unique teams function . One team went to a jazz club , another to an emergency room , another to a ﬁre station , and the last team went to the San Francisco zoo.

The challenge was to go and observe how the team worked together, and to bring what was learned back to the group at large. This involved observing aspects such as how each member fulﬁlled their individual roles, how they collaborated to get the work done, how they prioritized the work, and what could be applied to the teams.

One big takeaway from this event was that the teams did not all function the same way . It’s an obvious concept when you stop to think about it, yet we don’t always consider the team’s purpose when we picture high-performing teams. We often try to create a one-size-ﬁts-all model for team effectiveness—something that can kill the creativity and vitality of a unique team.

For example, the jazz team found that it was important for the jazz quartet to feel complete freedom to riff off each other . When they were most relaxed, they were most creative. They needed complete trust in the skills and intent of the other members. Once they knew each other and their talents well enough, they could truly jam and play off each other. Even though each person was incredibly talented in their own right, they would willingly and happily give up being the lead to let another step brieﬂy into the limelight, allowing the group to then play off that new path that the star took. But they always synced up on their goal, not only for their own enjoyment, but also to make beautiful, powerful music together.

The jazz team’s experience brings to mind a very moving James Thurber quote: “There are two kinds of light—the glow that illuminates, and the glare that obscures.” Those who glared would not long be welcome in a jazz quartet.

In the next post, we’ll discuss the other group findings, relating to their own unique teams.

Making Time For Team Building

Fri, 01 Mar 2019 00:00:00 GMT

What about creating your own unique "Olympics" event to inspire camaraderie and collaboration?

“We don’t have time for this!” A common sentiment when it’s suggested that busy executives head off-site for team-building activities. But when teams make the time, they often find that these exercises ultimately lead to a deeper understanding and appreciation of one another.

One group decided to use the Olympics as their theme to participate in an assortment of physical, mental, indoor, and outdoor events. This was purposely differentiated from those executive golf team-building outings, where the same people who always hang out together still hang out together on the course. Events like that separate out the haves (as in have the golf skill) from the have-not's (better sign up for that massage or walking tour now). In this case, four cross-functional teams together found the various competitive events to be fun and challenging

Some people were hesitant about this session, because they didn’t think they could break away from the ofﬁce for a day to play games. But by the end of the Olympics, they were having such a good time it was actually hard to leave. They were all reminded of the power of teamwork. People were engaged, and the different environment caused them to see each other in a new light , which in turn increased morale and communications.

So, what do you, as leader, do when everyone says they are too busy to join in the ﬁreﬂy hunt, leaving group problems to remain unresolved? It is hard to take time—correct that, make time—to be away from your daily tasks for the purpose of enhancing your collaboration, creativity, and cohesiveness as a team. But I promise you that the payoff will be the long-term vitality and effectiveness of this group of people.

As the preceding Olympics team discovered, the results last way beyond game day. If you are only getting together as a team during regular staff meetings, then you are really missing out on the many other powerful ways to bond together as a team.

It’s easy to find concrete, doable steps, created to carve out time on the team’s calendar for higher value-added activities. On the easy end of the continuum (in terms of not a whole lot of up-front planning being necessary) are such ideas as a team declaration of a moratorium on meetings for just one day out of the workweek. This has the unintended (but happily foreseeable) consequence of causing people to be much more invested in making the meetings they do attend on the other days much more impactful.

Why stop there? Why not declare a ban on all habitually pointless meetings? How do you know a meeting will not be worth your investment of time? No one, including the meeting leader, knows what the critical meeting deliverables are. There is never a well-thought-out agenda for the meeting, much less one sent out in advance so participants can prepare to participate. We never have everyone there, since this meeting is not seen as a can’t miss event, so the same discussions happen over and over again, and decisions get delayed until just maybe the problem resolves itself. Sound like meeting hell?

In addition to implementing the ban on meetings for at least one day of the week, you could also try making the meetings you do attend more effective using the above-mentioned tips. And you could try replacing an unnecessary meeting with a brief phone call or one-on-one conversation, an e-mail exchange, or posting a document on a shared drive for people to add their comments and questions.

Hopefully, these suggestions will prompt you to ﬁnd the elusive excess time on people’s calendars that is needed to engage in quality team-building events . How about engaging your team in picking one of the events above to try out? Better yet, release their creative talents and allow them to design one that will truly engage them, and result in newfound collaboration and ideas to apply to your toughest business challenges and your most exciting business opportunities!

Determining Criteria For Your Decision Matrix

Tue, 26 Feb 2019 00:00:00 GMT

How to use the Decision Matrix as a team problem solving tool

We’ve been talking about methods for refining and organizing information in order to create an actionable plan. In our last post, we focused on the Decision Matrix. Ideal for helping to weigh ideas based on multiple factors, the process for using the Decision Matrix begins with a group brainstorming session to determine the criteria you’ll use to evaluate ideas. In this post, we’ll move on to the next phase, where that criteria is refined.

Discuss and re fine the list of criteria; identify any criteria that must be included or excluded and why. Reduce the list to those that the team believes are most important for reaching the right solution. Ideally, you won’t use more than five to seven criteria, since there tends to be overlap among them when you start adding more than this number. Also, the more you add, the more it becomes nice to have versus need to have. While voting with sticky dots can be used, first see if you can reach agreement the old-fashioned way—by talking it through. In the end, make sure everyone is very clear on what each criterion means.

The team then needs to decide whether each idea will be assessed against these criteria using a rating scale, a simple Yes/No, or a checkmark to indicate the presence or absence of that item for this particular idea . This will obviously impact the wording of the criteria themselves. For example, Low Cost to Implement can be answered with a simple Yes/No or a check mark, while Cost to Implement needs to be rated on a scale. This scale could be as simple as Low, Medium, or High; or you might choose to assign a numerical rating, with the highest number consistently representing best score. Make sure that everyone can verbalize the differences between each of the levels for each of the criterion.

The next step involves deciding whether the criteria should be weighted to show the relative importance of each in the final decision. This is where the beautiful simplicity of our two-by-two impact/effort grid with its criteria already laid out becomes obvious, and its advantage over the matrix is apparent. There are several approaches you can take to assigning these weightings:
- Have a general group discussion as to whether anyone believes that some criteria should carry more weight in the decision-making process than others, and why they feel that way.
- Assign the weights so that items of less importance have a lower number, and those of greater importance have a higher number, keeping in mind that the same weight can be applied to more than one criterion.
- Test the weighting decisions by turning them into sentences, such as, “If I understand the decision we just made correctly, then we are saying that it is three times more important that we choose the least cost solution over one that has a higher return on investment.” If something doesn’t ring true with the team, fix it now before you actually start applying these weights to real solution options.
- Another simpler and therefore less refined alternative is to discuss and reach agreement on how to distribute 10 points across the chosen criteria.

Now that you’ve determined your criteria, and you have a system in place for scoring and rating each one, it’s time to start plugging your ideas into the matrix.

In our next post , we’ll discuss how to accomplish this, going over the remaining steps in the Decision Matrix process, to show you how to get to your end goal: a plan. Make sure to stick with us, as we continue to show you how to increase your team’s ability to be more effective and collaborative in decision making.

The Three Creative Myths

Wed, 13 Feb 2019 22:32:02 GMT

Why do we abandon the creativity we had as children? Perhaps because we’ve bought into these myths.

Did you know that all ﬁreﬂies glow when they are first born, but some actually lose that ability when they become adults? How amazingly similar to what happens to so many individuals!

Enter into the world of small children, and you’ll instantly be whisked away into the realm of imagination. First, you’re attending a tea party at the palace of a princess, then you’re selecting your gown for a royal ball, and the next moment you’re hiding from monsters. Each of these make-believe scenarios is accomplished with minimal props and none begins with a brainstorming session. Children don’t have to be coached to be creative. They just are.

One of the tragedies of maturing is the dampening of our creative spark. Somewhere along the way our imagination quits functioning reflexively, and we have to plan to be creative. In particular, we shun creativity at work. Our days revolve around routine. We check the usual boxes and go about our business without plugging in to the illuminating electricity of our creative potential.

Why do we abandon creativity? Most likely because we’ve bought into the three creative myths.

Myth #1

Creativity is something you either have or you don’t, like blue eyes, brown hair, or left-handedness. It is, most people believe, a trait you are born with or without.

Myth #2

Being creative is something you do as opposed to something you are. This mindset lends itself to fairly harsh judgment of our own creativity based upon the value of output versus the ingenuity of the thinking.

Myth #3

There are a limited number of creative geniuses, a la Pablo Picasso. The negative impact this myth inflicts upon teams can be devastating. When one or two individuals on the team are held up to be the “creative” ones, the remaining members shrink back to the sidelines, waiting to hear what has been decided.

In my next post, I’ll pass along ideas to help you combat these myths in your organization.

Making Music Without A Conductor

Wed, 13 Feb 2019 00:00:00 GMT

What can we learn from this award-winning, "leaderless" orchestra?

The Grammy-award winning Orpheus Chamber Orchestra wows crowds around the world with virtuoso performances of Stravinsky, Mendelssohn, and Mozart. Garnering prestigious awards (a Grammy in 2001) and accolades (Musical America’s “Ensemble of the Year” in 1998), the New York based orchestra fills the world’s finest concert halls with adoring audiences and the some of the sweetest sounds on earth.

Astonishingly, the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra has no conductor! Its 28 members alternate roles and share responsibilities. From guiding rehearsals to interpreting selections, leadership of the group rotates among its musicians.

Thinking about the unusual structure of the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra sparked ideas in my mind about the nature of leading teams.

1) Being a leader doesn’t mean that we always have to pick the tune, set the pace, and assign the parts.

In a conductor-less organization, in which leadership and authority are dispersed throughout, creativity abounds. Each member has the freedom to contribute his or her unique talents for the benefit of all. On the contrary, the combined creativity of an organization is blocked when a single leader hoards authority.

2) In the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, no one has a back to the crowd.

Absent of the human barrier, the audience is invited into the midst of the orchestra and can share a more intimate connection with its music. Conversely, an organization with power concentrated too heavily at the top can easily lose sight of its customers. Generally, the most senior leaders have the least front line interaction with customers. If we, as leaders, don’t make room for the instincts and input of people throughout our teams, then we’ll gradually blind ourselves to the needs of the clients we’re trying to serve.

Pulling It All Together

Tue, 12 Feb 2019 00:00:00 GMT

Creating action plans for those great ideas that will get executed with excellence.

Now that your team’s ideas have been thoroughly evaluated, you’ve reached the final step of your process . It's now time to reach an agreement on what will be implemented, and what needs to be discussed and clarified. Congratulations! You’re well on your way to solving your original problem.

To begin, ask the analytical members of your team to help everyone test the solutions they’ve come up with, to make sure they’ll solve the original problem. Let your organized team members lead the charge by engaging the team in the development of action steps for executing these ideas by asking questions.

Beware - you might get some groaning from those who love the creative brainstorming part but not the detailed planning; remind them that the great ideas we just developed won’t get fully executed if we don’t do the hard planning work now . Some questions you might ask include:

What does success look like at the end of full implementation for each idea?
Where are we currently with this problem?
What are the major steps to get from current to future state?
Who needs to be accountable for each one?
What are the due dates?

It’s best if you create these timelines and major milestones while the team is still present at the session. It’s also a good idea to keep the planning time-frame short - about 90 days. That is about as far into the future as most teams can see. (One exception to this is for very large-scale change initiatives.)

You don’t need to outline each detailed activity step at this time; that is up to the individual to create a more complete project plan later. But do spend at least a few minutes troubleshooting the plan by asking such questions as:

What are the most difﬁcult, complex, or sensitive aspects of our plan?
What organizational or technical blocks and barriers could we run into?
Have we incorporated some good change management principles into our plan?

During the large-group debrief, ask each solution implementation sub team to walk through each of the major steps, while the others listen for interdependencies, gaps, and redundancies. They can also help the team to stress test or troubleshoot the plan.

Beware "irrational exuberance"! I warn you that by this stage most teams are very excited and want to plan very aggressively by choosing many ideas, short time frames, and front-loading them for the ﬁrst 30 days. Help them to temper their fervor with reality testing, but not enthusiasm busting. This public announcement of the team’s intentions is a great way to build commitment to the plan and to help each hold the other accountable for living up to their deadlines.

Last, reach agreement on how to check progress and course correct. These progress reports should include the activities that have been implemented, the results achieved, and any remaining items with corresponding expected completion dates. The leader and the team need to take a positive, action-learning approach to dealing with failure. Were the dates too aggressive? Did we meet unexpected obstacles? Should we revisit some of the ideas that didn’t make the cut to see if they might work instead?

The team needs the leader’s support the most at times like this. Remember to celebrate the successes and be tolerant of intelligent mistakes, but not delays or errors due to such things as a lack of collaboration or a lack of commitment to execution. Keep the creative spark alive and it will light a ﬁre under future problem-solving.

Create A Plan Using The Impact versus Effort Grid

Mon, 11 Feb 2019 00:00:00 GMT

How this simple 2 x 2 matrix can simplify evaluating your brainstormed ideas

In previous posts, we discussed using techniques like MindMapping and Brainwriting to stimulate your team’s creativity and generate ideas. Now it’s time to channel all those great ideas into a viable action plan! How do you pull all that creativity together in an actionable way? We’ve got two very effective techniques to discuss: the Impact versus Effort Grid and the Decision Matrix. In this post, we’ll talk about the Impact/Effort Grid.

The Impact/Effort Grid tool is very easy to use right away since, unlike the DecisionMatrix, it does not require the creation of criteria, and the grid has already been designed. It is also perfectly suited to evaluate a large number of ideas in a small amount of time, and it can be easy to determine fairly quickly what the highest priority ideas that should be moved forward into the action-planning phase are. The DecisionMatrix, on the other hand, is ideal for more complex decisions, especially if you incorporate a weighting of the criteria.

Both of these tools bring greater objectivity and thoroughness to the process than a simple sticky dot vote does, especially since it involves the entire group in the decision making process as opposed to just majority rule. Using them—at the outset or as a backup plan—can also ease tensions when strong opinions combined with strong-willed individuals make reaching consensus on the top ideas more and more unlikely.

If you can create a two-by-two matrix, then you, too can be a consultant! This is a relatable way to introduce the Impact/Effort Grid, because that is what this tool looks like. You simply draw a large square over the whole surface of a flip chart, then draw intersecting lines to divide it into four equal quadrants. Along the horizontal axis at the top of the square, write the word EFFORT, and then write in Easy on the right side, Difficult on the left side. Along the vertical axis, write IMPACT, and then write in Major at the top, Minor at the bottom. This is what those four boxes mean, and how you should deal with the ideas that fall into each one:

Easy Effort/Major Impact. The best of all worlds! Create a quick project plan, assign some accountabilities, and get started right away.
Easy Effort/Minor Impact . It’s up to you and your team whether to execute on this idea or not. If you need more quick wins than you can get from the one above (Easy Effort/Major Impact), you might want to build some of these ideas into the plan, especially if people have the capacity to take them on.
Difficult Effort/Major Impact. These ideas will need detailed action planning, so I recommend waiting to fully execute on them until the ideas above are exhausted. One caveat is that if there are not enough great ideas in the first two boxes, then you might need to get to work on these. Also, if you strongly believe that you will eventually implement these ideas, and some require a lot of up-front planning before full implementation would be possible, then you might need to get started sooner rather than later.
Difficult Effort/Minor Impact . Who would want to do these? Discard!

Impact versus Effort is such a simple concept, and it is the perfect next step from a brainstorming session when each person wrote down their ideas on individual sticky notes. As simple as it is, though, it does require some planning, and there are processes that make it easier still.

In our next post, we’ll take a closer look at Impact versus Effort, and give you some tips to make it work for your team.

Everyone has the ability to be creative

Tue, 05 Feb 2019 00:00:00 GMT

Would "creative" and "committed" describe your team?

Everyone has the ability to be creative—if you broaden your concept of what creativity means , and if you know how to tap into it.

My experience with hundreds of groups leads me to be able to say, with confidence, that at their core, great teams are comprised of creative, committed individuals who are using their best efforts to reach a common goal .

In fact, teams that solve problems and tackle challenges together have a special bond that’s not often found in other groups. And they don’t see these challenges as drudgery or something outside the scope of their work. They view it as the excitement and fun of being a part of a team.

Think of the members of the team of which you are currently a member or a leader. Would creative and committed be the words you would use to describe each one of them?

Problem Solving With Your Team

Tue, 15 Jan 2019 00:00:00 GMT

Tips for leaders on how to engage your team in a meaningful way

How can leaders engage their teams in a meaningful way? By stimulating their brains positively through support and praise, rather than shutting them down with negativity. It’s important to encourage your team to concentrate on the most important things, rather than joining in a ﬂurry of activity or allowing internal negative backbiting to get the best of the team. In the times they come together, teams really want problem solving oriented thinking, not report outs.

As problems or concerns arise during staff meetings, this is a great way to deal with them: say, “Let’s focus on that issue in our next team problem-solving session.” Employees feel as though they’re being heard, they know action will be taken, and they are a part of the solution instead of just complaining about the problem.

In fact, neuroscientists have found that the brain doesn’t build connections when told what to do; it only changes patterns when we’re involved in the process. Thus, involvement literally equals changed mind-sets. So you believe in the value of engaging employees in solving the critical business problems, and you take time to address these as a team. If possible, have a placeholder in your regular team meeting for identifying problems that need attention at a future, separate session. I don’t recommend that you deal with them at the time of the meeting; you will merely take away from the original purpose. However, asking people to keep an eye out for areas of improvement on a regular basis is a great way to keep them engaged in the discovery process.

If you can’t cover this issue during a separate session and it needs to be incorporated into a regular team meeting, then only choose one problem to discuss and make sure you allow enough time on the agenda to really get into it. And don’t make it the last agenda item, because you might never get to it. Or by the time that you do, the energy level has been sapped by dealing with the more mundane, but urgent issues and people are just ready to get out of there.

If you can create separate, focused, creative, problem-solving sessions, then I recommend you move to a different location from your regular staff meeting. A different view out the window can trigger a different view from your mind’s eye.

Now that you have made it clear that thinking with creativity is a priority—and have demonstrated this by setting aside speciﬁc time to be creative—how do you make sure that your behavior during the session doesn’t put a damper on your teammates’ desire to offer their ideas?

People can feel very vulnerable sharing original thoughts; in fact, many consider the risk of speaking up to outweigh any possible beneﬁts. “When in doubt, keep your mouth shut,” says that little voice in their heads. Some leaders have managed teams whose members only introduced issues at the weekly staff meeting that they knew had already been resolved. Bringing something new to everyone’s attention was simply perceived as too risky. In addition, they were worried that their colleagues would think that they were throwing someone under the bus or blindsiding them if they hadn’t already shared—and resolved—any problems with others outside of the meeting. Everyone except the leader knew implicitly that it was better just to keep quiet. So what’s a leader to do? In our next post, we’ll talk about this issue, and how you can convey to your team the value of speaking up.

Purpose + Passion = Productivity: Part 1

Mon, 07 Jan 2019 00:00:00 GMT

Finding your formula for success.

What’s the formula for engaging and empowering your workforce? It’s very simple, really: Purpose + Passion = Productivity . We’ve all heard, “Our employees are our most important asset,” and yet the latest Gallup research shows only 29% of employees are engaged .

In our next few posts, we’ll show you how that formula works, and how to apply it to your team - with concrete, actionable ideas - for having an immediate, positive impact on the levels of engagement and empowerment within your employees.

We want to help you:

Clearly make the business case for the importance of employee engagement.
Know what you can personally do to positively impact engagement and empowerment in your company.
Create your 30-day plan for putting three things you learned into action.

Why is employee engagement so critical to the success of your business? Research indicates what common sense also dictates: employees who are engaged are more productive and profitable, create stronger customer relationships, stay longer in the company, and are your best source of new ideas . The more people get to do the work they do best, the more engaged, productive, and satisfied they are at work.

So how can you personally impact your employees’ engagement and empowerment in a positive way? By learning the unique qualities, strengths, gifts, and weaknesses of all the members of your team. Once you have that knowledge, and your employees feel respected and valued, you’ll find it easier to capitalize on each team member’s unique attributes.

In our next post, we’ll talk about the 3 P’s of engagement and empowerment. The goal is to make you the best manager your team could want, able to facilitate connections and creativity, and empower your team to do great things. We will help you find your own creative spark, so that you can inspire and motivate others to a higher level of performance and job satisfaction.

What To Do With Your Collective Ideas

Tue, 13 Nov 2018 00:00:00 GMT

Beware the Dot-mocracy! Collide ideas - don't "vanillaize"!

In our previous posts, we’ve been talking brainstorming, and how to do it effectively. We discussed how to inspire ideas, and hold a round robin discussion to share them, gathering ideas onto a flip chart. But once you’ve collected ideas via sticky notes or listing them on a flip chart, what happens next?

Yes, sticky dots can be helpful in selecting ideas to move forward - but beware a "dot-mocracy" where the sheer number of sticky dots is the sole decider.

Give each person three to ﬁve sticky dots (or more dots per person for more choices). Numbering the ideas and asking each person to write the number of their choice on the dot itself before they go place it on the list is a simple way to prevent "groupthink". You know what I mean—when people get up to place their dots, and change their mind to go with the herd.

The team should next spend quality time discussing the various alternatives to see if they can combine them to develop stronger solutions that can satisfy all parties. Be sure when combining ideas to try to "collide" - and create a better idea. Don't "homogenize" or "vanillaize" the ideas, causing you to lose the parts of the individual ideas that were interesting, unique and inspiring.

This is a great time to remind everyone to keep a both/and mind-set versus either/or. You can ask members of the team to actually make the case for the beneﬁts of the idea they don’t support, which is a wonderful way of helping them to see the strengths of the other idea, and thus making it easier to build upon or improve.

It can also be very beneﬁcial to get the input and feedback from the broader group if there were several problem-solving teams working concurrently. It’s also worthwhile to consider using the more elaborate evaluation tools presented in my other blog posts. Whatever the ﬁnal choices may be, try to be as clear and speciﬁc as possible about the solution. You can even use examples if that would help to clarify what is meant.

The team leader and those who have strong interpersonal skills have a critical role to play throughout the creative problem-solving process. They need to make sure that everyone is staying engaged along the way and promoting an open environment. You might even want to call for a process check to ask people how things are progressing from their perspective - are they feeling engaged? Is everyone remaining receptive and actively listening to each other’s ideas? It’s better to know in the midst of the session if some are not feeling engaged than to ﬁnd out later when it comes time to execute the ideas that they have no desire to commit to the chosen solutions.

Everyone’s voice must continue to be heard in order for the best ideas to continue to come forward. Losing one team member’s participation means losing their viewpoint. Make it safe for them to contribute their ideas. Keep the conﬂict productive, and remember— creative abrasion. Discourage people from making such creativity killer statements as: “That will never work.” “We’ve tried that before, and it didn’t work.” “That’s a good idea, but ...”

Remember to seek the third way, not only your way or my way. How do you make that happen? Ask people to take on the role of another key stakeholder (such as a key customer or the CEO) and brainstorm ideas from that perspective. Explore alternative scenarios, and ask questions like, “If this works as planned, what do you see as the end result?” or “What is the worst thing that could happen if we tried it?” Make implicit assumptions explicit. Ask people to restate what they understand other positions to be. Remember to balance advocacy (arguing for your own position) with inquiry (seeking to understand another’s).

In our next post, we’ll discuss what should happen after the ideas have been thoroughly evaluated. The final step of the process, reaching an agreement on what will be implemented, will be discussed and clarified. Once you’ve reached the final step, you’re well on your way to solving your original problem.

Brainwriting: A Go-To Idea Generating Tool

Tue, 23 Oct 2018 00:00:00 GMT

We’ve explored using toys to loosen up a meeting, and we’ve discussed ways to loosen up your team, creatively speaking. The first method, which we discussed in our previous post, was Mind Mapping. The second idea-generating tool that I use is Brainwriting.

This process is ideally suited for allowing each person to view the problem from their own unique perspective, and then to encourage them to build on and improve the ideas of others. It can also be very effective when there is a concern that one or more people might dominate the problem-solving session, or that some may be fearful of sharing their ideas in a large group brainstorming session. The anonymity of the ideas and the emphasis on stretching the ideas further and further increases the odds of coming up with . . . well, odd–and potentially very novel–solutions.

Let’s go through how this exercise works:

The problem-solving team–ideally, four to six people–is seated around a table, and each receives a blank sheet of paper.
Everyone writes the agreed-upon problem statement at the top of the paper, and then draws three columns on it. If a team gets stuck on how to write a good specific problem statement, they can use sentence prompts like, “How can we improve…?” or “How do we ensure that…?”
Give the team two minutes to legibly write three ideas–one per column–for addressing the problem. Someone needs to be accountable for setting the timer.
At the end of two minutes, the timekeeper asks everyone to draw a line under their ideas across the whole page, and then pass the paper to the person on their left.
They then set the timer for three minutes this time, giving each team member the chance to read through the ideas and piggyback on the original solutions by writing new ones under the original suggestions.
This process of writing in ideas continues for as many times as there are people around the table, with each instance allowing a little more time (a maximum of five to six minutes per round) since the addition of ideas makes it progressively harder to come up with new solutions. If need be, people can enter a completely new idea instead of building upon one, if they truly are stuck, but this should be a last resort versus a first choice.
There are several choices for next steps at this point. One is to pass the paper one more time (so people aren.t evaluating their own ideas that they just wrote down). Then have everyone read through the entire list of suggestions and select the best ones based on some previously agreed-upon criteria. Another option is to read all of the suggestions aloud, record them on a flip chart, and discuss them openly. While this might be the most equitable approach, ensuring that no ideas are improperly screened out by just one person, it could prove to be a very laborious process to actually have to get through. A third possibility is to post the sheets on the wall or pass them around the table such that each person can read all of the ideas and write in their initials beside the ones they think are most likely to solve the original problem statement.

Let team members try to combine ideas from one or more pages to come up with an exponentially better idea. Avoid the tyranny of the “either/or”, searching instead for solutions that incorporate”both/and”. It may be a good idea to hang on to these sheets for a while after the session. You never can tell when someone might get an inspiration overnight or in the shower. They might need a reminder of the idea they saw that prompted their creative thinking.

Now, how do you evaluate all of these ideas and select the ones that you want to action plan? You need a way to pull all that creativity together and make it actionable. In our next post, we’ll discuss two great tools for making this happen: the Impact versus Effort Grid and the Decision Matrix.

Leading The Way

Wed, 17 Oct 2018 00:00:00 GMT

As the leader, you play a very powerful role in demonstrating the extent to which problem solving and opportunity ﬁnding is the team’s responsibility. In fact, you need to let them know that in your mind, this is part of what you are paying them to do; then you need to support that statement by ensuring that there is time clearly set aside on people’s busy calendars to engage in this activity . Management consulting ﬁrm Blessing White, Inc. recently conducted a survey in which 40 percent of respondents claimed that their managers never encouraged them to look for new solutions or to take risks, with 34 percent saying that they were rarely encouraged.

An issue that correlates strongly with this trend is managers’ tendency to tell their employees something like, “Don’t bring me problems, bring me solutions!” While avoiding these complaints might temporarily improve your mood, you are potentially eliminating the opportunity to address problems that make your employees’ work more difﬁcult than it needs to be, and you’re closing your eyes (and everyone else’s) to issues negatively impacting your customers or other departments.

What a lost opportunity for managers, especially when you examine recent research on the way our brains work! According to these studies, managers should be taking an interest in and celebrating those employees who desire to improve the performance of the business, even if it is initially presented as a problem to solve and not a solution served up on a platter to the manager. HR Magazine published an article that explored a new ﬁeld of study that joins psychology (the study of the human mind and behavior) and neuroscience (the physiological study of the brain) to shed light on the brain’s role in human nature and behavior. New MRI equipment and other tools and techniques are allowing researchers to study what happens in the brain during learning, engagement, motivation, and social interaction.

Scholar in the ﬁeld Dr. Ellen Weber, PhD, Director of the MITA International Brain Based Center in Pittsford NY, has concluded that when managers show interest in employees, supporting them and offering genuine praise, it increases the production of serotonin in the brains of those employees. Serotonin opens minds to ideas, creating a desire to get to know the manager better and to support whatever he or she needs. On the other hand, diminishing an employee increases the production of cortisol in the brain, diminishing openness to new ideas, and willingness to help.

Because of brain-imaging technologies, we know that we use only 3 to 5 percent of our brains. Sending an employee to a staff meeting to sit and listen to you talk only engages about 3 percent of the brain, which is the reason employees are bored and disengaged. However, stirring up an employee’s environment meaningfully can entice them to use a much higher percentage of the brain.

In our next post, we’ll talk about how leaders can engage their teams in a meaningful way, either during staff meetings or during a completely separate session dedicated to solving the teams’ most impactful business problems.

Top Creativity Myths That Hold You Back – Myth #3

Tue, 09 Oct 2018 00:00:00 GMT

Myth #3: The Lone Creative Genius

For example let’s take this fellow here – all alone it would appear in his lab. Want to take a guess as to who this inventor is? (If you give up, look at the big light bulb over his head for inspiration!)

That’s right…Thomas Edison!

Many people think of him as a lone creative genius, but even he said “Genius is 1 % inspiration and 99% perspiration.”

You might have thought that Edison worked alone —- developing all those patents, but that’s not the case.

In fact he worked with a broad creative team. Here they are in 1876 on the site of their industrial research laboratory in Menlo Park, Pennsylvania. He called it “the invention factory” – because they were always working on several different inventions at any one time. Together they were more creative than Edison could have possibly been on his own. Together they found success – and over 400 patents.

Just like on your team – each one of you have a critical role to play to bring out the best in your team.

Because all of us are smarter than any of us.

Change By Design – A fantastic innovation guide by Tim Brown

Mon, 10 Sep 2018 00:00:00 GMT

Want the "cliff notes" version - and a great book discussion guide?

I recently had the opportunity to lead a book club discussion on this fantastic guide to innovation, Change By Design by Tim Brown , CEO of renowned design firm IDEO and guru of the next wave of innovation… “design thinking” . Below are some key excerpts you can check out to see if you want to read the whole book – or just get by with these cliff notes!

What is design thinking?

“An approach to innovation that is powerful, effective, and broadly accessible, that can be integrated into all aspects of business and society, and that individuals and teams can use to generate breakthrough ideas that are implemented and that therefore have an impact.”

Why do we need it?

“As the center of economic activity in the developing world shifts inexorably from industrial manufacturing to knowledge creation and service delivery, innovation has become nothing less that a survival strategy. It is moreover no longer limited to the introduction of new physical products but includes new sorts of processes, services, interactions, entertainment forms, and ways of communicating and collaborating.”

How does it work?

“The continuum of innovation is best thought of as a system of overlapping spaces rather than a sequence of orderly steps. We can think of them as inspiration, the problem or opportunity that motivates the search for solutions; ideation, the process of generating, developing, and testing ideas; and implementation, the path that leads from the project room to market.”

“The willing and even enthusiastic acceptance of competing constraints is the foundation of design thinking. The first stage of the design process is often about discovering which constraints are important and establishing a framework for evaluating them. Constraints can best be visualized as a series of overlapping criteria for successful ideas: feasibility (what is functionally possible within the foreseeable future); viability (what is likely to become part of a sustainable business model); and desirability (what makes sense to people and for people).”

“The classic starting point of any design project is the brief…a set of mental constraints that gives the project team a framework from which to begin, benchmarks by which they can measure progress, and a set of objectives to be realized: price point, available technology, market segment, and so on…The clarity, direction, and limits of a well-defined project are vital to sustaining a high level of creative energy.”

“The tools of the design thinker – getting out into the world to be inspired by people, using prototyping to learn with our hands, creating stories to share our ideas, joining forces with people from other disciplines – and ways of deepening what we know and widening the impact of what we do.”

Who excels at it?

“There is a popular saying around IDEO that ‘all of us are smarter than any of us’…To operate within an interdisciplinary environment, an individual needs to have strengths in two dimensions – the ‘T-shaped’ person…On the vertical axis, every member of the team needs to possess a depth of skill that allows him or her to make tangible contributions to the outcome….Design thinkers cross the ‘T’…people with the capacity and – just as important – the disposition for collaboration across disciplines. In the end, this ability is what distinguishes the merely multidisciplinary team from a truly interdisciplinary one…There is a collective ownership of ideas and everybody takes responsibility for them.”

What cultural environment is needed?

“To be creative, a place does not need to be crazy, kooky, and located in northern California. What is a prerequisite is an environment – social but also spatial – in which people know they can experiment, take risks, and explore the full range of their faculties.”

What are the benefits to the organization?

“There is an important lesson here about the challenges of shifting from a culture of hierarchy and efficiency to one of risk taking and exploration. Those who navigate this transition successfully are likely to become more deeply engaged, more highly motivated, and more wildly productive than they ever have before.”

[Two great examples of successful design projects – Bank of America (p. 119+) and Japan’s Cool Biz (p. 127+)

Potential Discussion Questions:

What are three highlights from what you read – either things you strongly agreed or disagreed with?
Do you believe it is possible to create a culture of design thinkers? Why or why not?
Are there clients that you think might be ready participants in the introduction of design thinking into their culture?
What would it take to create this culture? How would you approach from a change management perspective?
What do you think would be the greatest challenges you would face? How would you overcome them?
Do you believe in the business case and need for a new approach to innovation in this next decade?

Brainstorming Success!

Tue, 04 Sep 2018 00:00:00 GMT

Tips for a very effective brainstorming session.

How do you lead your team through an effective brainstorming session? By setting some simple guidelines.

First, remind everyone of these very simple but effective ground rules for great brainstorming (you can even post them on a ﬂip chart, if it helps):

No discussion or judgement of ideas until later.
All ideas, even absurd or impractical, are welcome.
Quantity of ideas is the major objective, since it leads to quality
Build on ideas of others
Everyone participates; don’t hold back

Second, you give everyone the opportunity to think individually about the problem for one minute - and capture their own ideas on individual sticky note pads (one idea per note). This eliminates the oft-detested role of reluctant ﬂip chart scribe. In addition, even if the team idea writer were inclined to capture all of the ideas, the typical person can’t write fast enough; something that slows down the creative energy in the room. This has the benefit of having many ideas ready to post after one minute - and lots of inspiration for people to build on the ideas of others.

Want some other creative problem-solving, brainstorming techniques? Check out my other posts on mind mapping and brain writing.

The next step in the creative problem-solving process is to evaluate the ideas and select the top solutions to recommend for implementation. I always suggest that teams take at least a 10-minute break between idea generation and evaluation. It’s even better if you can take a break of a few days, for two reasons:

(1) A delay keeps you from choosing an easy, recognizable solution. It causes you to stop action and explore the options further.

(2) It is difﬁcult for most people to generate their best ideas on the spot within the X number of minutes allotted to this brainstorming session, which becomes especially true if no one sent out information in advance to stoke creative juices.

If you ask the members of your team when they got their best ideas, they will likely say that it was not under the pressure of the buzzer. Most people’s best ideas show up overnight, in the shower, or driving in to work. It is a myth that pressure enhances creativity.

But what if the team doesn’t have time for a longer break of a couple of days? There needs to at least be a few minutes break before people start telling you that your baby (the idea you just generated) is ugly.

I will share some simple approaches here, and then discuss more involved evaluation tools (i.e., impact vs. effort grid; decision matrix) in separate blog posts.

The important thing is to have clear criteria upon which all can agree and understand for making the evaluation, and your team needs to identify these before you start discussing the ideas. This makes it much more objective when some ideas are not selected for implementation (or at least for execution at this time).

After the decision criteria are clear to the participants, each person selects their top three to ﬁve ideas and writes down their rationale for choosing them. Conduct a round-robin to let everyone hear the top choices and corresponding rationale, and capture these ideas on a ﬂip chart.

In my next post, we’ll discuss what to do with these ideas once you’ve collected them.

Innovation Catalyst - The Design Brief

Mon, 03 Sep 2018 00:00:00 GMT

There is a new focus for innovation – and it is called design thinking. It is all about breaking down the organizational silos and making everyone in the company responsible for innovation. One of the chief proponents is Tim Brown - CEO and president of IDEO and author of Change by Design

Tim Brown is an industrial designer by training, and has won numerous design awards. His team even appeared on a news show, demonstrating how to create a new and improved shopping cart in just 4 days. His passion is finding ways design can be used to promote the well being of people living in emerging economies. [In fact, many innovative ideas are being created by focusing on these emerging economies].

He says one of the keys to great ideation is great preparation . And great preparation begins with a design brief. Here he captures the power in his own words:

“The difference between a design brief with just the right level of constraint and one that is overly vague or overly restrictive can be the difference between a team on fire with breakthrough ideas and one that delivers a tired reworking of existing ones.”

And I have found this to be true in my work facilitating innovation sessions, though it may seem counter-intuitive. Often, the clients I work with say they want the brainstorming session to be very broad because they want to "empower" the participants. In fact the opposite tends to happen. When the "creativity canvas" is too wide, it actually either leads to too many ideas that are off the mark and not actionable or too many ideas that do not address the most critical challenges.

As Brown says above, with just the right ending to the sentence - "How might we..." - you too can catch your team on fire with creativity aimed in the right direction!

Innovation - #1 Driver of Business Performance

Thu, 05 Apr 2018 00:00:00 GMT

What can we learn from Accenture's research?

In a recent Accenture survey, 89% of executives agreed that innovation is as important as cost management for high performance. This indicates a big shift from 2009. The emphasis for most companies last year was on how to cut expenses. This year, there is the realization that you can't cut your way to business growth. And this survey bears that out.

Okay, from the Accenture survey we know execs think innovation is important. Below is the Daily Stat email I receive from Harvard Business Review (a very valuable resource that I strongly encourage you to check out). From this Ernst and Young survey, we can see that only half of the senior executives see their companies as more innovative than their competition – and 17% even say their less innovative than peers.

There are several reasons cited for this. For example, while many companies are investing more in innovation, only a few have a rigorous approach for managing the process. As a result even innovative companies often fail to realize the benefits that their new ideas could produce.

Interestingly, almost half of them blame the lack of appropriate personnel as a major contributor to their lack of innovation. You know as well as I do that you can't just go getting rid of everyone you don’t think is creative – and in fact you don’t have to. There are ways - which I will share with you in later blog posts - for discovering and tapping into the creativity in each of us.

And this is where you come in. Strategic, progressive leaders have an incredible role to play in boosting the innovation occurring within their companies – and it all begins with employee engagement. Next post - some proven ideas for how to engage your top talent.

What's the secret to being one of the World's Most Admired Companies?

Tue, 03 Oct 2017 00:00:00 GMT

Here's the headline: Employee engagement drives loyalty and business performance at World's Most Admired Companies. According to the Hay Group's latest research, top companies are particularly focused on making sure employees feel engaged by their work.

Hay also conducted supplemental research on employee engagement practices at these organizations, which found that companies at the top of the list generated stronger employee loyalty to the organization over the last two years and reported greater decreases in employee frustrations over work conditions that were not conducive to their success.

“The World’s Most Admired Companies have been particularly good at focusing on long-term strategies, showing little tolerance for executives that compromise long-term objectives for short-term gains,” said Mel Stark, vice president with the Hay Group. “Equally important, the WMAC communicate their objectives to all employees, connecting the goals and objectives of every employee to the overall business strategy, and as a result, were able to come out of the downturn with motivated and loyal employees." Hay Group’s study found that 90 percent of respondents from the WMAC identified their company as very effective or effective at fostering high levels of employee engagement compared to 71 percent of their peers.

These findings are supported by another study conducted by consulting firm Towers Perrin (now Towers Watson). They conducted a Global Workforce Study, the largest study of its kind, in which they asked 90,000 employees in 18 countries, "What can a company do to attract, retain, and engage top talent?" They boiled it down to 5 key things:

Get leaders out front to talk with employees about the business environment…how the organization is responding…the long-term vision…what the organization stands for.
Involve employees in efforts to manage costs to help them feel like active contributors.
Communicate consistently and candidly about both short- and long-term objectives.
Listen and gather input from employees.
Promote development opportunities so people can see a future for themselves worth working toward.

If you look at 1,3 and 5, you will see these are all about talking to or telling employees something about the company. 2 & 4 are all about listening and getting employees to tell you ways to manage costs, perhaps front line customer feedback on what needs to change, etc. The researchers noted: “The challenge for senior management is to recognize the value of employees’ untapped potential and to channel it in ways that yield real improvements in business performance.”

More engagement comes from being recognized as unique and with value. The good news is with a more engaged team – the leader doesn’t feel they have to do this alone – it truly becomes a team effort. And they may even come to care as much about the success of the organization as you do.

What do you need to start doing today to attract, retain and engage your top talent? There's no time to waste, because even in this tough job market, your highest performers always have choices.

Teaching Your Team Members To Speak Up

Wed, 05 Aug 2015 00:00:00 GMT

As we pointed out in our last post, part of being a leader is teaching your team the value of speaking up. This can be tricky, because people are often unsure of the value of their input, and nervous about the team’s reactions to their opinions. Nevertheless, you need to somehow convey to your team the value of speaking up. You have to make it clear that you don’t mind having your ideas challenged, and will not punish those who step forward with different opinions, even on those subjects nearest to your heart.

It’s important to set as a ground rule: “Speak so you can be heard.” This simply means addressing others with respect, in order to avoid unnecessary, defensive reactions that might shut an open mind. You can also publicly acknowledge those employees who have volunteered innovative ideas, or cite times that your mind was changed by a member of the team; however, try to do this without playing favorites.

Deciding what problems to tackle ﬁrst can be an issue in and of itself. It’s a good idea to select early-on the ones that are low-hanging fruit type of problems; in other words, those that are most familiar and annoying to employees and may require focused effort, but that don’t require much money or a long planning cycle.

Begin with the problems that will garner a high return on your investment of limited time and effort. The team needs to solve a few problems early and implement the solutions before tackling the toughest and longest-standing issues. Instead of the team leader deciding which topics to address, I recommend that people bring one problem to resolve from their own area, as well as one that crosses functional team areas.

Another place to ﬁnd potential problems to solve is the team dashboard of results. Where is the team falling short of the target? Where are we not hitting our numbers or goals? This is a great way to make the session very meaningful and engaging for everyone.

On the other hand, one of the ﬁrst problems you might want to tackle is to identify ways to promote greater creativity. It’s a good idea to send out information in advance of the session to get everyone’s creative juices ﬂowing and build up excitement for what they will be working on as a team before they even arrive. This can also be a great way to make sure that everyone has at least a foundational knowledge base to be able to actively engage in the discussion. Be careful that you don’t slant the discussion or the search for solutions by what you select to share in advance. If there is a signiﬁcant chance that this will happen, don’t send out anything prior to the session.

People will feel more engaged if they get the chance to select the problems on which to work , versus receiving these issues as an assignment. I call this voting with your feet when working with a group. Choosing the problems in advance, then allowing each team member to select one that especially resonates with them is a great way to engage them.

And don’t assume that everyone who works on a problem needs to fully understand the issue’s entire background to be effective. In fact, sometimes the team members without preconceived notions about what will and won’t work, who aren’t fully versed on how things work now or the challenges and barriers currently at play, make some of the best members of a problem-solving team.

The problem-solving or opportunity-ﬁnding process should be kept fairly simple. In our next post we’ll discuss an easy way to do this.

Conflict Resolution Between Teams

kdouglas@fireflyfacilitation.com (Kimberly Douglas) — Tue, 28 Apr 2015 00:00:00 GMT

Now that we've discussed how leadership should approach conflict resolution, let’s discuss norms for getting teams to work together effectively. It’s a good idea to create “rules of engagement” -- escalation rules for when and how an issue would be taken to higher levels in the organization. This prevents escalation into mistrust, anger and resentment. The following is an example of how this was resolved in one organization.

There had been conﬂict between the corporate and ﬁeld units of a single function because issues that were not being resolved at the lower levels were bumped up for resolution to higher levels far too quickly. The complexity of the matrix structure, with a dual sense of allegiance to both the function and the business unit, hampered the effectiveness of these interdepartmental communications. Bad feelings resulted, all because of a lack of agreement on the ground rules for escalating an issue. These were some of the escalation guidelines we developed:

Make sure you have all the facts your boss will need to help solve the problem. If you don’t, push back to get them prior to escalating.

Indicate why you are escalating it. If it’s informational only, put FYI in the subject line of the e-mail; if their involvement is needed, put ACTION NEEDED.

If it’s impacting the business or is a deliverable, escalate it. Don’t use escalation to cover your back.

Escalate when you think the issue will come to your management so they’re not surprise.

To best escalate, know the communication style of the person you are escalating to and utilize that knowledge to alter the communication for greater impact.

“What we’ve got here is a failure to communicate.”

Cool Hand Luke had it right; sometimes the conﬂict between departments is as simple as that. One group is looking at things from the left side of the brain, while the other group is looking at it from the right side, big picture versus need for detail. Making assumptions about what needs to be in a report can lead to confusion and discord, but once there is a common understanding, it’s easier to relay and receive information.

Often, someone asks for a report to be run or for data to be gathered, but they don’t slow down to tell the listener how this information will be used. To be a successful liaison between two departments, someone needs to have the best interests of both parties at heart. It’s important to avoid taking sides, understanding that each group had good intentions. Showing respect for the competence of both parties, can help them to work together to achieve their shared objectives. In our next post, we’ll delve deeper into facilitating conflict resolution. Until then, let's talk! Reach me by email or phone: 770-989-7030.

Leadership During Conflict Resolution - Be A Guiding Light

kdouglas@fireflyfacilitation.com (Kimberly Douglas) — Mon, 20 Apr 2015 00:00:00 GMT

When two departments are trying to work through conflict, the heads of each department play a critical role. This is because conflict between leaders of the departments has an impact on other people. While some leaders fool themselves into thinking that the people in their organization don’t know how they feel about the leader of another department, that is almost never the case. Though some leaders may be more politically correct than others and don’t directly bad-mouth their peers, the subtle message is just as damaging.

Before the actual departments come together, the two leaders should meet to make sure they really want this session to be a success. How they kick off the session - not only their words, but the passion with which they speak them - will oftentimes set the stage for what will happen the rest of the day. Of course, the actions that follow their words had better be in sync, or they run the risk of losing not only the trust of the other department, but their credibility within their own team.

One other thing: these sessions need not be a one-time activity. Before the session ends, everyone should agree that they will come back together again in 60 days to check progress. This is a great way to hold everyone accountable for sticking to their commitments to each other, and it also clearly communicates to everyone that folks aren’t expecting quick ﬁxes from one 8-hour meeting. It is hard to get everyone in the same room at the same time to deal with issues that cross departments. Putting a date on everyone’s calendar for a follow-up sets the expectation that there will still be things to work through.

If collaboration between these two departments is mission critical - and if there is still signiﬁcant room for improvement at the check-up meeting - then regular gatherings should be held between these departments, at least quarterly, and perhaps monthly or bimonthly. Make sure these meetings have a positive focus and that the agenda is ﬁlled with important topics.

Go for some quick wins: Interdepartmental relations can improve dramatically through something as simple as an easy-to-use, up-to-date contact list that clariﬁes who is accountable for what, so that you clearly know whom to call when an issue arises. The frustration and wasted time that this prevents is well worth the small investment of someone’s time to create it. Find opportunities for members of each of the departments to form ad hoc teams and work on critical business priorities of mutual interest. The more opportunities for them to collaborate successfully, the better.

In our next post, we’ll discuss creating norms for how the group can work together effectively. Until then, let's talk! Reach me by email or phone: 770-989-7030.

Bridging The Gap: Dealing With Conflict Between Departments

kdouglas@fireflyfacilitation.com (Kimberly Douglas) — Mon, 13 Apr 2015 00:00:00 GMT

In our last post, we talked about times that the system doesn’t fit with your department’s needs. But what about those critical processes that cross the boundaries of department lines? These can result in situations that are potentially rife with conﬂict, and can be sources cause of great tension, because these are the places where departments rub against each other. In those cross-departmental situations, you often see the ﬁrst signs of loss of trust, doubt about others’ intentions, and attribution of bad attitudes or lack of competence to each other.

Fortunately, there is a reliable technique that can be used to ascertain and then address these areas of discord.

To do this, bring together the two departments with the most heightened conﬂict, whose discord has the most critically negative impact on the business. Break them into their respective department teams and ask them to discuss and ﬂip chart their responses to these four questions:

What are we held accountable for?
What do we think the other team is held accountable for?
What is our greatest conﬂict with them?
What do we think is their greatest conﬂict with us?

It is amazing how much the dialogue among the team and in the large group debrieﬁng can help to shed light on where the key difﬁculties and misconceptions lie. Having the groups discuss what they believe the other team is accountable for will help you to develop a true appreciation for the tasks they regularly undertake. Additionally, acknowledgment of your own conﬂicts helps to deﬂect the natural defensiveness that would occur if others just told you outright. Many, times these clashes revolve around broken processes, and that is actually good news, because it’s something on which the groups can collaborate to improve and together put their creative talents to work. A simple version of this process improvement method looks more like this:

Step 1: Identify the starting point in the process—that is, the trigger or triggers that something needs to be launched or changed. Write them on a sticky note and put it at the beginning of the process ﬂow.
Step 2: Deﬁne what success looks like at the end of the process, write that on a sticky note, and place it at the end of the process ﬂow.
Step 3: Determine the 8 to 10 major steps involved in getting from the triggers to the ending point. We are expecting a high-level overview of the process, not deep detail. Write each of these major steps on a sticky note and place it on the process ﬂow chart.

Sometimes just walking through the process steps helps all parties to realize where the problems lie. Is there a handoff that isn’t going smoothly? Did either group lack clarity as to who needed to be involved in a key decision versus who was the ﬁnal decision maker? Has there been duplication of activities or functions because of a breakdown in trust or communications? Are there key people who are unaware of, or simply not using important supporting processes and procedures? Why and how could they be revised to make them more useful? These are the natural discussions that will evolve if you don’t overcomplicate the process, and use it instead as a vehicle for healthy, candid dialogue. In our next post, we’ll discuss the role of leadership in this type of session.

What do you do when the system doesn’t fit?

kdouglas@fireflyfacilitation.com (Kimberly Douglas) — Tue, 31 Mar 2015 00:00:00 GMT

I have shared a success story with you in the last post, so let me balance it out by telling you about a near disaster:

I was selected to facilitate a two-and-a-half day strategic planning session for a branch of the military, and began the hard work of designing the session. I was working very closely with the planning committee, but not the key decision makers, which was a different setup than I was used to. I normally spoke directly with the key stakeholder on the desired outcome of the session, and then began to design the process and content to achieve that end.

This time, I took the planning committee at their word when they told me we needed 42 presentations on possible strategic initiatives - each one hoping to make the cut and get the funding. Basically, this was each presenter’s opportunity to get in front of the most senior leadership and shine, and no one was willing to forego it. I kept questioning this method of presentation, but I was assured that everyone coming knew what they were getting into.

The small hotel room in which we gathered to hold the session was jammed with people. There were 18 highly decorated uniformed ofﬁcers sitting at U-shaped tables, with 25 more people seated in chairs around the perimeter. After brief opening comments, I explained the process we would be using to determine the rank order of our top 10 strategic initiatives, and the criteria they should use to make the determination of what was strategic. I also distributed the handout they would be using to summarize their thoughts during each presentation. This was my attempt at keeping them engaged by requiring that they think and look for things during these 42 four-minute presentations.

We jumped right in and the ﬁrst presenter distributed a handout about his initiative, talking as people passed along copies, since he only had four minutes. When this presenter’s time was up, I asked everyone to please jot down their comments as to whether they thought this initiative met our criteria for strategic, and why. I noticed a little discomfort among the participants, but there was no time for me to address it, since the next presenter was up. The next four minutes went by even faster than the ﬁrst four.

The tension and anger building in the room was palpable, and I knew this scenario wasn’t working. I had to decide whether to keep going or run the risk of changing the process, even though I had no idea how to make it better at that very moment. Would the planning committee think I was throwing them under the bus? What if they were right and this was the only way?

When I decided to take the leap and ask everyone in the room whether the process was working for them, it was like the dam burst! No one was happy with the process. Once I knew that, I was able to pull aside the top five leaders and come up with a rather easy solution. These leaders met with their direct reports and support staff for 30 minutes to review the initiatives they’d submitted and determine which ones should be presented or consolidated, based on specific criteria.

The lesson is simple: Be crystal clear on what the key stakeholders want to achieve, and let that be your guide as you plan the content and process of the session. Trust your judgement, and test all assumptions to keep them from getting in the way of your success. Then, if something isn’t working, have the courage to change it, engaging the creativity and perspectives of others to solve the problem.

In our next post, we’ll talk about addressing processes that cross department lines, in order to create solutions that work for everyone involved. In the meantime, let's talk! Reach me by email or phone: 770-989-7030.

Opening Dialogue to Strengthen Inter-team Productivity

kdouglas@fireflyfacilitation.com (Kimberly Douglas) — Mon, 23 Mar 2015 00:00:00 GMT

Now it’s time to discuss how a leader can shift the team environment to allow for the reemergence of skills that will help the team to shine. Did you know that ﬁreﬂies undergo a process called overwintering? In other words, they survive the harsh conditions of winter and very dry conditions of drought by burrowing underground or ﬁnding protection under the bark of a tree. They almost completely cease activity, only to emerge in the spring when the conditions for their survival are more favorable. Amazing, isn’t it, how much this resembles what happens to those with a thinking style that other members of the team might not value as much as they should? If our team’s environment feels like winter or drought, then we, too, may take our different perspectives, unique talents, and creative ideas underground.

It will require the emergence of spring - be it a new leader, a team setting that calls for change, or a critical business crisis - for us to take the risk of exposing ourselves to these harsh conditions. Monarch butterﬂies may migrate to a new, more favorable climate (or company), but the ﬁreﬂy holds out hope that it can wait it out until it’s truly time for them to shine.

In our last post, we talked about a team that didn’t value those with interpersonal strengths as highly as some others on the team. They needed a new perspective to be able to address the high-conﬂict situation they were facing, but would they see it before our two-day session ended? Would they take building the effectiveness of the IT team just as seriously as they would solving a technical problem that was standing in the way of their success? Would they realize that interpersonal strife and conﬂict were just as strong a barrier as any hardware or software issue?

The first step in fixing this problem was to realize that good teams know what is important to the other teams with whom they share interdependencies, and to learn more about the critical drivers for each of the other departments. Each team was asked to identify- within their own department and for each of the other three departments- what they believed to be the top ﬁve priorities and why. After they had this discussion and documented the results with their own department, they were then to disperse and form cross-department teams to compare results. The atmosphere was electric when they went into these second groups of teams. You could hear people voicing new appreciation for the other departments’ demands. People were talking animatedly face-to-face, often never having corresponded before today except via e-mail.

The interdepartmental problems they had identiﬁed weren’t personality based, but were rather solvable structural issues. However, the group’s lack of presence and appreciation for interpersonal strengths had kept them from facing these issues in an effective way. This often happens at this point in a really productive interteam conﬂict situation. They have become so used to making the other department out to be the problem for so long that they can achieve very signiﬁcant breakthroughs just by beginning the dialogue between factions. Once they do so, they become aware of topics upon which they can agree, by really listening to others and realizing they are all working toward the same goal. Once this message was received, it was possible for spring to emerge on this team. In our next post we’ll counterbalance this success story with a story of near disaster.

Let's talk! Reach me by email or phone: 770-989-7030.

When Conflict Jeopardizes Success

kdouglas@fireflyfacilitation.com (Kimberly Douglas) — Mon, 16 Mar 2015 00:00:00 GMT

Let’s just assume for a moment that your team has been working very hard on improving the creativity and collaboration among one another, and that you have found great success through your efforts. Now, you could really be effective if it weren’t for that other team, department, or business unit messing things up. Why can’t they get their act together? It sure would be easier if you didn’t have to interact with them at all. But that’s not possible, is it? So what can you do?

Often, you’ll find that there is a lot of very unproductive conﬂict at the edges, where the work of your team bleeds over into the work of other teams. And with the increase in matrix organizations— where the line blurs between the projects for which your group is responsible versus mine—this situation will only be on the rise. Therefore, it’s important to be aware of examples of inter-team, and what can be done to resolve it.

One such example involves a session bringing together the 50 senior most leaders of the IT organization for a large ﬁnancial services company: something that had never been done before. One of the IT business goals for this ﬁscal year was to “Leverage Technology as a Strategic Business Tool.” The inﬁghting among the departments had reached such intolerable levels that it was severely jeopardizing the success of several very large, costly IT projects that the business desperately needed in order to remain competitive, and they understood that teamwork is one of the most critical elements for success in meeting the needs of the lines of business and the customers.

Each of the attendees received pre-work assessments in which they were asked to measure the current level of team effectiveness and the alignment of the strategic priorities across the entire IT organization. The IT team as a whole was only rated “very effective” 6% of the time versus 34% for the team of which each participant was a member versus 57% for the team they managed. The comments accompanying these results told overwhelmingly about the lack of coordination, cooperation, and communication between teams—and how this was adversely impacting the ability for IT to optimally perform.

Two key sections of the session agenda were especially effective in positively impacting the perceptions that came out of this gathering. On the ﬁrst day of this two-day meeting, a diversity exercise was conducted to help the team learn more about each other, see their colleagues as people, and improve their ability to value and capitalize on the different thinking styles that existed within the team. When it was time for the people who most identified as analytical, logical thinkers, to gather in one area, there was a lot of movement to this spot. When the call came for those whose strength was in planning and organization, again, a large number of people gathered, in a very organized, orderly manner.

However, when it came time for those with interpersonal skills to come together, no one moved! Out of a group of 50 people, no one had self-identified as having strong interpersonal skills and an aptitude for teamwork. This indicated that those who did feel they possessed those strengths wouldn’t want to let anyone in the company know it. This is the consequence of undervaluing interpersonal skills: they go underground. In our next post, we’ll discuss how a leader can shift the team environment to allow for the reemergence of these and other skills that will help the team to shine.

Let's talk! Reach me by email or phone: 770-989-7030.

Sparking Creativity in your Team

kdouglas@fireflyfacilitation.com (Kimberly Douglas) — Thu, 05 Mar 2015 00:00:00 GMT

What is your team doing to spark creativity in addressing the critical problems and opportunities it sees? Set aside time for creative problem solving. Pick problems about which people feel passionately. Be speciﬁc with the problem; it really will release more creative juices than leaving it wide open. Make it safe to make a suggestion. Get familiar with the creative problem-solving process, using your creativity to improve upon it and make it your own!

Are there tools and techniques that your team should become familiar with and use on a regular basis? Get each person to bring one creativity toy to the next problem-solving session. Try out the mind-mapping tool if you are left-brain oriented, or let the right-brainers give the brain-writing technique a chance. Use the impact/effort grid to aid your next decision; it is an easy and inventive way to ensure the entire team’s collaboration on solving a speciﬁc problem. Employ a decision matrix for those tougher, more complex choices.

When was the last time your team got out of the ofﬁce for a creative excursion? Ask each person to bring one suggestion for an expedition to your next meeting. Go with an open mind, and come back with new ideas. Debrief what you learned and how you can apply it. Make it fun, and you’ll make it happen.

Which department, division, or business unit does your team have the greatest conﬂict with? And what kind of impact does this conﬂict have on your business results and theirs? Bring the leaders of the two groups together so that you begin on the same page. Find out what they are held accountable for and how your team can proactively help them to achieve their goals and vice versa. You both might be surprised by what you discover. Then make sure you both make good on your commitments.

Do you see the spark of creativity going on around you, perhaps that others aren’t seeing… yet? Be on the lookout for good things going on around you. Sometimes, you ﬁnd what you look for. Maybe there are synchronous ﬁreﬂies in your backyard waiting to be discovered by you. Call them best practices if you prefer; but look for them, share them with your team, adapt them to help all of you to excel.

Do you like being the changer better than changing? Think about how many change initiatives you currently have underway. Be sure that the purpose of each, as well as how it supports the larger organizational strategy, is clear. Communicate your compelling change message over and over, using a variety of vehicles. Use the optimal ﬂow to create it.

Answering the above questions will help to light a ﬁre under yourself and your team, and help you become the light you want to see in the world. Take the ﬁrst step on the path to change, and simply start where you are. Your life and the life of your team can be different because of the actions you take. On a sheet of paper, write one thing from the list above that you really want to do. Put your creativity to work to ﬁgure out how to get it done. Put a due date on it. Share it with one other person that you trust. Hold yourself accountable for achieving it. If you are the leader of a team, be the role model of someone you would want to follow. When you feel the positive reinforcement that one action causes, you will want to do it again.

Start a movement—make it happen! Pay it forward, and you can recapture a lost dream and make a difference in the world. Wondrous things occur when one unselfishly gives to another without thought of how or when repayment will be made. When you give to others, you receive so much more in return. When you find something worthy of remembering, and pass it on to another, it is like the spark of the ﬁreﬂy which magically illuminates a dark night.

Let's talk! Reach me by email or phone: 770-989-7030.

Guiding Your Team toward Your Vision

kdouglas@fireflyfacilitation.com (Kimberly Douglas) — Mon, 23 Feb 2015 00:00:00 GMT

Once you have a vision for where your team is going, how do you turn this vision picture into a concrete plan?

There are some simple steps to make this happen. Determine tangible, clear measures for success. Focus on the critical few. Make those tough strategic decisions—not only what you will do, but just as importantly what you won’t do. Engage your critical stakeholders. Monitor and course correct. Celebrate your successes.

What would it take to make this the best team yet?

Ask people to share their prior team experiences, and use these inspirational stories as the foundation for designing the four to six guiding principles for how this team will work together. After you create them, live up to them and expect everyone else on the team to do the same.

Is your team meeting the most exciting part of the week?

If the answer's no, then what would it take to make it so? Don’t give into the common thinking that all meetings are bad and ineffective, because that doesn’t have to be the case if you commit to doing the hard work that will make it better. Find out what people expect and want from these meetings, and then redesign the agenda to deliver those expectations. Create an environment for fully engaged participation by all team members, and permit nothing less. Don’t allow a select few to dominate (especially the team leader). Spice up your meetings with variety- in the location, the topics, the process and, at the very least, in the seating! Start using a timer to help everyone stay on track. You may laugh, but it works! Does your team have really productive discussions that end with clear decisions, actions, and accountabilities? Start today by ﬁguring out which items on the meeting agenda require a decision to be made, construct a clear and explicit decision-making process, and understand the rationale for the path chosen.

Other effective practices?

Create conﬂict norms that will ensure that all voices are effectively heard.
Send information out in advance to promote informed participation.
Balance inquiry and advocacy.
Keep a curious mind-set.
Ask who needs to know what you all just decided and ﬁgure out how to communicate with them effectively.

Is the team leader keeping too tight a lid on the jar?

If you are this team leader, then you can directly impact this if you think making a change is important enough and you commit to doing what it takes. Beware any dominating behavior in team meetings. Share your opinion last. Let small, breakout groups discuss controversial or sensitive topics before a large group debrief. Learn how to manage yourself and lead the team effectively through high-conﬂict situations and bring a discussion to closure, with full commitment from all team members to fully implement the ﬁnal decision.

Do your team members hold themselves accountable for living up to their commitments?

If you don’t have a common picture of what great personal accountability looks like, then start there and create one as a team. Make sure that you delegate and follow up effectively. Celebrate the right behaviors in the right way for each person on the team. Use team meetings as a showcase for members to uphold their commitments to each other and to you. Conduct an accountability assessment as a team, pick a few areas to improve upon, and then do it. Remember: “We give ourselves credit for our intentions; but hold others accountable for their results.” Learn, then coach.

Let's talk! Reach me by email or phone: 770-989-7030.

Assessing the State of Your Team

kdouglas@fireflyfacilitation.com (Kimberly Douglas) — Wed, 04 Feb 2015 00:00:00 GMT

Do you think there is untapped talent and unspoken knowledge on your team? If so, have your team members work together to learn more about each other’s strengths and areas of potential development. Then discover ways to use these talents to the team’s advantage. You just might ﬁnd that along the way, you have improved the creative thinking ability and communications effectiveness on your team.

How would you currently rate the level of trust on your team? If it's not what you might hope for, consider suggesting a get-to-know-you better warm-up exercise at your next team meeting — ask about a hidden talent, a ﬁrst job, where team members grew up. Or have a group milestones dinner and go a level deeper by sharing a signiﬁcant person or event in your life, and the impact that it (or they) has had on you. Take time to recognize the ways people contribute to the work of the team. Step out of your comfort zone and invite the newest, least-connected team member to join you for lunch.

Is conﬂict on your team a source of creative abrasion? How diverse is the thinking on your team? How are you capitalizing on those different perspectives to address critical team challenges? Begin with the mindset that conﬂict is natural, expected, and yes, even desired. Acknowledge and discuss the conﬂict that everyone knows is currently occurring. Keep the team’s focus and energy on the real competition — the one in the marketplace. Deal with that ferocious ﬁreﬂy. Eliminate trustbusters like sarcastic humor.

Find a way to reconnect with those who are distant, disengaged, or just plain dismal. How much of your team’s energy is wasted with irrelevant, personality-based inﬁghting? In that last high-conﬂict one-on-one situation, did you ask yourself, “Why would a reasonable, rational, and decent person act like this?” Sometimes, team conﬂict is simply a failure to communicate. As a leader, what kind of example are you setting? Let the optimal ﬂow and coaching from others help you to resolve it. Remember, don’t be ruled by the tyranny of the "or" - seek out the third way. Learn about a day in your co-worker’s life.

Do you know what the vision for team success is, and how you will know when you get there? As a team, dedicate time to focus on the future. Create a common understanding of the critical role that the group plays in the overall company’s success. Make sure everyone sees how each role contributes and is interconnected and interdependent. Break down those silos that keep you from working collaboratively. Understand the barriers and challenges facing the team.

In our next post, we’ll talk about turning your vision into a concrete plan, celebrating successes, and being the spark that lights up your team. Until then, l e t's talk! Reach me by email or phone: 770-989-7030.

The Next Steps in Sparking your Team’s Creativity

kdouglas@fireflyfacilitation.com (Kimberly Douglas) — Tue, 13 Jan 2015 00:00:00 GMT

You have creative power within you, and the tools we’ll offer here will help you tap into it. You will ﬁnd it in yourself to be alive and driven to do a great job.

You’ll truly be able to inspire creativity in those around you, creating the Firefly effect in your team, group, or organization.

Our journey continues with an exploration of the two critical roles of leadership. Once we’ve tapped into your creativity, we’ll move into considering your new direction and calling for leaders to create a fertile environment for breakthrough creativity and business results. An appreciation of the unique talents and perspectives of each member, along with an unshakable foundation of trust, are critical elements of team development. Once this groundwork is laid, conﬂict takes on a completely new meaning when viewed constructively as creative abrasion that leads to incredible breakthroughs.

Your team is undoubtedly comprised of a group of individuals who likely have very different personalities, talents, experiences and points of view. How do very diverse people capitalize on their strengths? As we move into strategies for targeting team energy, all members of a team will have—despite their differences—a clear, common picture of the road on which they are traveling, the important mile markers, and guardrails for how we will work together.

Your team will truly be firing on all cylinders when you gain an insider’s perspective on the secrets of powerful collaboration , including how to maximize your time together, reach decisions based on each person’s candid input, and to hold each other accountable for honoring commitments. Creativity really occurs when the ﬁeldwork completed leads to sparking creativity. This section shows exactly how to do this, with creativity boosters, ﬁxes for when the ﬁreﬂies (aka creativity) don’t show up, and dealing with colliding team purposes.

The grand ﬁnale is a light show beyond compare—the magical synchronicity of thousands of ﬁreﬂies. It will renew your belief in the possible, and will show you that by experimenting with what you have learned, you can individually shine like never before. You will see how your role as leader is more empowering and fulﬁlling than you could ever have imagined, and the team and the organization as a whole will reach new heights of breakthrough performance.

My memory of chasing ﬁreﬂies—of gathering them and having fun with those close to me as we all strove to achieve a common purpose—was so powerful for me that I chose to name my company after it: FireFly Facilitation. I have spent the past 10 years pursuing my passion by working with leaders to help them build more successful teams. Through this blog, I’ll share what I have taught and learned throughout the process. Now—let’s begin a new chapter and discover how to be part of a highly effective team!

Let's talk! Reach me by email or phone: 770-989-7030.

The Creativity Spark

kdouglas@fireflyfacilitation.com (Kimberly Douglas) — Mon, 05 Jan 2015 00:00:00 GMT

In the last post, we talked about hunting fireflies as a metaphor for creative teamwork within a company. In this post, we’ll endeavor to clarify the definition of creativity, and the scope of what we are undertaking.

There are many books on developing wacky, brainstorming prompts and driving organizational creativity. While many of these contain great tips and tools for discovering new product ideas, and can be useful with marketing teams for that very purpose, regular business teams focus most often on ﬁnding effective ways to capitalize on business opportunities and solve tough challenges. The goal here is not to try and incite a creativity revolution across entire companies, but rather to provide tools that can help guide you down a path that will dramatically improve your team’s effectiveness.

Your time is valuable and limited, and if you lead teams, this blog is worth your while. Team leaders, along with aspiring team leaders and ambitious team members, will ﬁnd new insights and approaches that will make you even more effective in your role. Your entire team will beneﬁt from applying what you learn here.

To quote Samuel Johnson, “People need to be reminded more often than they need to be instructed.” My hope is to remind you, in meaningful and memorable ways, of those unique differences that truly distinguish the very best aspects of powerful teams. These things are not hard to understand, but will require the group members’ commitment to stay on track. I have shown teams that once they take that ﬁrst step and thereby experience—and celebrate—their early successes, a magical transformation occurs.

And the momentum of their collective results sparks new levels of team effectiveness. Each posting will be brief and to the point, while also being fun, entertaining, and memorable through the use of ﬁreﬂy analogies and stories designed to create a ﬂash of “Aha!” Here is a partial listing of topics to be covered:

What to do when the ﬁreﬂies don’t show up (or when creativity dries up).
How to know when it’s time to ﬁnd a new meadow (or a new approach, place, or process).
What to do if the leader is keeping too tight a lid on the jar (and team innovation is gasping for air).
How to get inventive when it rains on your ﬁreﬂy hunt (or parade of ideas).
What happens when everyone is too busy to join in (and group problems remain unresolved)?
How synchronizing makes everyone’s light brighter (and how to tap into the power of synergized effort).

You can create the Fireﬂy Effect in your team, group, or organization; and these weekly postings will show you how to go about doing so. The ﬁrst step on this path is to rediscover your creative spark, helping your team to do so as well. You have creative power within you, and we’ll talk about that, and how we’ll proceed, in our next post.

Let's talk! Reach me by email or phone: 770-989-7030.

What Is the Firefly Effect?

kdouglas@fireflyfacilitation.com (Kimberly Douglas) — Mon, 29 Dec 2014 00:00:00 GMT

Do you remember the magic of a childhood summer evening? Catching ﬁreﬂies with your friends? Watching in awe as they lit up the night?

The Fireﬂy Effect will change how you discover and apply creativity within your team to get results. A lone ﬁreﬂy—like the lone genius—does not ignite the imagination of others. It takes the brilliant light of many, and the creative effort of the entire team, to truly spark innovation with impact.

You will learn about proven tools and techniques that have already generated qualitative and quantitative results for hundreds of teams in such companies as Coca-Cola, Home Depot, and AT&T. The use of the “ﬁreﬂy hunt” metaphor—as well as facts about these fascinating creatures—along with actual client examples will make the process easy to understand, to remember, and to achieve.

So what exactly is the Fireﬂy Effect? Well, it is the behavior on display any time you see children chase ﬁreﬂies. You might notice that:

Few children chase ﬁreﬂies alone. The excitement comes from the sharing of effort and results with others.

Everyone is clear on what the goal is and enthusiasm remains high, because their target is so well understood and so simple.

Each individual knows his or her task. No one needs—or wants—a dictating leader. Children do not criticize one another on a good ﬁreﬂy hunt. Everyone is clearly giving his or her best effort.

The group eagerly seeks out new and better ways to get to realize a successful result.

In the end, there is joy in what they accomplished together.

This, in essence, is the Fireﬂy Effect. It is ﬁrst about the individual, how every one of us can rediscover our unique and creative talents and best apply these to enhance the group’s experience.

Second, it is about the leader—how to be an almost invisible role model for inspiring others to do their best work.

Third, it is about the team—using their individual talents collectively to focus on the critical business challenges and opportunities, instead of focusing their attention inward on petty personal differences.

Finally, it is about the organization—having achieved powerful results as one team, then becoming a spark for the change that’s needed in other parts of the company so that you’re all ultimately working with a one-team mind-set. In the next post, we’ll clarify what is meant by creativity, and the scope of what we are undertaking here.

Let's talk! Reach me by email or phone: 770-989-7030.

Keeping Everyone in the Loop

kdouglas@fireflyfacilitation.com (Kimberly Douglas) — Mon, 15 Dec 2014 00:00:00 GMT

In a previous post, we talked about finalizing a team decision, and deciding how to implement it. After you have identiﬁed the plan of action for implementing the team’s decisions, your ﬁnal step is to ask one very simple: “Who is not in the room that needs to know what we just decided?” This is a great way of getting the team to identify the key stakeholders in their decisions.

The more essential their sincere commitment and ensuing actions are, the more time and effort you need to spend in rigorously considering how to attain truly engaged input. How are you going to get their support to achieve the decided-upon goals (commitment) versus simply instructing them to do it (compliance)? Those in the group who are very good at all things interpersonal can help you to both identify these concerned constituents and understand what it will take to gain their support. They can lead a discussion on how this decision will affect these key stakeholders.

Your stakeholders, who are likely be different for each of your decisions, might include people who:

Will be directly affected by this decision
Have ﬁnal sign-off authority
Have to implement the decision
Could sabotage the process

The next logical step is to ﬁgure out how the team will communicate the decision to these people. What are the key messages, what are the right vehicles, and what should the timing be? The more power each stakeholder has to support or derail the decision’s approval and implementation, the more thoroughly you will need to plan the communications, and the more closely you will need to monitor their effectiveness. When you have come this far, you can’t leave this last part to chance. Use the team’s creativity to determine the most effective means of reaching your most critical stakeholders.

So there you have it: a tried and true process for ensuring your team makes better and faster decisions that include everyone’s most creative input. In future posts, we will focus on the leader’s role in making certain that these are indeed the best decisions. Moving forward, we will explore accountability, and ﬁgure out how to assess whether team members are fulﬁlling the commitments they’ve made. Because a decision without action is really just a hallucination!

Let's talk! Reach me by email or phone: 770-989-7030.

Staying Open to the Possibilities

kdouglas@fireflyfacilitation.com (Kimberly Douglas) — Mon, 01 Dec 2014 00:00:00 GMT

So, at this point we’ve talked you through the process, and hopefully you’ve decided how your team will make decisions. Now, it’s up to the leader to ensure that the decision makers keep an open mind about a wide variety of ideas before making a ﬁnal decision. Remember, while our differences may sometimes be irritating, they can spur us to look at situations, problems, and opportunities more creatively if we begin with a curious mind.

Often, exactly the opposite occurs in group-setting situations. When people know that they are attending a meeting where an important decision will be made, there is often a lot of jockeying for position that occurs before anyone steps foot in the door. People sell their ideas beforehand to save time instead of truly coming to learn about potential, viable alternatives. How do you deal with this kind of preconceived decision making? By reinforcing that curious mind through a balancing act of inquiry and advocacy.

One great resource when learning to manage this concept is Peter Senge’s The Fifth Discipline Field . This book introduces a very straightforward concept for teams to understand and use—one that, despite its simplicity, seems almost revolutionary to many leaders. The unfortunate truth is that most team members have already formed a conclusion about what they think is the right approach, and it can take a great deal of effort to put that mind-set aside and openly request the other’s point of view. We are too often working our hardest to convince each other of the correctness of our conclusion, position, or actions. But true creativity and conﬂict resolution screams out for inquiry, not for the other person to simply stop talking so that you can interject your opinion. It’s hard to hear others above the voice speaking in your own head, but inquiry prompts you to focus your energy on truly listening and comprehending another’s point of view instead of merely defending your position.

The vast majority of people have no problem advocating their opinions, but true leadership is something different. When someone offers an idea for a solution that you disagree with, before you say, “That wouldn’t work,” try beginning with inquiry by asking, “Can you help me to understand your thinking on that?" or ”What leads you to suggest that would be a good alternative?” and then really listen to their response. You just might be surprised.

Two other procedural techniques go a long way toward ensuring a lively discourse on alternative solutions:

1) The ﬁrst is to simply send information out to the participants in advance, and expect them to read it and come prepared to learn and share perspectives. Sometimes teams struggle with the fact that members hear about something for the ﬁrst time during the meeting, and are expected to offer feedback on the spot. Mandating that anything requiring a decision at the meeting has to have preliminary reading sent out a minimum of 48 hours in advance is a terriﬁc way of ensuring a more level playing ﬁeld for informed discussions and decisions.

This brings us to the other procedural recommendation:

2) For signiﬁcant strategic decisions with far-ranging and long-term impact, it’s unreasonable to think a decision can be made when the topic is initially raised, so it can be helpful to implement a policy you might call a rule of three. Simply put: higher-level issues will be discussed in three separate meetings, with a decision expected in that third meeting. This gives the team an opportunity to learn about the relevant issues in the ﬁrst meeting, bring additional information that spurs investigation of a broader search for alternative solutions to the second, and ﬁnally, to making an informed decision to which all can truly commit at the third. In the next post, we’ll talk about knowing how to discern that the team is prepared to make a decision, in order to begin planning for its implementation. Until then, l et's talk! Reach me by email or phone: 770-989-7030.

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