The Business Sensei

Now can I solve the problem?

This is an excerpt from my new book, Organizational Psychology for Managers.

Unfortunately, you still can’t solve the problem. There’s still just a bit more to do before you dive in and implement your solution. Examine the goals you just developed: how will you carry them out? Which steps can you plan and which steps can you not plan in advance? How will you know if you’re successful? This last point may seem silly: after all, if you’re successful, the problem will go away! While that’s true, it helps to identify precisely what you expect to happen and when. Back to goals and feedback: we want to know if we’re succeeding before we get to the end. Conversely, if we are solving the wrong problem or if our solution is flawed, we want to know this as early as possible. As with all goals, we have to define our intermediate steps and identify the factors that will tell us if we’re going off course. At the end, we don’t want to get bogged down arguing about whether or not we’ve succeeded: by defining our criteria ahead of time, before we’re invested in the results, we avoid the danger of getting somewhere random and simply declaring that to be the finish line.

If the implementation of the solution is going to be carried out by other people, it pays to bring them into the process at this point if we haven’t brought them in already. People who have to implement a solution will feel more engaged and committed if they are involved early on in the process of coming up with that solution: respect their competence and build relatedness. On a purely practical level, they are also likely to have expert insights that others may not: I worked once with an architecture firm whose head architect made a point of involving builders in the earliest stages of design. He told me it was because that way he wouldn’t end up giving the client drawings for something that didn’t exist.

At this point, you can go ahead and implement your solution. At the end, do a final check: did it work? Since you’ve already defined the criteria for success, at least in theory this shouldn’t be too hard to determine. In practice, it’s often a bit messier than it sounds on paper, so be prepared for that. If it didn’t work, you have a choice in how to respond:

Option 1: Clearly the failure is someone’s fault. Heads must roll!

Option 2: What have learned that we didn’t know before? Remember our discussion of hindsight in chapter 11. Just because something is obvious now doesn’t mean it was obvious before. Based on what we’ve learned, how can we now solve the problem? What else have we improved along the way?

Cultures that focus on blame typically go with option 1. However, the more optimistic and successful organizations choose option 2. That doesn’t mean not doing a post-mortem and trying to identify mistakes or failing to refine your processes; it simply means that you’re proceeding from the perspective that you have competent, committed people who have no more interest in wasting their time on a wild goose chase than you do. The secret to solving large, difficult problems is accepting that there will be mistakes along the way. The secret to optimistic organizations is that they actually treat those mistakes as feedback and learning opportunities instead of merely giving the concept lip-service.

We’ll return to these concepts when we discuss organizational diagnosis later in this chapter.

Balzac combines stories of jujitsu, wheat, gorillas, and the Lord of the Rings with very practical advice and hands-on exercises aimed at anyone who cares about management, leadership, and culture.

Todd Raphael
Editor-in-Chief
ERE Media

Curse of the Half-Empty Glass

“What was the primary means of motivation in those days?”

“Fear.”

— Carl Reiner and Mel Brooks, The Two Thousand Year Old Man

For the 2000 year old man, fear may have been a very effective motivator: when he saw a lion, he was motivated to run the other way. That, in a nutshell, is the problem with fear. Fear doesn’t make someone move toward safety; it makes them move away from danger. Same thing? Not really. In jujitsu, pain can be used to invoke a fear of injury. Someone experiencing that pain, and that fear, will move away from it, even if moving away means running full tilt into the nearest tree.

In business, the same phenomenon occurs. Faced with an unexpected problem or setback, the most common response is to highlight the threat to the organization and all the terrible things that will happen if the threat is not immediately countered. This practice of attempting to motivate people to work harder through fear – fear of competition, loss of market share, job loss, company going out of business, and so forth – may encourage harder work, but not necessarily more effective work. In the business environment, there are a lot of trees.

While fear gets the adrenaline flowing, it also narrows focus, reduces creativity, and makes it harder for people to recognize and change a losing strategy. This would be fine, except that what is actually needed in most situations is a creative solution, the ability to accurately assess whether or not a strategy is working, and the ability to quickly discard failing strategies. Avoiding premature decision making, no easy task at the best of times, only becomes more difficult. As we all learned in grade school, in the event of a fire, don’t rush for the door: proceed slowly and avoid panic. The same is true in business: rushing to a decision is almost guaranteed to lead to a bad decision.

So given that the business needs to get employees focused and energized to meet a potential challenge, how should it go about doing that?

The key is to recognize that the glass in not half empty. It’s half full. That makes a difference: instead of focusing on what you lack, focus on what you have going for you. Instead of fear, instill an atmosphere of optimism. There are several steps to accomplishing this:

• Start by defining success. What does it look like? What will your business have accomplished in order to have been successful? Communicate that in a few brief, vibrant, sentences. If you don’t know where you’re going, you can waste a lot of time not getting there.
• Lay out a set of goals that will make the business successful. Include what you’ll be doing as well as what you expect others to do.
• Remind employees of previous challenges that they’ve successfully overcome. Emphasize the positive: how teams pulled together, how individuals stepped up to the plate, and so forth.
• Recognize that roadblocks will appear: don’t assume everything will go perfectly. The competition may do something unexpected. A critical employee may get the flu. A storm may disrupt travel or power. Make sure you’ve allowed time to deal with the unexpected so that it doesn’t derail you.
• Present energizing images to use when bad news strikes or setbacks occur: a cyclist passed by an opponent can imagine a rubber band attached to his opponent’s back. The rubber band pulls him faster and faster until he passes said opponent. Come up with the equivalent for your business. Repeat it frequently. If you can’t keep a straight face, find a different image.
• Take the time to brainstorm different solutions to the problems you are facing. Evaluate what you come up with and make sure it will get you to that success state. Rushing off down the wrong path wastes valuable time and, even more important, drains enthusiasm.
• Periodically review progress and show people how far they’ve come. Pilots may care more about the runway ahead than the runway behind them, but everyone else is motivated more by how much they’ve accomplished rather than being constantly reminded of how much more there is to do.
• Celebrate successes. Short-term reminders increase the sense of progress and make people feel appreciated.

Half empty or half full. A fearful team or an enthusiastic, creative team. It’s your choice.

Happy New Year!

Eye of the Hurricane

I was lying on my back. Standing around me were four people who, only two weeks before, had been teaching a class on appropriate emergency response in jujitsu.

The fact that I was flat on my back on the ground was not, in one sense, unusual. A friend of mine was taking his black belt exam and I had volunteered to let him demonstrate his throws on me. Things went slightly off the rails when he threw me, lost his balance, and ended up kicking me in the head.

The “thwock!” echoed through the gym.

One of the instructors was supposed to take charge. They stared down at me. I stared up at them. Eventually, I said, “Someone get me an ice pack.”

One of the men jumped slightly, turned, and ran out of the room. A moment later, he ran back in with one of those first aid kid chemical cold packs in his right hand.

“It’s not cold,” he yelled.

“You have to squeeze it,” came a voice from somewhere in the room.

In case you were ever curious, yes, it is possible to squeeze one of those cold packs too hard.

For such a small cold pack, the contents covered a remarkably large area.

I looked at my now soaking gi. I got to my feet.

“I’m fine now. Please don’t help me any more.”

Fortunately, in this situation, there was no permanent harm done and the fact that several people froze at the moment of crisis was merely embarrassing. My gi wasn’t even stained.

Unfortunately, many businesses are not so lucky. Even more unfortunately, it’s not the actual disasters that freeze them: handling the rare fire or power failure is barely a blip in the proverbial routine. Rather, the “disasters” that throw everything off balance and freeze decision making in its tracks are those that could have been anticipated or for which management thought that they had prepared.

Despite all their training, when the accident occurred, the four jujitsu instructors metaphorically lost their balance by focusing on the image of how bad it could be. That prevented them from acting immediately to determine how bad it actually was.

At Lacunae Software, the ship date was two days off when QA found a major bug in the software. Rather than stop, investigate the severity, and determine an appropriate course of action, the CEO announced that delaying the ship would clearly doom the company. He castigated QA for disloyalty and ordered the product to ship on schedule. Customers were not happy, costing the company more than the delay would have. Acting out of fear of how bad it could have been made the situation worse.

When things are going well and something suddenly goes wrong, it can be very easy to focus on all the potential negatives. That doesn’t help. Successful companies have the habit of focusing on what can go right. Developing that mindset takes practice:

Take a deep breathe and recognize that you have more time than you think. This is quite probably the hardest step.

• Remind yourself of the vision for your product and company (you do have a vision, right?).
• Review the steps necessary to manifest that vision. It can help to write them down as you go through them.
• List the things that can go right to move you forward from where you are. Be realistic, and also optimistic.
• Any time you find yourself focusing on what can go wrong, stop and shift back to what can go right. Evaluate the problems later.

Far too many companies never define their vision nor do they map out the path to success. The secret to success is staying on balance. The secret to not losing balance is knowing where you’re going, reminding yourself how you’ll get there, and focusing on the positive.

Building Confidence By Focusing On Success

I was recently interviewed on Youth Sport Radio on how to build confidence in young athletes. Funny thing… the same techniques work for older athletes and, with a very little modification, in a business setting as well.

Curse of the Half-Empty Glass

“What was the primary means of motivation in those days?”

“Fear.”

— Carl Reiner and Mel Brooks, The Two Thousand Year Old Man

For the 2000 year old man, fear may have been a very effective motivator: when he saw a lion, he was motivated to run the other way. That, in a nutshell, is the problem with fear. Fear doesn’t make someone move toward safety; it makes them move away from danger. Same thing? Not really. In jujitsu, pain can be used to invoke a fear of injury. Someone experiencing that pain, and that fear, will move away from it, even if moving away means running full tilt into the nearest tree.

In business, the same phenomenon occurs. Faced with an unexpected problem or setback, the most common response is to highlight the threat to the organization and all the terrible things that will happen if the threat is not immediately countered. This practice of attempting to motivate people to work harder through fear – fear of competition, loss of market share, job loss, company going out of business, and so forth – may encourage harder work, but not necessarily more effective work. In the business environment, there are a lot of trees.

While fear gets the adrenaline flowing, it also narrows focus, reduces creativity, and makes it harder for people to recognize and change a losing strategy. This would be fine, except that what is actually needed in most situations is a creative solution, the ability to accurately assess whether or not a strategy is working, and the ability to quickly discard failing strategies. Avoiding premature decision making, no easy task at the best of times, only becomes more difficult. As we all learned in grade school, in the event of a fire, don’t rush for the door: proceed slowly and avoid panic. The same is true in business: rushing to a decision is almost guaranteed to lead to a bad decision. 

So given that the business needs to get employees focused and energized to meet a potential challenge, how should it go about doing that?

The key is to recognize that the glass in not half empty. It’s half full. That makes a difference: instead of focusing on what you lack, focus on what you have going for you. Instead of fear, instill an atmosphere of optimism. There are several steps to accomplishing this:

1. Start by defining success. What does it look like? What will your business have accomplished in order to have been successful? Communicate that in a few brief, vibrant, sentences. If you don’t know where you’re going, you can waste a lot of time not getting there.
2. Lay out a set of goals that will make the business successful. Include what you’ll be doing as well as what you expect others to do.
3. Remind employees of previous challenges that they’ve successfully overcome. Emphasize the positive: how teams pulled together, how individuals stepped up to the plate, and so forth.
4. Recognize that roadblocks will appear: don’t assume everything will go perfectly. The competition may do something unexpected. A critical employee may get the flu. A storm may disrupt travel or power. Make sure you’ve allowed time to deal with the unexpected so that it doesn’t derail you.
5. Present energizing images to use when bad news strikes or setbacks occur: a cyclist passed by an opponent can imagine a rubber band attached to his opponent’s back. The rubber band pulls him faster and faster until he passes said opponent. Come up with the equivalent for your business. Repeat it frequently. If you can’t keep a straight face, find a different image.
6. Take the time to brainstorm different solutions to the problems you are facing. Evaluate what you come up with and make sure it will get you to that success state. Rushing off down the wrong path wastes valuable time and, even more important, drains enthusiasm.
7. Periodically review progress and show people how far they’ve come. Pilots may care more about the runway ahead than the runway behind them, but everyone else is motivated more by how much they’ve accomplished rather than being constantly reminded of how much more there is to do.
8. Celebrate successes. Short-term reminders increase the sense of progress and make people feel appreciated.

Half empty or half full. A fearful team or an enthusiastic, creative team. It’s your choice.

Published at FreudTV.com