One right answer?

In his video, Everyday Creativity (http://www.starthrower.com/everyday_creativity.htm) Dewitt Jones tells us there is more than one right answer.

My students often try to give every possible answer just to make sure they get the one right one. At work, people often argue over the one right answer, digging in their heels and pushing for their solution until relationships are damaged and the solution is watered down to "make everyone happy." At home we worry we aren't finding the one right answer for our children and can get stuck in a sort of paralysis until we're forced to act.

Dewitt is right, though. There are often many right answers. And the key to success is to pick one and make it work, without worrying over making mistakes.

What do you think? In what areas of your life are you searching for the one right answer, always disappointed with yourself for choosing wrong or angry at others for not following yours?

Align your (hidden?) drives with your team's stated goals

People are committed to organizations that stand for the same ideals. We form team identities with teams that enhance our self-esteem by representing high ideals. And we decide the organization's and the team's ideals by the behavior of the leader -- not by the organization or the team's motto, mission statement, or advertising.

Leaders are people, too, though. And while they support their organization's or team's mission, etc., they, like all people, have unconscious goals and desires. These drive their behavior. And if the behavior doesn't match their stated ideals, it seems irrational to their employees.

As a leader, are you aware of your own internal -- perhaps hidden from yourself -- ambitions, drives, and need for self-aggrandizement?

How might your drives lead your behavior to be different from behavior that would be driven by the organization's stated ideals?

How can you align your personal needs and goals with the organization's?

When leading a virtual team . . .

. . . communicate, communicate, communicate! Use many different tools to reach people.

In this article, Bob Taccini, a Cisco Systems vice president, discusses his use of vlogs (video blogs), blogs, teleconferencing, videoconferencing, discussion boards and the good old fashioned telephone to communicate with his far-flung team: http://blogs.hbr.org/cs/2010/06/leading_virtual_teams_to_real.html.

You'll find a wonderful list of tips for leading virtually in the article as well.


vintage phone image: Daniel St.Pierre / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

What can we do as managers/leaders to get this kind of performance from our virtual teams?

Yet, we keep trying to . . .

"You can control cheese, or at least you can keep tweaking and tweaking, trying to get it just right, but you can't control people."

--Paul Stephan, owner and head cheesemaker Blue Ridge Dairy Co. Quoted in the Washington Post Magazine (7/4/2010) on why he prefers making cheese over managing a large restaurant.

When to coach:

In honor of John Wooden

A coach is someone who can give correction without causing resentment.
Coach John Wooden
October 1910 - June 2010

When not to coach:

What kind of challenge are you facing?

We often throw technical solutions at adaptive challenges. For example: team communications seem to miss the mark. Let's train them on how to have productive meetings and how to use email effectively. But the deeper problems -- cultural, personal -- go left unresolved.

Or, we are overworked because we fail to delegate. Let's get a book on delegation and follow the directions step by step. But the deeper issues -- our identity is wrapped up in doing work, not telling others what to do -- will prevent us from long term quality delegation. Within a few weeks, we'll be overworked again.

When we must adapt, technical tactics will not resolve our challenges. We must find ways to alter our own -- or our team's -- mindsets.

What keeps you from creating the change you would like for yourself?

What have you been complaining about lately?

Where Will We Find Tomorrow's Leaders?

Teleconference tips 4

Start and end the meeting successfully:

1. Start: (5 minutes max) if your team is multi-national, assign one person each meeting to share a story or other information from his home country. If not, ask one person each meeting to start the meeting off with something motivational, funny, or a personal achievement (graduation, birth, new home, promotion, etc.)
2. Review agenda and promise to stick to it
3. End: "self-propelling ending" (HBS publishing) -- end the meeting with

• who will do what by when (any decisions or agreements made during the meeting)
• the date/time of next telecon
• a statement of the team's purpose and a specific reason why this meeting got the team closer to its purpose ("we've hashed out some difficult decisions on the technical requirements and I thank you for your input and candor. Without that, we could have risked some major problems down the line")
  

Teleconference tips 3

Are you the leader for a particular telecon? If so, ensure everyone who must be on the line and focused is on the line and focused!

1. send a reminder email (subject: telecon, project X, time, date) the day before
   
2. call the most critical people (are there any people without whose input or decision the meeting is wasted?) the day before to confirm their attendance
   

What happens when departments are silos

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