Kaushal Seth, Author at Enterprise Management Ltd

Agile Leadership Through Situational Mindsets

The definition of leadership continues to expand in complexity and focus. This paper examines the need to expand leadership essentials to include systems analysis and environmental scanning.

When the “born to rule” theory imploded, attention shifted to developing leaders rather than relying on genetics. Approaches varied from developing leadership style, competencies, or best practices. These methodologies centered on a static or compartmentalized model focusing on an individual leader. They overlooked vital factors such as the impact of the environment, culture, organizational systems, change, and followers.

Today’s more comprehensive models expand the scope to include followers, contextual awareness, and systems alignment. Success depends on agility, the ability to decipher entanglements, environmental awareness, and integrated systems.

The reference to a “health care system” does not ensure systems effectiveness. Consider the “simple” task obtaining personal protective equipment. Obtaining masks requires connecting with worldwide suppliers, but purchasing supplies is just the first step. Shipment quantity and quality must be verified before safely storage and supply distribution. Skipping one component jeopardized timeliness, staff safety, and patient care. Agility, systems thinking, and comprehensive information are essential. Yet, professional specialization for career advancement encourages silo or narrow thinking.

Dragonflies have a compound eye employing thousands of lenses to obtain nearly a 360-degree view of their surroundings. Similarly, leaders must tap cross-professional expertise and engage others to generate a comprehensive understanding of current challenges and triggers novel solutions.

Mental Agility

Mental agility studies what has happened, what is currently happening, and what can happen in the future. It does not require an impressive IQ, advanced degree, imposing position, or specific personal style. It requires a dedicated willingness to:

Validate existing assumptions based on dynamic environments and stakeholder expectations
Recognize potential distortions or bias
Solicit, respect, and involve all stakeholders
Learn from the past, understand the present, and plan for the future

A single leader, no matter how gifted, cannot accurately recognize and weigh every reality. Leaders must ask astute questions, carefully listen to responses, assess opportunities, and gain active support for action. Extensive inquiry identifies what is critical from what is superficial and customary.

Situational Mindsets

While looking only one way before crossing the street is foolhardy, relying on limited data invites danger. Employing the six situational mindset framework produces a complete organizational scan. The six mindsets include the:

Inventing situational mindset, which examines current products and services offerings and technological opportunities for innovation. It captures opportunities by asking: what are we doing, what will new systems and technology enable us to do, what could we start doing, and what should we stop doing. This mindset reveals new processes, synergies, services, and products.
Catalyzing situational mindset, which concentrates on customers and the marketplace to improve sales. It targets competitor products, price points, and market growth. Feedback from customers combines with an analysis of current offerings, sales strategy, and sales volume to expand the customer base. Collecting data on customer retention figures, recognizing emerging customer requirements, and sales reports clarify opportunities and priorities.
Developing situational mindset, which examines organizational systems, design, policies, and reporting relationships for seamless execution. This macro inquiry uncovers systemic barriers due to flaws in compensation practices, staffing levels, capacity planning, resource allocation, or information flow.
Performing situational mindset, which targets maximizing workflow, operating efficiencies, and productivity for maximum return. It examines inventory levels, costs, and maintenance schedules. This mindset monitors profit margins and explores ways to improve quality and efficiencies. Attention to workflow variances, team performance levels, and resource utilization identifies best practices.
Protecting situational mindset, which reviews workforce culture, competencies, and talent retention to sustain a change ready culture. It examines engagement, teamwork, and change readiness. Additional critical factors for the protecting situational mindset include succession planning, trust, talent development, workforce diversity, and mission alignment.
Challenging situational mindset, which studies operating assumptions, environmental and social trends, and strategic opportunities to enhance sustainability. Additional interests include an economic forecast, financial health, pending legislation and regulations, and potential alliances. These factors help to revise the business model, capture a potential niche, enhance the brand’s status, and ensure sustainability.

Situational mindsets capture internal organizational and external environmental forces boosting a leader’s ability to weigh opportunities and discern what takes priority. It prepares leaders to:

Adapt to new information and conditions
Upgrade both primary and secondary systems
Reallocate time and resources, and
Solicit, evaluate, and communicate realities and priorities.

Brokerage companies warn customers that past performance is no guarantee of future results. Organizational leaders must heed that advice and avoid relying on their past. Successful leaders scan their environment, explore innovative opportunities, develop dynamic systems, and align efforts.

Conclusion

Multifaceted crises and narrow thinking conceal critical realities and complexities. COVID-19 confirms the need to add a dynamic perspective to our leadership frameworks. We cannot control our environment, but we can control our reactions to changing realities. Situational awareness enables leader to connect the dots and improve leadership effectiveness.

Dr. Mary Lippitt, author of Situational Mindsets: Targeting What Matters When It Matters. She can be reached at mlippitt@enterprisemgt.com

A Lesson from Lemon Juice: The Perils of Partial Awareness

By Dr. Mary Lippitt, author of Situational Mindsets: Targeting What Matters When it Matters

We all know the advice of creatively changing lemons into lemonade. However, a story aboutlemon juice offers us another valuable lesson.

This story begins with a man robbing two banks in one day without wearing a mask or a disguise. When the Pittsburgh police arrested him, he was shocked and told the officers, “but I wore the juice.” He had coated his face with lemon juice and,therefore, confidently assumed his face would be invisible. Thisassumption stemmed from his knowledge that lemon juice created invisible ink, so he concluded lemon juice would obscure his face.

He is not the only individual who combined incredibly incomplete knowledge combined with faulty logic to act unwisely. Oblivious to their narrow perspective, parents in Lake Wobegon assume everyone in their town has above average intelligence. They are not alone. Bad drivers assume they excel, high school performers consider themselves ready for Broadway, and 94% of professors consider themselves above average. My favorite was a forger who tried to pass a US $1,000,00 bill at a grocery store. He was shocked the cashier was not willing to provide change. Luckily she knew the largest denomination of currency in the US is $100.

After we chuckle at these obviously implausible actions, we need to evaluate our own thinking practices. Are we fully aware of opportunities, risks, and creative solutions?

Underperformers consistently overestimate themselves, and high performers regularly underestimate themselves.Getting it right is rare, and getting it wrong is costly.

This is not a new phenomenon. Charles Darwin wrote, “Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge.” Given these pervasive misperceptions, we need to re-examine our abilities to assess contextual awareness, conduct disciplined analysis, and employ rigorous scrutiny.

In the era of the knowledge worker, we must ensure better thinking, comprehensive data collection, and effective analysis. Leaders must shift their expectations from providing all the right answers to asking all the right questions.

Consider the following: Do you accept that what you see on the surface is not all that there is to see? Are you rewarding those who ask tough questions? Are you developing your staff’s critical thinking skills? Do you use a checklist to prevent overlooking key factors?

As Mark Twain noted: “It ain’t what you don’t know that gets you into trouble. It’s what you know for sure that just ain’t so.” The Pittsburgh thief paid a high price for not knowing more about lemon juice.

What is Your COVID-19 Lens? Six Points of View

By Dr. Mary Lippitt, Author Situational Mindsets: Targeting What Matters When It Matters

Our response to the COVID-19 pandemic must be more than a dualistic choice between preventing infection or “opening up” to save the economy. Simple, obvious responses lead to greater failure rather than desired results.

Addressing complex issues requires consideration of multiple factors and contingencies. During the 1918 Spanish Influenza pandemic, early and sustained intervention in cities such as Cleveland ultimately produced a more robust economic recovery when compared with those choosing a limited response. And “opening up” does not mean that operations will resume. During the 1918 Spanish Flu pandemic, Philadelphia shipyard employees refused to return to work even though ship construction was essential to the US effort in World War 1. Today, some meat packing and retail employees have elected to stay home. Opening the doors does not guarantee customers will enter.

This pandemic requires granular analysis, not an oversimplified, short-term binary choice. While it is tempting to “keep things simple,” attractive easy answers are wrong. We face a complex, interdependent and systemic challenge. Hand wringing over polarized options stifles creative insights necessary for dealing with persistent and pervasive threats. We must and can do better.

We can expand our understanding, explore options, and direct our decisions using six situational mindsets or lenses. Dangerous blind spots surface if we overlook one of these perspectives.

The inventing lens stresses creativity the need to develop new treatments, medications and vaccines. It seeks innovation synergies to leverage existing resources and practices.
The catalyzing lens focuses on demand. It targets the needs of first responders and essential workers, while rapidly responding to hot spots. It also focuses on enlisting resources to meet obligations.
The developing point of view targets infrastructure and policies. It seeks to ensure hospital capacity, procure supplies, issue guidelines, and set goals. It also clarifies goals, roles and responsibilities for effective execution.
The performing mindset examines operational factors. It analyzes patient data, deploys testing, and measures efficacy. It also adjusts staffing and resources to address gaps.
The protecting perspective focuses on people, culture, and society. It centers on safety education, providing for basic needs, ensuring compliance, training contact tracers, and recognizing success. It also fosters trust, confidence, and community support.
The challenging mindset identifies emerging needs, tests assumptions, and prepares for future episodes. It also examines the impact of demographic, economic, regulatory, and security challenges.

As Obi-Wan Kenobi told us in Return of the Jedi, “You’re going to find that many of the truths we cling to depend greatly on our own point of view.” When we grapple with all of these aspects, we can pivot from a cavalier ‘either-or’ divisiveness to an informed and respectful search for wise action. Situational awareness unfogs our creative thinking and enables us to successfully explore the problems we must solve. What we see on the surface is not all that there is to see. We must learn to look beyond our basic frames to grasp complex realities, surface different perspectives, and define implementable solutions to meet this challenge.

Dr. Lippitt can be reached at mlippitt@enterprisemgt.com.

Leveraging Mindset to Increase HR Influence

While HR creates, implements and monitors people, processes and culture, HR frequently fails to win support from decision-makers. I know my proposals were often rejected or deferred. I felt stymied since I couldn’t predict what drove the decisions. It spurred me to pivot. I took three steps to improve my influence and my role.

My first step was to accept that logic alone regularly failed to be persuasive. I needed to understand the perspectives and realities of decision-makers. To learn about their priorities, I requested individual interviews with key decision-makers. In a listening mode, I heard their current goals, recent accomplishments, current priorities and decision-making criteria. I ended each meeting by asking what actions HR could take to help them achieve their goals. It opened a constructive dialogue.

The second step was re-defining my role. Instead of identifying myself as an HR leader in a business setting, I adopted the role of a business leader in HR. While this does not seem like a significant move, it broadened my thinking and placed the organization’s health as my top concern. I could do that by using my HR skills.

The final step was to identify current business goals. It was paramount I knew what drove decisions. Only then could I develop proposals that solved pressing business issues that would win support.

Since complexity, uncertainty and change rapidly altered business drivers, I needed a way to analyze fluctuating priorities. I applied a framework of six different goals or mindsets to discern critical objectives. The categories and definitions are:

The Inventing mindset targets the development of new ideas, products and creating new internal synergies and innovation.
The Catalyzing mindset focuses on meeting customer requirements, keeping existing customers, building the brand and besting the competition.
The Developing mindset seeks a robust infrastructure, effective policies, integrated systems and goal alignment.
The Performing mindset concentrates on improving process improvement, quality, productivity, cycle time and profit margins.
The Protecting mindset prioritizes an agile culture, developing talent, enhancing teaming, improving collaboration and fostering engagement.
The Challenging mindset targets sharing best practices, recognizing emerging trends, validating operational assumptions and seeking new alliances to ensure future success.

This goal-oriented framework clarified what drove decision-makers and enabled me to include their goals in my proposals. Combining goals was relatively easy, and the practice developed trust and established me as a valued team member.

However, goals are not static. Consider how quickly the coronavirus has impacted decision making. Therefore, it was essential to check for change. Using the chart below, I stayed in alignment with decision-makers.

Discovering ways to blend business and HR goals requires some creative thinking, but it delivers superior results. Let me illustrate some examples by mindset.

The Inventing mindset

Instead of the typical wishlist suggestion program, a new approach centered on quarterly presentations to upper management with the caveat that each presenter must provide a full cost and consequences analysis. This had the added advantage of giving immediate feedback on whether the suggestions were accepted, rejected or needed additional information. This approach substantially increased the quality, quantity and approval rate of suggestions.

The Catalyzing mindset

Call center training was revamped to ensure that key points were obtained and shared during the first call. As a result, customer satisfaction increased. Another program updated the reward and commission structure to align it more closely with existing strategic goals. A new sales training program was developed to foster consultative sales methods.

The Developing priority mindset

New promotional criteria required demonstrating effective coaching and change implementation. An innovative onboarding process incorporated business knowledge to support a cross-functional orientation.

The Performing mindset

An expanded dashboard with additional in-process metrics spotted issues and successes quickly. Exit interview data was shared in an annual report, which successfully identified areas for improvement. Multiple small improvements surfaced when team leaders asked employees to make a two-percent improvement. While the request was small, the results were significant.

The Protecting mindset

A rapidly expanding firm addressed major talent shortages by developing an internal program of training, coaching and shadowing that provided the needed talent. Improving the transfer of training resulted from team-based training. Intact teams attended a training session where they identified a desired change and developed a change execution plan. Team proposals were then presented to management for approval. Resistance to change evaporated since the team ‘owned’ the initiative.

The Challenging mindset

Recommendation for new structures and policies improved the track records for mergers and acquisitions. Also, best practices were identified, shared, and recognized. Team leaders were encouraged to ask, “what should we start doing and what should we stop doing” to discover opportunities.

As these examples illustrate, HR touches the whole organization and frequently is the only function that monitors performance across the entire organization. HR is uniquely positioned to promote both macro and micro contributions. Shifting into a trusted business partner role does not require an advanced degree, it stems from collecting data, recognizing priorities and formulating novel initiatives. It is up to us to pivot into a trusted business partner role and improve organizational outcomes.

Published with permission from https://blog.hrps.org/

About Author:

DR. MARY LIPPITT https://www.enterprisemgt.com

Dr. Mary Lippitt is an award-winning author of “Brilliant or Blunder: 6 Ways Leaders Navigate Uncertainty, Opportunity, and Complexity.” She founded Enterprise Management Ltd. in 1984 to provide leaders with practical and effective solutions to navigate the modern business climate using situational mastery. Dr. Lippitt is a thought leader and speaker on executing change, optimal leadership, and situational analysis. She currently teaches in the MBA program at the University of South Florida. Mary is also the author of Situational Mindsets: Targeting What Matters When It Matters.

Women Who Created Our Future

By Dr. Mary Lippitt, Author of Situational Mindsets

The movie Hidden Figures introduced us to Katherine Johnson, Dorothy Vaughan, and Mary Jackson, who were ‘human computers’ at NASA. The film captures Katherine Johnson’s dedication and creativity as she enhanced trajectory analysis for Alan Shepard’s flight. John Glenn insisted that she verify the newly installed computer projections before his flight. She lifted her career as well as the rockets.

Dorothy Vaughan was the first female supervisor at NASA. She earned her position by developing her teamto code the newly installed IBM computer to keep them ahead of the technology curve. Seeing the writing on the wall, she conducted computer program classes and saved their jobs.

We must learn from these women, especially since the pace of change has grown exponentially since the 1960s. Women must continually update their skills and demonstrate their value. Career development alternatives you could consider include

Staying alert to external trends and internal realities. What if you were a professional driver? How would drones, driverless cars, cashier-less stores, and automation mean for your job?
Leveraging trends in your organization. Is greater specialization or general managerial skills increasingly important? What accomplishments have recently earned promotions? How can you contribute to critical goals?
Developing mentors outside your chain of command offers you a sounding board and career insights. They can guide your next steps.
Displaying initiative and creativity increases visibility while also expanding your skillset. Many women become executive after introducing a new line of business.
Building a professional network. Join your professional association to stay up to date. In addition, professional associations gain early identification of job openings.
Crafting a developmental plan. Record your goals and specific milestones to increase the rate of follow-through. Share your interests and plans with your manager.
Collecting honest feedback and suggestions. Every one of us can improve when we learn about our potential blind spots. It demonstrates that you are interested in advancing your career.
Attending conferences, seminars, and workshops. Valuable technical nuggets can be gained, and, at the same time, you can expand your network.
Learning from your mistakes. The only failure in life is to make the same mistake twice. Take time to reflect on professional and personal setbacks to discover new strategies for handling the issue in the future.
Allocating time for strategic thinking. While turmoil frequently consumes our time and energy, we must devote time to finding the right career direction.

What are you doing to develop your career opportunities? Our careers are not set in stone. We need to continually build it.Opportunities abound, enabling us to create our desired career path.

#successful women, #career planning

Dr. Mary Lippitt, an award-winning author, consultant, and speaker, founded Enterprise Management Ltd. to help leaders with critical analysis. Her new book, Situational Mindsets: Targeting What Matters When It Matters was published last year with a Foreword from Daivd Covey. She can be reached at mlippitt@enterprisemgt.com or https://www.linkedin.com/in/marylippitt/

The Problem with Problem Solving

We have a choice. We can target what is going wrong in our organization or what is going right. Many leaders concentrate on fixing problems, assuming that only minor tweaks are needed. After all, putting out a fire produces a benefit, and it builds a reputation as a successful “firefighter.” However, in reality, problem solving merely adjusts the status quo. In our dynamic world tweaks cannot keep pace with the market or opportunities. G K Chesterton captured this choice when he wrote: “What is wrong is that we do not ask what is right.”

Significant advances cannot be found by narrowing fixing problems. A “fix it” mentality limits our thinking, rather than expanding it. And the practice probably focuses on only a slice of the real issue. It certainly accentuates the problem and may also encourage blaming a person or unit. Traditional problem solving rarely results in a leap forward.

Think about a person trying to fix the problems reported by those who use a two-wheeled suitcase. The easy fix is to add two more wheels for easier handling. But is that all that can be done? What about options to adjust the handles, change materials, improve internal compartments, add a tracking device, or alter the weight. Restricted thinking fails to surface new alternatives. It just fixes what is broken. I am not advocating that we end the practice problem solving; we need it. But established practices should not be considered optimal. We need to advance out thinking beyond the ordinary. We must do the right thing instead of doing things right.

About Author:

Your Best Career Path: Tiger Woods or Thomas Edison

I am not a golfer, but I know that Tiger Woods started playing the game as a toddler with his father as his coach. Malcolm Gladwell capturedhis career in his book Outliers: The Story of Success, to support the premise thattrue mastery requires 10,000 hoursof practice. The importance of extended dedication to specializationwas bolstered by references to Bill Gates, the Beatles, and Robert Oppenheimer. The take-away was that excellence sprang from a prolonged and specialized dedication.

David Epstein’s book Range: Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized Worldcounters that premise. He proposes diverse experience and a broad knowledgebase produce excellence. He supports this with the careers of Thomas Edison, Charles Darwin, Leonardo Da Vinci, and Winston Churchill, all of whom leverage multiple knowledge and interests into stellar careers. Current examples include new medical devices that sprang from merging engineering and medicine just as fusing mathematics and the stock market generated new trading algorithms.

These books raise serious questions for coaches:

Is specialization essential to excellence or does it lead tonarrow thinking?
Does a generalist background yield a jack of all trades and a master of none?
Does the path to success depend on the environment, industry or organization?

Over my 30 years of experience, I have found that no one can offer a guaranteedcareer path.A one size fits all formula does not exist. Career success for specialization appears in law enforcement, research, sports, medicine, engineering,technical vocations, and relatively stable industries.And at the same time, generalistsexcel in small businesses; strategy focused roles;dynamic industries;and creative endeavors.

Career planning requiresa broad lens. It may be that lateral career moves are wiser than waiting for the next step up the linear career ladder, that following in the footsteps of former success stories may not be safe, that both specialization and generalist backgrounds offer rewards, and that switching career trajectories may not be terminal.

I think the message from both books is not to limit your options or ambitions. The “right career” is one where you can take pride in your impact and continue to learn.

About Author:

Bridging Silos

When you think of silos, do corn and grain come to mind? Or that self-serving department at work that won’t cooperate with anyone. It’s tempting to create our own silo in response.But that just increases the toxicity.Instead, we must bridge these silos and create common ground.

Let’s take an example. Picture yourself as VP of sales. Operations hasn’t produced or shipped a large order for a new customer. This delay might mean that the customer will be lost.The response from those in Operationsis that they did geta heads up on the big order,they had to order new materials, and they were already working overtime. They do not want Sales to make promisesthat can’t be kept.

It is easy to see how these attitudes can grow into finger-pointing and stereotypes that can spiral out of control. How could you bridge these divergent views? There are four ways to tear down silos.

Listening.Understand the facts from the other party’s point of view. Learn“What’s in It for Them (WIIFT)” and then share the facts and goals from your perspective or WIIFM. Objectivity defuses labels and avoids finger-pointing and starts to build a bridge between viewpoints. It also builds respect and engagement.

Questioning. Use questions to surface as much factual information on the situation as possible. This creates a common understanding of the situation and can reveal new solutions. Consider the following six questions that address six different situational mindsets;

- What is a creative solution? (Innovation)
- How can we best serve the customer now? (Customer Focus)
- What processes or practices could prevent this from happening in the future? (Infrastructure)
- What is the most efficient way to deliver on time and with quality? (Efficiency)
- What changes to staffing, workflow, training, or operating practices will increase efficiency and quality? (Talent and Culture)
- What can we learn from this situation? What should we do in the future? (Strategic Thinking)

Think Win-Win.Searching for mutual advantage forestalls tension,withholding information,and any sense of rivalry. The process is not difficult, and it requires a question such as What are our alternatives to working this out? In reality, everyone wants to succeed, and that desire creates new solutions.

Moving Forward. The word solution is often misassociated with a perfect and permanent resolution. This misconception blocks progress. It is the equivalent of assuming that only scoring is an acceptable outcome in football, soccer, baseball, or any other sport. Foreward progress counts too. In sports and business, moving the ball forward counts as a win. Incremental steps constitute progress.

You don’t have to be a genius or have a degree in engineering to build a bridge. Ask questions, listen, and explore to discover mutually satisfying progress. It will burst existing silos and prevent the construction of new ones.

Dr. Mary Lippitt,is the author of Situational Mindsets: Targeting What Matters When It Matters. She is an award-winning author and speaker, and founder of Enterprise Management Ltd., an international firm helping leaders build engagement and deliver resutls.

Boosting your mental agility and critical thinking

Large amounts of data and rapid change increase the need to think critically and adjust to new realities.

Will Rogers reminds us that “even if you are on the right track, you’ll get run over if you just sit there.” While stagnation is dangerous, finding the path forward can be challenging. Mental agility, situational awareness and sound judgment are essential to addressing probable, pervasive and problematic change.

The rapid rate of change has led CEOs to identify critical thinking, judgment and innovation as essential to their future success. In today’s complex world, no individual has all the answers, but a person can ask the right questions and evaluate responses.

Mental agility — the ability to recognize what has happened, what is currently happening and what could happen in the future — requires an open, inquisitive mind. And that openness must be combined with a critical analysis of all relevant information to discern how to leverage opportunities in the short and long term. Mental agility and critical thinking close the ubiquitous gap between what we think we know and what we need to know. They prevent missteps and blunders.

Mental agility and critical thinking do not require an elevated IQ, advanced degree, lofty position or specific personal style. They do require a dedicated willingness to:

Test existing assumptions that may have changed based on dynamic environments
Check for potential distortions or bias, including level of effort and confirmation bias
Solicit and respect multiple points of view

Adopting an open mind means actively seeking information, considering alternatives, and selecting a viable and valuable goal. With multiple variables affecting any decision, a comprehensive framework is indispensable in collecting pertinent information. Knowing it all prevents risking it all.

Consider the purchase of a car. Decision factors include price, warranty, miles per gallon, cost of insurance, features, size, lease or purchase, color, style, type of gas required, cost of maintenance, towing capacity and dealer location. This list may appear lengthy, but compared with the factors involved in organizational success, it is quite small.

Organizations confront greater complexity and interdependencies than purchasing a car. One individual’s ability cannot juggle every aspect. Leaders need a system to gather timely, relevant information from multiple sources. Considering six situational mindsets ensures an effective grasp of reality. The following definitions and questions serve as a guide and can be tailored into a checklist for your organization:

Inventing Situational Mindset questions concern innovative products, designs and services: What new features or services can we offer? How can we apply technology in a new way?
Catalyzing Situational Mindset questions assess the level of customer service, market position and competition: What new markets can we explore? What will grow sales? How can we improve customer service?
Developing Situational Mindset questions evaluate system effectiveness, information flow and seamless execution: What will improve cross-functional collaboration? Are our systems effective? What policy alterations will support our goals?
Performing Situational Mindset questions examine quality, cycle time, workflow and return on investment: What deviations should we address? What can we improve? What limits our productivity?
Protecting Situational Mindset questions address staffing levels, retention of key talent, succession planning and engagement: What will improve collaboration? How can we retain key talent? How can our culture become more agile?
Challenging Situational Mindset questions probe trends, assumptions, strategies and opportunities: What new alliances are possible? What new niches should we pursue? What will position us for the future?

These situational mindsets surface what is present, what is within reach and what is around the corner. Their use builds the mental agility and critical thinking essential for organizations to achieve their goals in the midst of change.

Published with permission from SmartBrief.com

About Author:

Mary Lippitt, an award-winning author and speaker, founded Enterprise Management Ltd., an international firm helping leaders deliver results. A leader in the field of organizational effectiveness, she has assisted corporate and government clients in the US and abroad, including Lockheed Martin, Marriott, the Department of Energy and the Environmental Protection Agency.