Leadership Archives - Page 2 of 6 - Enterprise Management Ltd

4 Ways to Smash the Barriers to Critical Thinking

Many leaders exhibit a tendency to jump intoaction. When a problem is identified there must be an immediate response. There appears to be an ingrained “just do it” mentality on the assumption it will produce results as well as admiration. What is overlooked is the option for a pause between learning about a situation and responding to it. The pause enables information gathering and analysis. It also acknowledges recognizes that no one, no matter how talented, can master the complex issues facing us today.

The practice of gaining input can be called brainstorming, consulting, buzz groups, task teams, or crowdsourcing. But these work only when they are employed, when everyone believes they can contribute, and when everyone feels that it is safe to offer an opinion.

The lack of critical thinking cited in many CEO surveys encouraged me to poll 100 people about the barriers they experience in practicing critical thinking. The results are:

42% Identified time pressure or the lack of time to consider options
20% Expressed fear of rejection, ridicule or retribution
20% Replied nothing will happen as a result; They were resigned to accept that status quo
9% Doubted their ability to add anything important
5% Feared that it will mean just mean more work for them
4% Stated that no one required them to think critically

Organizations are wasting valuable human resources if insights and concerns never surface. And reversing the top concerns require only minor adjustments. Consider implementing one or more the following:

Concerns over time constraints can be overcomeby setting aside 5 to 10 minutes of a staff meeting to explore an idea or ask for an issue that needs attention. It can also be encouraged by reminding staff that preventing problems saves time and effort rather than having to resolve setbacks later.And, the cost of blind spots continues to grow.
Creating a “safe” environment by encouraging and respecting different points of view. Why not start your next staff meeting by asking “what have we learned since our last meeting?” Another option would be to appoint a rotating “devil’s advocate” who will critically examine proposals and raise issues. This is particularly important whenpotential benefits crowd out a comprehensive examination. The devil advocate can spotlight the need for deeper dive. In business and physics for every action there is a reaction, and it is important to recognize ramifications before leaping into action.
Every suggestion or proposal deserves a response. Clarification on what was done or why no action was taken must be shared. It showsrespects for the person who offered the suggestion and ensures further engagement. Additionally, the contributor can learn about factors that can turn an apparent slam dunk into a pitfall.
Build critical thinking confidence through coaching, usingan established checklist, and providingtime to reflect and confer with others. Recognize that not all critical thinking happens instantaneously. It can require “soak time,” whether it is in the shower or in the car. Confidence is also boosted when critical thinking is recognized, whether it was implemented or not. Whatever the outcome, the practice deserves encouragement

Leaders and decision makers must recognize those that think out of the box as well as those that think inside it, and under it. To paraphrase,Einstein, today’s problems cannot be solved at the same level of thinking that was used to create them. We must expand our thinking practices.

About Author:

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/

Breaking the Vacuum Around Leadership

Has leadership kept pace with the unfathomable challenges we face? We have excelled at helping leaders from the inside out by focusing on leadership style, characteristics, and skillsets. However, we have avoided advancing leadership mastery in terms of systems and situational awareness. We must fill the external attention vacuum.

Peter Drucker’s stated that leadership“has little to do with ‘leadership quality’ and even less to do with ‘charisma.’ Its essence is performance,”and I agree with his focus on results. Flexibility, agility, timing, and situational awareness enable leaders to leverage new opportunities and prevent blind spots.

Organizations are more integrated, customer expectations have increased, and resources have become more constrained. And to make it even more challenging, this greater complexitymeans that no one person can have all the answers. Instead of becoming the solution provider, leaders need to ask the right questions and evaluate alternatives. Luckily, this is not rocket science or a matter of IQ. It requires committing to conducting an environmental scan,which can be done using six situational mindsetsto uncover information before jumping to a decision.

Asking questions covering six different spheresproduces a comprehensive understanding of present challenges and opportunities. Questions include:

What new approaches or creative options can we investigate?
How can we improve customer service and retention?
How can we become a truly seamless and effective organization?
What can improve our quality and efficiency?
How can we foster collaboration, engagement,and learning?
What can we do now to ensure a prosperous future?

Vacuums collapse when we find a way to fill them. Leadership today needs to include systems thinking, organizational insights, and environmental scanning for organizations to thrive.

“Breaking the Vacuum Around Leadership” was originally published on 10 July 2019 at BizCatalyst360.

About Author:

Targeting What Matters When It Matters

Adopting a narrow or fixed perspective is both foolish and dangerous. My MBA students frequently and fervently embrace a single answer, but in their rush to provide an answer they overlook key aspects and alternatives. Experienced decision makers know to dig deeper to see all that they can to address what most important, rather than wasting resources on what appears promising or urgent. They know their role is to ask the right questions more than delivering an answer.

When we drive our cars, we do not rely exclusively on the view through the windshield. We check the side and rear mirrors and this expanded awareness ensure our safety. Relying on a single point of view, or past practice discounts alternate perspectives as immaterial or mistaken. Such a laser-like focus equates to wearing blinders. But the other extreme of trying to focus on everything equally produces confusion derailing achievement.

Not everything warrants immediate attention. The urgent should not obscure the important. Decision makers must make the right call at the right time for the right results.

We can access mountains of data but extracting information, detecting patterns, and understanding the implications requires critical thinking and analysis. Mining insights requires discipline rather than an advanced degree, an elevated IQ, or a lofty title. Critical and situational analysis is not rocket science, and it is not bestowed on just a few of us. What is needed is to develop the ability to ask questions and gauge current conditions before jumping to conclusions.

Decision makers at all levels must effectively scan their environment, extract key insights, discover alternatives, evaluate risk and target key issues. And that cannot be done relying on our memory. Most of us have a working memory (the number of things we can pay attention to and manipulate at one time) of only three or four items at a time (https://www.livescience.com/2493-mind-limit-4.html). Therefore, we must train decision makers to collect and gauge the glut of information in a systematic manner to avoid blind spots.

If we fail to see all that there is to see, we pay a high price. Consider Tide PODS. Procter & Gamble launched one of their most innovative products in 2012. The brightly colored packets have captured one-fifth of the laundry detergent market by 2018. Yet, that success has to be balanced with eight deaths and over 9,000 poisonings. Could that have been foreseen? Many would argue that the risk could have been identified since young children are attracted to vivid colors and shapes that they can hold. A risk assessment would have identified it as probably and severe.

Likewise, Boeing could have anticipated software problem with their flight-control system. How do we know this? Boeing offered their customers, at an additional cost, a Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System (MCAS) system enhancement to override potential malfunction in an angle of attack sensor. Given that 737 Max 8 cost over $100 million and the fallout from a failure, the decision to charge extra for the additional software was a major red flag demanding attention. That short-sighted decision combined with a reduced amount of pilot training combined to increase risk and cost the firm approximately one billion dollars. Tide PODS and the 737 Max 8 had foreseeable and overlooked dangers.

Decision makers need to focus on asking questions to know what to do and when to do it based on current relevant information. What questions are you asking to guarantee that your team can target critical issues?

“Targeting What Matters When It Matters” was originally published on 25 April 2019 in BIZCATALYST 360°.

Using Checklists and Statistics to Get in Sync With Reality

I was recently struck by my seeming lack of perspective on global developments while reading Factfulness: Ten Reasons We’re Wrong About the World–And Why Things Are Better Than You Think. My only consolation was that I was not alone; 95 percent of the people held the same views, according to the author, statistician Hans Rosling.

One of the questions I missed was according to Rosling was: In the last 20 years has the proportion of the world population living in extreme poverty:

Almost doubled
Stayed approximately the same
Almost halved

Would you be surprised to learn of Rosling’s claim that extreme poverty has been cut by almost 50 percent? I was. In fact, I barely considered option three. My preconceived ideas, my repeated exposure to tragic news stories and, to be honest, my reliance on outdated facts led me to conclude that poverty had almost doubled.

While I am in good company since almost everyone was mistaken, the fact is both comforting and disturbing. It means most of us are out of sync with our current reality. Why is this? The causes include: (1) our assumption that we already know everything we need to know, (2) a tendency to expect the worst case is the most likely outcome, (3) a proclivity to reduce issues to two simple options and (4) time pressures.

If you are not convinced of the extent of this problem, consider another question: Which statement do you agree with the most?

the world is getting better
the world is getting worse
the world is getting neither better nor worse

The correct answer is A, according to Rosling, and the data that he uses to support this contention includes: significant increase in literacy, agricultural yields have increased, more people have electricity, more groups are allowed to vote, child cancer rates have improved, access to potable water has grown, more girls are in school, and technology has spread widely to less developed nations. Many of us failed to see this program. We seem to see the world as a glass half empty, rather than half full. Moreover, this notion creates fear derailing critical thinking and analysis.

What we know “for sure” is rarely entirely accurate. Sometimes our knowledge is obsolete, and at other times it is incomplete. To understand our current circumstance, we must stop thinking we know more than we do and start asking questions to fully understand all the issues enabling us to examine the facts critically. Critical thinking is vital as we confront rapid change and complexity. It exposes misconceptions, while also producing wiser more rewarding decisions.

Knowing that we infrequently update our knowledge and overlook information that does not conform to our pre-existing assumptions , we need new tools. Deploying a checklist has proven successful in medicine, aviation, litigation, and construction not because of ineptitude or ignorance but due to inherent cognitive flaws. Instead of being a constraint, checklists free our minds to concentrate on critical aspects, prevent small mistakes and save time. Now it is time for leaders at all levels to develop, share and use checklists to stay in sync with their current reality.

The book cited here is: Hans Rosling, Ola Rosling, and Anna Roennlund, (2019) FACTFULNESS: ten reasons we’re wrong about the world – and why things are better than you think. [London: Sceptre Publishing]

About Author:

The Role of Mindsets in Leadership Development

Leadership development historically has two basic approaches: focusing on personal development and targeting an individual’s job skills. These were enough in a relatively stable environment. However, in a dynamic and fast changing world, leaders must be adept at dealing with changing environments. This new contextual approach to leadership fills the gap between personal and organizational mastery.

Wise leaders collect, decipher, weigh, and use information from all points of view to capitalize on opportunities and avoid being blindsided by trends due to narrow perspectives. A limited frame of reference creates blinders. This lens is also called current driving Mindset. If we ignore some data, we open ourselves to unnecessary risk. This current driving Mindset is one of six Mindsets which enable you to assess opportunities, threats, and risks characteristic of your organization. Seeing the big picture ensures that your actions, plans, and decisions target the right outcome and address the critical challenges.

Mental agility remains a key leadership practice. Leaders who have foresight to see reality will be more proactive. To put this in practical terms, a leader who elects to act when noticing a fire code violation offers more value than one who waits until they see flames. It saves lives, property, and opportunities for the future.

Leaders with ability to make decisions or judgments which balance short-term and long-term priorities play an invaluable role moving an organization forward. It is often the ability to change minds and gain commitment of others to produce results, depends on collecting and evaluating data from six Mindsets:

Inventing

The desire to develop new ideas, products, and services is high in the Inventing Mindset. This Mindset also seeks new internal synergies and cross-functional innovation.

Catalyzing

A focus on fast action to meet customer requirements, keeping existing customers and building the brand and beating the competition drive this Catalyzing Mindset.

Developing

Building infrastructure, creating policies and systems are the focus of the Developing Mindset as are se goals and establishing policies.

Performing

Process improvement, safety, and profit margins are in focus in the Performing Mindset. In this Mindset, quality, improving productivity and performance metric are in the forefront.

Protecting

The Protecting Mindset includes developing talent and building the internal culture of an organization. It also concentrates on succession planning, team collaboration, and engagement.

Challenging

The desire to test assumptions, create strategic options and adjust the business plan is primary in the Challenging Mindset. Discerning and spreading best practices, seeking new alliances and niches are key to sustainability.

Neglecting to comprehensively collect and examine data generates blunders. Consider the fate of Blackberry, Kodak, and Blockbuster.

The writing was on the wall, but they failed to see it. Their limited situational awareness blinded them to the need for change. Situational awareness is the missing link in leadership development. It provided leaders with the ability to see what is on the wall, around the corner, and within reach. It is time we help leaders effectively read the realities they are confronting.

About Author:

Situational Triage: Judging Current Conditions

The TV series M.A.S.H. was not just a funny comedy; it also depicted advancements in field medicine including the practice of triage. As the helicopters and trucks arrived with the wounded, the doctors and nurses would check each patient and determine whose injury needed to be attended to first. Recent mass casualty events remind me of this process and the value of astute professional medical judgment. Read More

Brilliant Or Blunder- Key Mindsets For Leaders

Eileen Bild had an opportunity to interview Dr. Mary Lippitt, an award-winning author of “Brilliant or Blunder 6 Ways Leaders Navigate Uncertainty, Opportunity and Complexity,” and founder of Enterprise Management Ltd. Read More

Critical and Strategic Thinking Builds Agility

Leaders say they want to boost creativity, critical thinking and agility to improve performance and manage change. Research studies confirm the accuracy of those statements. Who wouldn’t want their staff to be quick on their feet, display ingenuity, offer critical insights, or make effective strategic choices? However, there is no consensus on how to boost agile thinking or increase brain capacity beyond the standard 10% utilization. Read More

Success Mindsets For Astute Scanning

We all recognize that better decisions follow reliable data collection. However, obtaining it remains a challenge. Too often we accept a penetrating glimpse of the obvious or past practice since it is safe and efficient to keep doing what we have always done. Unfortunately, this tendency keeps us in an echo chamber where old assumptions reside and reverberate. Read More

123 4 5 6