Situational Mindsets Archives - 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.

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.

Would You Choose the Red or Blue Pill if you were in the Matrix?

In the film,The Matrix,the main character, Neo,is offered a choice. He could take a red pill representing a desire to live in the real world as a free person or take a blue pill and remain secure in an illusionary world where he could hold on to his established beliefs, practices, and expectations. His choice was change or stability. It was an either-or choice to be made immediately.

In the movie Neo takes the red pill, rejecting a fabricated world to gain increased awareness and discomfort and the risks that follow. He elected reality and change over staying in a fictitious world offering predictability and safety. With only two choices and pressure from Morpheus, encouragement from Trinity, and pursuit by agents he had little time to make this momentous decision.

Organizations today often cast major decisions as either-or options, when, in reality, there are few binary choices. For example, what if Neo asked if he could take both pills? What if he asked Morpheus for additional time? What if he asked if there was a purple pill? With only two polarizing possibilities, he elected not to stay shackled to an impersonal manipulative system and change the matrix.

Leaders today must reject dualistic thinking and apply critical thinking to assess multiple options. This does not require an advanced degree, membership in Mensa or a lofty title. The practice merely requires an open mind and a willingness to shift mindsets to address current conditions. Adopting the practice of probing six situational mindsets enables leaders to discover alternatives and weigh options. It also engages others, surfaces new information, and creates common ground. The six mindsets questions cover every organizational aspect.

The Inventing Mindset probes options for new products/services, creative designs, and new synergies.
The Catalyzing Mindsetfocuses on serving the customer and building the organization’s brand.
The Developing Mindset creates seamless infrastructure, integrated systems, and effective polices.
The Performing Mindset targets process improvement, quality, workflow efficiencies, and ROI.
The Protecting Mindset centers on developing talent, collaboration, agility, and bench strength.
The Challenging Mindsetevaluates challenges, trends, risks, and opportunities for sustained success.

These six mindsets combat our natural tendency to rely on past practice, accept only confirming information,jump quickly into action, and tolerate limited alternatives. We can do better asking questions covering all six mindsets. A simple mindset checklist will prevent hasty action.

Now some resist the idea of a checklist viewing it as a personal shortcoming. However, lawyers, doctors, and pilots use them. The world is too complex and there are too many variables to juggle and weigh complex issues. If we have to-do lists, grocery lists and digital schedules, we already recognize ourinability to balance all of the information.

If we adopt an inclusive understanding of our circumstances and choices, we will find more alternatives. May be there was a purple pill option for Neo if he had asked. What questions should you be asking right now?

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/

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:

Situational Mindsets: Targeting What Matters When It Matters

Situational Mindsets expands leadership beyond mastering personal style, skill set, and positive characteristics. It adds the ability to adjust to dynamic conditions and deliver results. The importance of situational awareness was cited as early as the 5^th century BC in The Art of War by Sun Tze. Sun Tze described how the terrain, weather, population, sources for food and water, and vegetation were important factors in military strategy.

While the challenges facing our leaders today differ, knowing what has been what is and what is changing enables leaders to accurately assess their current environment to make a smart decision.

Situational Mindsets offer a framework to effectively scan an organization’s environment, weigh alternatives, decipher complexity, and address changing realities. Leaders cannot do everything that they want to do, but they must target what is vital at this moment in time. Using situational mindsets, leaders grasp present realities, foster engagement, circumvent risk and leverage opportunities. Situational mastery flows from asking questions. It does not depend on IQ, advanced degrees or extensive training. Also, when we exchange information, we promote understanding and alignment. Leaders do not need to have all the right answers, but they must ask all of the right questions. No one person can handle the pace of change, the growing complexity and amount of data. But the task is not overwhelming. It merely requires a situational mindset checklist to guide data collection and prevent potential blind spots.

Six situational mindsets cover key organizational factors: new products and services, customer focus and competitive position, organizational excellence, productivity and profitability, people and culture, and preparing for the future. Insights from situational mindsets prioritize actions and prevent blunders.

Another benefit is that mindsets enhance respect for different points of view. Valuing diverse perspectives builds collaboration and initiative. It also reduces interpersonal conflict. It provides the clues to walk in another’s shoes translates. It spotlights how to influence their thinking and actions. It is also the greatest honor you can give to another person—to listen to them and help them achieve their goals. After we understand all perspectives and realities, we can discover common ground.

In the dynamic 21^st century the scope of leadership must expand. Situational mastery, critical thinking, priority setting, and sustainable results play a critical role in a person’s and an organization’s success. Click to order your copy ☛ Situational Mindsets

Join me on October 29^th at 1 pm Eastern for a FREE webinar on Situational Mindsets: How to Boost Critical thinking and Deliver Results ⤵︎ click link below

Situational Mindsets: How to Boost Critical Thinking and Deliver Results – with Mary Lippitt

Published with permission from Bizcatalyst360.