Putting a Stop to Intuitive Decision Making

Despite the significant consequences of poor managerial decision making, it is astounding to see the high weighting of intuition in decision making processes for many organisations. In fact, a study by Accenture in 2013 found that 70% of surveyed Australian small-to-medium sized managers say they trusted their gut instinct over any professional advice when making decisions.

Although gut instinct will creep its way into decisions from time to time, there are ways to prevent it from clouding effective decision making. One way is through the utilisation of the Ladder of Inference. The Ladder of Inference provides a method for looking at holes in your logic, setting aside personal influence as much as possible and preventing your judgement from being clouded by emotions. This method has seven topics that each form a separate step on the ladder. These are: reality and facts, selected reality, interpreted reality, assumptions, conclusions, beliefs and actions. According to this model, instinct will cause your mind to naturally skip some steps of the ladder when initially forming decisions. Consequently, effective decision making requires individuals to step up and down the ladder as much as they need to in order to develop holistic decisions. Below we will take a look at each of the ladder steps.

1. Reality and Facts

This step of the ladder requires individuals to consider what has happened and all of the facts surrounding the situation. In organisational settings, this step may involve research and SWOT analysis. Individuals commonly skip this step of the ladder; however, it is an important step to reduce bias and provide perspective for the remainder of the decision-making process.

2. Selected Reality

The second step of the ladder considers the information that individuals decide to filter informing their decision. The information that individuals decide to select is usually based on prior experiences.

3. Interpreted Reality

This stage of the ladder translates the selected facts into a personal meaning. By developing a personal meaning based on the facts developed in step one and two, a decision is likely to be more justifiable.

4. Assumptions

At this level, assumptions are made based on the interpreted reality that has been developed. The assumptions made will vary for every individual and instinct may play a role in shaping these.

5. Conclusions

Once assumptions are clear, conclusions can be formed. In order to make more responsible conclusions at this stage of the ladder, it is recommended that individuals ask for feedback from their peers.

6. Beliefs

Beliefs assist in solidifying the conclusions made in step 5 of the ladder. If beliefs aren’t strong at this stage, it is possible that further situational analysis needs to be undertaken before making a decision. As such, it is recommended that individuals step back down the ladder to form more concrete conclusions.

7. Actions

Once concrete beliefs are formed, reasonable actions can be undertaken. The consequences of these actions can then be utilised in the initial ladder stages of future decision-making processes.

Overall, the ladder of inference displays how instinct will naturally creep its way into any decision making process. However, being aware of the likeliness of instinct and following a systematic decision-making process can assist individuals in making more responsible decisions.

CAREER DOCTOR: AN IML SPECIALIST TAKES A PROBLEM TO TASK.

BY PETER CULLEN MIML

Stepping out of your comfort zone and into the unknown

It is quite normal to have our thoughts and emotions hijacked by anxiousness when preparing to take on a new role, project or team. We can become overwhelmed with these thoughts and emotions to the point where we are not thinking clearly or perhaps even rationally. And we haven’t actually done anything yet.

Let’s take a step back in time. The people who made the decision to place this higher level of responsibility on you did so because they believe you are the best person for the role. They believe you are capable of achieving their desired outcomes. They believe you have the capacity to learn and grow in this new role and to be the person they need to grow the company in the future. They should also understand that learning and growing takes time, commitment and support from both sides.

 

There are some essential building blocks that will help you move forward with confidence. 

 Clarity: Seek as much clarity and truth about your role, responsibilities and reporting lines as possible. There is a need for discussions on expectations of those you will be reporting to, those who report to you and vice versa. Research the teams’ history to understand previous concerns and successes. When you have this clarity, you are better able to ascertain your own strengths that will support you in your new role and more clearly identify your development needs. Having this knowledge removes the unknowns and diminishes your potential to be anxious from over thinking the reality of the role.

 

Action: We will often need courage to make decisions and take action in areas which are new to us. Having personal one-on-ones with team members is a great way to create a mutual understanding of each other as people and respective capabilities. Exploring each other’s thinking typically results in better ideas while making it easier to assign tasks, delegate and to build a collaborative environment which often leads to more substantial outcomes. Your team and manager will expect you to be decisive and take action when necessary.

 

Practice: Remember, taking action also means we make mistakes. How we react to a mistake makes an enormous difference to establishing self confidence in our role. Knowing it is an inherent component of the learning process means we take the opportunity to be open and honest about our mistakes, seek advice or greater understanding from the person we report to, a peer or colleague and then implement it. Through consistent practice, focus and determination we will learn to get it right and continue to progress in our role. Honest self-reflection and feedback from others will help to continuously improve our current and newly learned capabilities whilst identifying new opportunities for personal and professional development.

 

Authenticity: Knowing and living your personal values goes a very long way in establishing yourself as the person you really are rather the person you believe other people want you to be. Being open, honest and transparent in your dealings with others in an appropriate and respectful way helps others to see you as a person more worthy of their trust. And that is the foundation stone for people believing in you as a role model.

 

Be true to yourself and move forward quietly, calmly confident

 

 

 

Peter Cullen is an education and training facilitator who teaches IML Education and training courses.

Each three-day program engages participants in developing and implementing their capabilities as managers and leaders.

 

 

 


MAKE YOUR MARK. GO CHARTERED 

Chartered Manager (CMgr) is the internationally-recognised professional designation accrediting management and leadership excellence.
The highest status that can be achieved as a manager and leader, it allows managers to professionalise their leadership skills and stand out in a competitive global market.
Focused on Continuing Professional Development (CPD), Chartered Manager is awarded on experience, expertise and a commitment to management and leadership.

For more details visit Chartered Manager

4 reasons why I got my management accreditation

Why become a Chartered Manager?

Why did I bother? After all, I already have a Masters in Management (MMgt), and numerous other accreditations in coaching and human behaviour assessments. Well, while that’s great underpinning theory, we all know that it’s hands-on experience, proven results, and continual learning to stay current that matters most.

Just like other professions, standards of practice vary. For example, there are bookkeepers, qualified accountants, and there are Chartered Certified Accountants. As a leadership coach, it concerns me that in the coaching industry, there are numerous life coaches, wellness coaches, transformational coaches – a whole raft of labels anyone can use. From attending a weekend coaching course, to completing a full Diploma in Coaching, credibility varies greatly.

1. Get recognition as a manager

When IML ANZ refreshed their membership brand, they heralded a deliberate intent to raise the bar in professional standards of managers and leaders, they had my immediate attention. You see, leadership is at the core of everything I do, and everything I help others do. Our company – Vital Leaders’ mission is to develop more dynamic leaders, so it sits well with the Institute’s re-energised, agile direction.

On 16 January 2018, I officially achieved the internationally recognised, designated status of Chartered Manager – CMgr. What’s that mean, you ask? Good question. It’s quite a new recognition pathway for experienced managers and leaders in Australia and New Zealand. In fact, it is recognised as the highest status you can achieve as a leader.

IML ANZ offers this globally recognised designation here in Australia and New Zealand, though a strategic partnership with UK’s Chartered Management Institute – CMI.

2. Learn more about yourself as a manager

Similarly, there are accidental managers who fall into the industry and struggle without support, there are skilled semi-experienced managers who manage operations and outcomes, and there are dynamic leaders who inspire change, ignite growth, influence positive outcomes, and are intentional role models and mentors. There IS a difference, but it is often overlooked in recruitment processes and shoulder-tap promotions.

The Chartered Manager assessment offers two routes, depending on what qualifications and experience levels you already have. I took the qualified route, which required me to submit a comprehensive assessment outlining how I manage change and lead others, outcomes and learnings, from over the past 18 months. I also had to demonstrate how I stay current, including outlining my professional development plan for next 12 months.

An assessor was assigned to me, and I had the privilege of meeting with her for my final assessment interview in London, while I was there visiting family. My submission piece was assessed against strict professional ethics and the CMI Code of Conduct and Practice.

Honestly, the process was more challenging than I initially thought it would be – but that’s a good thing. Achieving Chartered Manager status is more than a document of proof or a form-filling exercise. It required considerable introspective reflection on why I do what I do, and particularly, what I learn from each experience. It recognised the vast range of skills I use, often subconsciously, but always intentionally.

3. Credibility, currency and commit to ongoing professional growth

What being recognised as a Chartered Manager means to me is these three core things:
Credibility – International recognition of my high-level expertise as a currently practicing company manager, leader of change, trainer and mentor of aspiring leaders; formally assessed to rigid Code of Conduct and ethical practice standards (formal qualifications + experience + intentions + results + learnings).

Currency – acknowledged value of what I currently do, how I resolve issues by challenging the status quo and driving change, how I meet client expectations by using the latest practices, and recognition of positive outcomes achieved the last 18 months.

Commitment to continual growth – acknowledgement of my insatiable thirst for continual professional development [CPD], and commitment to research and learning, for which I will be held accountable each year through a CPD reporting process.

4. Stand out from the competition as an intentional leader

Embedded into our leadership development programs, is a trust formula for leaders, which is fundamentally about building credibility.

Character + Competence + Consistency = TRUST.

The Chartered Manager process gave me the opportunity to provide evidence of my ethical, honest and intentional character, my competence levels and achievements, and my consistent approach to continually learn and grow. Being awarded the Chartered Manager designation and proudly upholding those standards, means I stand out from the mediocre, and stand proud as an intentional leader – as a trusted role-model and mentor.

Yes, it’s means more than just another paper certificate.

Yes, I’m proud of being globally recognised for my achievements.

But above all that, I’m honoured to share my journey and what I’ve learned so that others can aspire, reach and grow.

Intentional leaders mentor and develop more leaders … and my intention is to keep doing that.
Leadership credibility matters.

Want to find out more about becoming a Chartered Manager? Click here.

By Jilinda Lee CMgr FIML, Director and Founder of Vital Leaders.

Annie Parker Gives Her 5 Top Tips For Surviving The Uphill Trek

Written by Carolin Lenehan

 

Annie Parker’s journey into the intoxicating world of startups began atop Mount Kilimanjaro, where she pulled out her phone, and in a single text, quit her job.

“I thought I’d get this huge adrenalin rush when I finally made the summit, but instead I fell in a heap and cried,” she recalls.

The sense of achievement wasn’t the cause – instead, the realisation hit that nine months spent trying to fill some missing sense of purpose were over, and now she would have to go back to the job that wasn’t doing it for her.

Six years on, Parker is interim CEO of Australia’s legendary startup nursery Fishburners, with responsibility for 845 early stage tech startup companies.

 

Here are her five hot tips to surviving the uphill startup trek:

 

  1. Take responsibility and make your own path

“When I reached the summit I realised that I had to take responsibility for my own personal development. No one can decide what your future is, and no one should do it for you, because if they did, they’d probably get it wrong,” Parker says.

 

  1. You’ll know the tipping point when you feel it

There is an inevitable point of no return with every startup.

“It’s like abseiling down a cliff . . . That moment where you tip backwards and you go, ‘What if this doesn’t work, what if this rope doesn’t hold me?’ You realise you are so vested in the potential of what this idea could become that you can’t bear the thought of finding out later someone else did it instead.”

 

  1. It only takes small steps to move forward.

Get over your fears, take that first small step and learn more. Then take another.

“A startup – by definition – has probably not been done before, so it’s OK that you don’t what the whole plan is from day one,” she says.

“Attend some startup events at places like Fishburners – you’ll be surprised how happy people are to share knowledge and experiences. From there, it starts to become obvious what the next right step is for you.”

 

  1. It’s OK to not be OK

Starting a business is a risk, and things can go wrong. Annie’s moment came earlier this year. In a raw and brave LinkedIn post, she shared:

I think it’s hugely important not to gloss over the bad bits and call them out for what they are – valuable (painful) learning experiences… I know everything will work itself out in the end, but until it does, I’ll be wrestling with the embarrassment of not being able to make the plan work; the worry that people will think less of me; the concern for others we bought along on the journey and hoping that they’ll be okay too….

 

  1. “Just keep swimming. Just keep swimming, swimming, swimming.”

This line from Finding Nemo’s Dory character was on repeat in Annie’s head as she dug deep to put one foot in front of the other and climb her mountain.

“Starting a business you will have moments where you feel you’re spent and have no energy left, but just give it another half hour, day or that extra week, and you never know- you might still find a way through.”

 

How you present can impact staff buy-in

By Emma Bannister 

 

A powerful presentation is our most critical tool in an organisation today. We use them to build buy-in with our team members, to communicate our big ideas and connect with employees to inspire them into action. Yet the majority of the time our presentations are bland, boring and the only impact they have is to get staff running for the doors (if they haven’t already fallen asleep in their seats).

Our important and urgent messages are hidden in badly designed slides, complex paragraphs of information, and screens of bullet points that have no clear purpose or call to action. While you may not be able to magically transform a poor presentation into a powerful one overnight, to truly educate or inspire your team to leap up in their seats with glee (not to flee) then here are some small changes you can start with.

Pick one key message

When you present, pick one clear message to structure your presentation around and then repeat that message throughout to make the message stick. It is that one idea, purpose or point that is the glue that holds everything else together. Once there is a clear bumper sticker message then it’s easy to figure out what the key take-home message is for the audience and what it is they should do as a result. Anything else in the presentation that does not align to this message should be deleted, stripped out and banished. What gets left out of a presentation is more important than what goes in.

Make it emotional

I know, I know, in business we’ve traditionally been taught to do the opposite, to just present the facts. But these days, the best presenters are those who can use a combination of facts and emotion to explain a future place that everyone in the organisation wants to work towards.

Use images that match your words and make your team feel an emotion, whether that’s excited, happy, angry or sad. I’ve seen clients use video in place of static images to make their message more memorable. Remember, people buy from people they like. We buy based on how we feel about something – or someone. It’s your passion and authenticity that will help you to bond with your team, so they feel like you’re all in this together, instead of you just barking out orders of what they need to do. That emotional pull is what will impact your team’s decision to ‘buy in’ to what you are saying.

Be honest

It’s important not to try and hide or cover up negative information or numbers. Nothing turns your team off more than when you lie about your financial position. You need to treat your team as equals. Provide your employees with confidence going forward. Be future focused and take ownership of the problem. Explain the steps you’re implementing to turn things around to minimise loss, and how your team can help with this too.

You need to be open and honest about where you are at right now, and what is involved in the journey to get where you are going – together. Leave them inspired, not deflated like it is their fault. Bad slides and presentations are used like a security blanket to hide things under. So start with small changes to your content and attitude, and stop hiding and hoping for the best. Your team will respect you for that.


Emma Bannister is the founder and CEO of Presentation Studio, APAC’s largest presentation communication agency.

 

A New Way To Look At Decision-Making

By Michelle Loch FIML, Neuroleadership and Communications expert, Founder and Director at Michelle Loch – Leading Humans

 

As I have become older, and busier, and more distracted in my work and home life, my capacity for making decisions has felt really challenged, and from my conversations with colleagues, it seems I am not alone in that challenge.  There are a number of things that can get in the way of making decisions.

 

I often say to my clients…’people don’t know what they want and they don’t tell the truth’. This is not intentional, but our natural cognitive bias and subjectivity get in the way. We are not good at challenging and stretching our thinking (which is why having a great coach is invaluable) so what we think we want and have articulated is often not quite right and there is a need to reflect deeper.

Another of our human challenges is our relative incapacity to manage complex and conflicting data, or simply the volume of information inside our heads. When it gets too much, it’s overwhelming and the brain interprets this as threatening and pulls back it’s thinking in favour of protection.

Thirdly, our need to be ‘accepted’ is one of our strongest human motivational drivers, and the risk of making the wrong decision, or a decision that might negatively impact the favourable perceptions of others toward you, even if that risk is very low or indeed if the decision is necessary, will evoke an avoidance response and procrastination will ensue.

Here are three ideas you might like to consider in order to improve your decisiveness.

 

Figure out What you Really Want

 

This is actually quite a tough one to do on your own, but take some time to reflect on the real outcome you are looking for. It may be useful to ask these questions of yourself:

 

  • What are my big picture goals that relate to this, and to my life/career/role?  Can I articulate them in one or two sentences?
  • Is there a specific dilemma that is causing the need for this decision?  Can I articulate it in one or two sentences?
  • How do I feel about this issue and how do I want to be feeling around it?
  • In one sentence, what is the specific decision I am needing to now make?

 

Investigate all the Options

 

Make a long list of options and alternatives.  Consider including the options of doing nothing, going with your gut, and also the not so palatable ones like making the unpopular decision. Your first options will be the obvious ones…then ask yourself the following questions…

  • What else could I or others do?
  • What would Richard Branson do?
  • What other perspective could I take?
Michelle is a well-known Thought Leader, Speaker, Author and Mentor, and is Director at Michelle Lock – Leading Humans


Kill off Choice

 

We live in a sophisticated, privileged and complex world with many, many options and choices.  It’s overwhelming.

The etymology for the -cide in the word decision literally means ‘to cut off’…or ‘to kill off’….think pesticide, suicide, genocide, insecticide. Cutting off choices sounds severe, but is not limiting, it’s liberating, freeing you from the curse of endless choices.

First list your options then connect back with your desired outcomes and bigger picture goals, and try to reduce the options to a maximum of 3…or less.

 

Hypothesise and experiment

 

Your brain is not designed for, nor good at, absolutes. When you’re thinking, your entire brain network is firing in complex ways with no simple ‘off switch. The concept of stop, start and continue is more difficult than you think, the stop and start bit in particular.

 

Your brain loves to stay in it’s comfort zone because that is both non-threatening, and therefore energy efficient, both of which are of vital importance to your brain.

 

One way to overcome this is to adopt an experimental mindset – like a hypothesis. After gaining clarity, investigating the options, killing off choice, and connecting the most useful option to the desired outcome, you can then articulate the experiment that you (and possibly your team) are about to enter into.

 

“I have decided that we should ….my thinking behind that decision is …..l expect the outcome to be….but let’s treat it like an experiment and review it in two weeks to see if it has been the right decision”

 

Pressure off…brain happy…you can move on to the next decision knowing that it’s not an absolute and reducing the risk of failure and humiliation.


Michelle  will be one of many speakers at our upcoming Sydney Conference on the 5th October 2017. Book Now to hear Michelle and many other specialists in their respective fields discuss attributes of successful leaders at this full day event.

 

Strike Up The Band

Being an evidence-based leader is a double-edged sword. Evidence becomes both a tool in our hand and a rod for our back. It’s how we learn about the true performance of our organisation, so we can manage it and also manage how we’re judged for that performance. We cannot have the former without the latter.

The price for informed decision-making is transparency and accountability, a price that appears too high for many leaders. They keep their heads in the sand and steer by gut feel; they distract with hearsay and anecdote and biased selection of data. But what these leaders don’t realise is that the price of transparency and accountability is much lower than the price of ignorance. Organisations led by such leaders rarely perform well. And if they perform well in something, it’s usually short-lived and at the expense of other important results.

In truth, most of us would like it both ways: to always be right and to have an organisation that is performing well. But we need to decide what’s more important.

One of my earliest teachers in organisational performance was the safety manager in a transport organisation. He invited me to help him improve safety performance reporting, and part of my improvement was to display the safety-performance measures in line charts with about two years of history. This was so we could see how performance changed over time, track the impact of our improvement initiatives and see the potential for further improvement.

This was what I assumed the safety manager was indeed trying to do. But I was wrong. He wanted to know that what he was doing was working. Not if, but that it was working. The graphs I showed him told a different story: they showed nothing had changed over the past two years. Performance was not improving under his leadership. He wanted to be told he was always right, and the price he paid was impotence: the lack of any effect at all on safety performance. And, of course, that was the price his organisation also had to pay.

In contrast, Jon, the CEO of a timber products company and one of my favourite clients, decided to lead his organisation to actually perform well. He was frustrated that he couldn’t see any bottom-line impact from all the investments the company was making in improving processes.

Rather than hiding this from his board, making excuses or looking for data that would paint a positive picture, Jon took ownership of reality. He and his senior leadership team spent the time to learn how to measure the company’s strategic direction, over and above profit. They aligned each operational team with that strategic direction and helped them learn how to measure the operational results that were drivers of the strategic results.

They used the measures as a cornerstone in their evidence-based management. And it became easier to align their process improvement projects to the strategic results, and the bottom line.

Transparency and accountability are demanded of organisations now, and they are needed in order to truly know how an organisation is performing. And, of course, accountability means that the organisation’s leaders will take responsibility for actual performance if it’s below expectation.

Our world needs more courageous leaders who will accept the price of transparency and accountability and pursue high performance. Because that’s really the only way that things get better.

Evidence-based leadership is not about how to lead. It’s about what to give our attention to as we lead. It’s not about how to direct or how to engage. It’s about how to communicate or how to inspire or how to direct or how to engage. It’s about how to apply all these attributes to create a high-performance organisation.

What we give our attention to as we lead is the performance of the organisation. We communicate the results that matter, so everyone understands them. We inspire everyone to reach for higher performance targets, to achieve the results that matter. We set direction and help each team find their contribution to it. We engage everyone so they feel ownership of their contribution. How we lead is important, and what we emphasise through our leadership is just as vital.

To lead an organisation to high performance, a strong emphasis must be given to the role of evidence. Evidence-based leaders pursue high performance by speeding up the cycle of closing performance gaps – those gaps between where performance is right now, and where they want it to be. This is why these leaders give a lot of attention to results-based performance measures.

Without good performance measures, we have no evidence. With no evidence, we can’t know.

 

MAKE IT UNDERSTOOD AND IT WILL BE MEASURABLE

Leading an organisation is much more complex than navigating a ship across vast oceans. There are many more variables and forces interplaying, and we don’t yet have the instruments and charts to detect or predict them all.

But the fundamental principle of direction is the same: if the captain isn’t clear about where to go and how to hold course when the seas get rough and the crew gets worried and confused, the voyage fails. Leaders of organisations need to be clear about the destination, and how to hold course when the pressure is on. This is the habit of articulating a clear direction, which is not about business as usual. It’s about strategy, and strategy is about change, improvement and working on the business and not in it.

A good strategic direction is where evidence-based leadership begins. A good strategic direction is results-based, not action-oriented. Evidence-based leadership makes no sense if there are no results to strive for. If the strategic direction is a simply a list of initiatives or projects or things to get done, then people confuse success with completion. But there is little point in getting stuff done if we’re not aiming that effort at the results we want to achieve.

For example, there’s no point in completing an initiative to set up a customer relationship management system unless everyone is clear that the result is to retain profitable customers. When we know the results we want to achieve, evidence-based leadership has a context. But too often strategy is written as a list of initiatives or projects or things to get done, and there is no result in sight.

 

ALIGNING PROJECTS WITH RESULTS

It isn’t an either/or decision to be project-oriented or results-oriented. We need to be both, but at the right time. We need to be project-oriented when we are managing the activities and initiatives we’ve invested in. And we need to be results-oriented to make sure we choose the right activities and initiatives, and that those investments aren’t a waste of time, effort and money.

There is a clear difference between program management and performance management, which monitors milestones and expenditure to keep projects on track. Performance management monitors performance measures to keep the results on track. Both are part of evidence-based leadership, but the former is only ever going to add value when the latter is defined clearly first.

 

WHEN PEOPLE ARE ONLY PROJECT-ORIENTED, WASTE IS GUARANTEED

Performance does not equate to completing projects on time and on budget. The only reason we invest time and money into projects is to make a needed difference, or have a specific impact, or achieve a particular result. If we don’t know what the objective is then how can we know that we’ve chosen the right project? How can we know if we’ve designed the project in the right way, and implemented it well? If we don’t know, then we’re guessing. And acting on guesses will always cause many times more waste than acting on knowledge.

Of course, not much will change if people are only results-oriented. Being clear about the results we’re striving to achieve is motivating and focusing.

We get everyone’s energy aligned toward the same end goal. Collaboration is easier, and so is decision making when problems or difficult choices arise. But without action, results never become reality. We sit around theorising and visioning and never get anything done. This breeds cynicism and apathy.

We need to marry results-oriented and project-oriented thinking, not choose one over the other, and not mistake one for the other. We’re not focusing on results instead of projects. We’re putting results and projects in the right order. That way, the projects can be celebrated when they successfully get the results that they were intended to create.

 

UNWEASELY WORDS

The easiest way to change a weasel word to something more meaningful and specific is to try to explain it to a 10-year-old. This does not mean dumbing down our goal; it means making it easy to understand, for everyone. For example, in the goal ‘Enhance our protection of our landscape’, almost every word is weasely. It’s too vague to be sure that everyone will share the same understanding of it. A local council in NSW avoided weasel words and wrote this goal in 10-year-old language: “The fragile soils of ridges and escarpments and valuable farming land are protected from unnatural erosion and loss of topsoil.”

Straight away we can visualise what this goal means. We see in our mind’s eye rolling hills and rocky outcrops, the earthy patchwork of crops, vast green pastures with cows or sheep grazing. We see black or red topsoil in some places, and grey and cracked earth in other places. We see what we can measure: the amount of erosion and the amount of topsoil.

In addition to being nearly impossible to measure meaningfully, and hardly ever comprehensible to everyone in the organisation, weasel words also hide another problem: a strategy that is too broad and unfocused.

 

BE RUTHLESS

Peter Drucker is quoted over again for his message that the key to strategy is omission. Good strategy is more about what not to do than what to do. And that’s the product of ruthless prioritisation.

In The 4 Disciplines of Execution, authors Sean Covey, Chris McChesney and Jim Huling suggest the first discipline is to focus on the wildly important.

Achieving goals for change amid the whirlwind of day-to-day work follows the law of diminishing returns.

If we have two or three goals over and above the whirlwind, we can achieve those two or three goals. But if we have four to 10 goals, in addition to our whirlwind, we’ll achieve only one or two of them.

You know how many goals can be achieved when we have 11 or more goals to achieve, as well as our whirlwind? None.

Should, can, will.

To be ruthless, we must only keep goals that can pass the ‘should, can, will’ test.

Before we even consider measuring a goal, we ask three questions of it:

Should the goal be pursued? (Is it important enough, right now?)

Can we pursue it? (Is it inside our circle of influence?)

Will we pursue it? (Do we have the time and resources to improve it?)

 

If we answer yes to all three questions, the goal is measure-worthy. If it’s not, then why is it in the strategy? Why are we aiming to achieve something but not interested in knowing whether it’s achieved or not?

Leaders who take on too much and set many lofty goals should not be held up as the heroes. They won’t achieve those goals and, if they do, the price will be too high.

It’s the leaders who have laser focus and achieve big improvements that can sustain themselves beyond the effort that are the real heroes.

 

Edited extract from Prove It! How to Create a High Performance Culture and Measurable Sucess by Stacey Barr