Minnesota Leaders – Now you can easily teach teams to solve problems

MN Executive Coach reveals how to solve system problems

Did you know your business is a series of systems … all linked together?

This troubleshooting process allows you to perform each step in isolation.  Oftentimes problems in systems are intermittent, which may trick you into believing that you’ve solved the problem only to have it reappear later.

Requirements:

This process requires you have a system diagram of all component parts or at least a complete understanding of the parts of the overall system and how they integrate together.

You will also need an escalation list of people, teams, departments that are responsible for systems connected to yours.

Process

C – Confirm

I – Isolate

R – Resolve or attempt to resolve

V – Verify resolution has solved the problem

E – Escalate to another if resolution process fails

Confirm – This step asks you to ensure you can recreate the problem consistently. Once you can recreate the problem consistently you can more readily isolate (the next step).

Isolate – This step requires the system diagram.  Systems are usually designed in a linear or ‘chain link’ fashion, which means each component is linked to (or dependent upon) 1 or 2 other components before it.  This uses the old ‘garbage in-garbage out’ idea – if you’re having trouble with the output of a particular component, look at the components that are connected before that component and also component in question.

One easy way to perform this step is to temporarily replace the component or modify the procedure and then re-confirm the problem (the previous step) disappeared.

In human systems you can ask the person to ‘imagine… for the sake of argument…’ an alternative idea, feeling, response or thought.  This allows the person to ‘try on’ or ‘swap out’ one thought, feeling or response for another.

Resolve – Once you are sure you’ve found the root cause, replace the faulty component or procedure.  In business systems, this might mean you improve, change or delete the procedure.  In human systems ask the person to try a 30 day experiment – where they agree to act as if this new thought, feeling or response is a normal response.  The agreement is after 30 days if they don’t like the feedback they get from the new behavior then they can go back to the ‘old’ way of doing things.

Verify – This step is important and overlooked.  It’s more than just rebooting the system or declaring the ‘problem is solved’.  It includes monitoring for a period of time to ensure the system is stable.  If the system is not stable, you may either go back to the Confirm step or Escalate (the next step).

Escalate – Systems operate within systems – which means they have isolated inputs and outputs.  Therefore the entire system may be getting an input that needs to be fixed.  Computer systems may be getting incorrect data from a database.  Human systems may be getting bad information.  If the source of the fault is outside of the system, then escalate using the escalation list.

This process is a simple method for continuous business improvement.  You easily implement this by teaching it to your team with instructions to place blame on the process, not the people.  Teach them to use this method everytime there is an irate customer, a product delay or other business problem.

Here’s a secret, you don’t have to wait until something is broken to use this process and improve things.

Check us out at http://quantumcommonwealth.com for more great ways we can help you grow your business.

Leaders can be made. What roadblocks are you creating as a leader?

How do leaders make ‘it’ happen?

Hard way: do it yourself (not a leader)

Easy way: Through others.

What to do? Show them what you are doing and why. Leaders have sincerely told me that ‘you can’t teach people to ‘get it’”. It is often defined as the capability of ownership or initiative. Often called the essence of leadership. Once we explore what ‘it’ is, invariably we find out there’s a process for helping people ‘get it’ and it’s quite simple. Tell them what they don’t ‘get’.

I call the leaders attention to the process of simply telling others what they see and inviting everyone else to see it makes the entire process easier.

Does this work for everyone all the time? Of course not. Underneath this all requires a willingness on the part of the leader and the followers. If someone is unwilling to ‘get it’ or if a leader is unwilling to share what they ‘get’ then there’s not much chance of success, if any.

How exactly do people get it? The process of asking ‘why?” ‘Why would they say that?” “Why would they do that?” “What did he mean by that?” “Why is that important to them?” This defines context, creating purpose and meaning to the actions. The benefit of this is the ability to create leaders out of employees, regardless of their role in the organization.

Sometimes leaders ask how something so simple could be so effective. I invite them to notice that this is the exact internal process they use to spot challenges and opportunities. This makes ‘leadership’ much less of a mystery and art. It becomes a skill that can be transferred and taught.

If you are willing to experiment, try inviting your team to ask ‘why’ for 30 days. Before you do this, assess their current level of initiative on a scale of 1 to 5. Look for evidence of increased initiative during the 30 day period and then re-assess. You will notice that this simple technique is an effective way to make leaders in your organization.

Alan Hill is a business and executive leadership coach in Minneapolis, Minnesota with ActionCOACH, the world’s number one coaching company. If you would like to learn more about him or to contact him for a private consultation, check out his website at http://actioncoach.com/alanhill

Work Life Balance (2 of 2) – MN Leadership Coach Shows How!

MN Business Owners - Can you be a Great Leader And Have A Life Too?

 

Work Life Balance Part 2 of 2

Years ago when I was in the IT field, I had just proposed a large nationwide email system implementation project to the CEO of a major construction company.  There were clear benefits to improving communication in his company, and at the time (late 90’s) the case for email had already been well proven, or so I had thought.

 

During the discussion the CEO hesitated.  When I inquired about his concerns, he told me something that I have found very insightful and eerily predictive of the way technology robs us of our time and distorts the supposed work life balance everyone seems to desperately crave.

 

Before I divulge what he said, I want to ask you if you’ve noticed manager level people with blackberries all text emailing back and forth.  If you ask them, as I have, who they are communicating with, it’s not their family, its their team.  Why?  It’s usually to keep informed on something that’s going on, or even in some cases, to make sure nothing is going on.  What does this say about that managers’ ability to have trust and confidence in their team?  What does this say about how they see their role in the company?  Are they a babysitter?

This CEO had commented that he wasn’t sure his company was ready for email, because he spent a lot of energy creating a company culture of self-reliance, of people who could be trusted and counted on to do their job and make the right decisions and were relied upon to do so.  His concern was that with email it’s far too easy to cc: your boss on any particular email. 

 

Once you start down that slippery slope as a company, you’re not too far away from getting the boss’s opinion before you make a decision.  From there, you’d better be waiting for the boss to get back to you on any decision.  So what do you do when the boss is away?  Whew!  Good thing someone invented Blackberries!  Now no matter where the boss is, home, family, flying, whatever, we can easily and confidently contact them. 

 

 

It would be better for us as a society and as companies that we have technology to instill backbones in our teams.  Then we’d have to change our focus from having strong leaders to having strong followers.  Perhaps we put autoresponders on all manager’s emails that say ‘I’m out of the office, you’re entrusted with this decision, what do you think is best? What do you believe I’d decide?”

 

Imagine a manager with a team that respects their family time on the weekend and does not interrupt them.  Imagine this team carefully considering what the manager would want in a particular decision and act accordingly.  What kind of powerful companies would we have then?

 

The essence of leadership is not an ability to make decisions.  Nor is it actions, nor is it vision, mission or influence.  The essence of leadership is to make leaders out of followers.  This is how leaders create balance, for themselves, their team, their customers, their company and their community.

 

Alan Hill is a business and executive leadership coach in Minneapolis, Minnesota with ActionCOACH, the world’s number one coaching company.  If you would like to learn more about him or to contact him for a private consultation, check out his website at http://actioncoach.com/alanhill 

Work Life Balance (1 of 2) – MN Leadership Coach Shows How!

MN Business Owners - Can you be a Great Leader And Have A Life Too?

Work Life Balance - Part one of two

 

In the recent BNET article/blog titled “Be a Great Leader – and Have a Life,” the author talks about the importance of the four domains: 1) Work, 2) Home, 3) Community, and 4) Self.

If you label yourself as a successful leader: how DO YOU DO IT? What works for you? The article may work in theory, but does it work in practice? 

 

I have a different perspective than most.

 

First it requires we forgo the notion that amount of time spent in each domain equates to balance. Perhaps a person is most beneficial to society by spending most of their time as a business leader because they are positively impacting many more lives than that of their family.  Or perhaps they are more impactful as a father teaching one person how to golf (Tiger Woods).  I believe our balance should be measured in contributions, not time.

 

When I was a corporate leader I did what was necessary to support my team. Many long hours were required. What came of that investment was a perpetual mentoring program that continues to give employees the opportunity work to promote themselves on a technical path.

 

My work life balance came in the lessons I learned and the mentor skills I developed as a result of that time invested. Now I am able to leverage that investment of time with many other businesses, just like a programmer writes a program once and people use it many times over.

 

I find it more beneficial to impact many more lives as a result of having spent what some consider an enormous amount of time to obtain an ability to quickly give benefit to many customers. Did I have balance then? Some would say no because I spent so much time at work and not at home. However, what if I write an ebook of my lessons and share that with the world? Would the time that others save in their work so they can be with their family be considered a part of my ‘balance’?

I submit that balance has to be considered in the scope of an entire life. Our tradition in America is to retire at age 65. Why wait so long? Why not develop a recurring revenue stream (or several) based upon our experiences, regardless of how much time we spent developing them?  Then we would be able to retire whenever we want.  Would this be considered balance because you’re taking away time from your family?    

As an example, Bill Gates does not have to work for a living, but he spent a bunch of time building a company that we all benefit from. When you consider the time he saved us (forget about buggy software for a moment) does that balance out the time he invested?  Consider that he is now in charge of a foundation that positively impacts lives around the world.  Does that balance out the countless hours he spent away from his family? 

Conclusion: When you measure work life balance, weigh in the amount of future return you and others will receive for the balance of your investment in your life’s work.  Considering the return will help you determine if this time is worth the investment.

 

Alan Hill is a business and executive leadership coach in Minneapolis, Minnesota with ActionCOACH, the world’s number one coaching company.  If you would like to learn more about him or to contact him for a private consultation, check out his website at http://actioncoach.com/alanhill