by Jane Perdue | Workplace tips
A client who wasn’t sure she wanted a future with her current employer was curious about the interview process.
She wanted guidance on how to best answer the classic interview question, Tell me about your strengths and weaknesses.
Her curiosity about the strengths/weaknesses question was a good thing to have. I shared with her that employers typically use this question to assess several things about the applicant: (more…)
by Jane Perdue | Workplace tips
Convinced you have the world’s worst boss?
So do lots of other people!
According to a five-year comparative study commissioned by Lynn Taylor Consulting, seven out of 10 people believe bosses and toddlers act alike.
Taylor’s study shows that being self-oriented is the top offending boss behavior. Being stubborn, overly demanding, impulsive, and interrupting round out the top five bad boss behaviors. (more…)
by Jane Perdue | Workplace tips
When we moved into our lowcountry house three years ago, the side yard was beautifully shaded with quintessentially southern crepe myrtle and magnolia trees that belonged to our neighbor.
Given that they lived here only a few months of the year, I felt privileged to enjoy the beauty of their landscaping year-round. Following their lead, I fulfilled my gardening zest by planting lots of shade-loving flowers and shrubs.
Every day the beauty of the plants growing there made me smile.
That beauty changed recently.
Crews with chain saws scampered through the neighbor’s yard and took down tree after tree—including those beautiful myrtles and magnolias that stood guard over my shade-loving plants. (more…)
by Jane Perdue | Workplace tips
“I can’t tell you how impressed I am with this group,” exclaimed Roger. “Once again, their efforts made all the difference. Without my team working into the wee hours of the morning to fill the customer’s order, we would have missed the shipping deadline.”
“What dedicated and caring employees you have,” said Sam. “Are you planning to recognize them?”
“Well, I’m not sure. This is the fourth time this month they’re pulled out the stops and made it happen. They know I appreciate what they do.”
Heroic efforts? Fourth time this month there was a need to pull out all the stops?
Recognition is absolutely important, but maybe, this boss needs to be looking at the reasons why his employees need to be so dedicated.
Sometimes we get so caught up in the crisis hoopla, that we forget to take a look at why those heroic efforts are needed so often.
Ian I. Mitroff, organizational theorist, consultant and Professor Emeritus at the University of Southern California authored Smart Thinking for Crazy Times. In this book, Dr. Mitroff details five things we do that cause us to solve the wrong problem and offers solutions to avoid misguided outcomes.
5 ways to muck up problem solving
1. Picking the wrong stakeholders.
This happens when we focus on just a few interested parties and forget about, ignore or fail to consider other people who have a stake in the outcome.
Want to avoid wrong solution #1? Take and/or make the time to thoughtfully do a stakeholder analysis. A stakeholder is someone who has a vested interest in the outcome and/or who might be positively or negatively impacted by what happens.
2. Narrowing our options.
This is one-note thinking: honing in on only one possible solution and failing to consider a broader range of options or alternatives.
How to side-step this trap? Don’t settle for just one definition of an important problem. When problems are called “important,” there’s usually more than one way to skin the proverbial cat – consider at least two very different formulations of the problem.
3. Picking the wrong language of variables.
This happens when we use “a narrow set of disciplines, business functions, or variables in which to express the basic nature of a problem.”
Duck this outcome by using your head to manage and your heart to lead. As Dr. Mitroff writes, “Never produce or examine formulations of important problems which are phrased solely in technical or in human terms alone; always strive to produce at least one formulation which is phrased in technical terms and at least one other which is phrased in human terms.”
4. Narrowing incorrectly the boundaries or scope of a problem.
Err on the side of being inclusive and expansive in defining the scope of a problem.
Elude this issue by broadening “the scope of every important problem up to and just beyond one’s comfort zone.”
5. Ignoring connections between parts and systems .
This is what Roger did: he focused on only one part of a problem rather than the whole system, thus “ignoring the connection between parts and wholes.”
Stay out of trouble by not fragmenting problems into isolated tiny parts. Look at the whole system, since sometimes the interactions between important problems are more important than the problems themselves.
What other problems get in your way of solving problems?
Image source before quote: Gratisography
by Jane Perdue | Workplace tips
People who met Martin for the first time walked away feeling like they’d made a new friend. They gushed about how kind, warm, open and caring he was.
It wasn’t until they got to know him better or began working for or with him that the truth came out.
Martin was a suave backstabber.
He had perfected the art of smiling in your face and later plunging his knife in your back.
I’ve known some Martins in my time and bet you have to. Right?
(more…)
by Jane Perdue | Workplace tips
In a past life, I had the honor of working on a special project team that was responsible for executing a company-wide initiative. Will, the team leader, was an extraordinary gentleman who knew his stuff. He knew leadership, too.
Will had assembled an eclectic bunch of high performers and knew how to lead the group in churning out remarkable results.
So remarkable in fact that the team was asked to remain together and take on another assignment. Everyone agreed to do so and again exceeded corporate expectations for the work product.
As one might expect, corporate headquarters asked the team to handle a third initiative.
To everyone’s surprise, Will said, “No, it’s time to disband.”
Some thought he was foolhardy, others said he was just plain crazy.
A few understood the wisdom of what he did.
7 reasons to disband the team and drive innovation
Will offered up seven reasons why disbanding the team was the right thing to do:
1) If you only work and interact with people who think just like you do, you stop growing. You gotta mix things up.
2) Innovation is a team sport, not the domain of a singular group. Don’t let institutional mindset rot set in.
3) Maintaining surprise and magic with an ongoing intact team gets harder and harder as process, practices and protocols slip in (no matter how hard you try to keep things loose). Sometimes well-oiled machines get stuck in a rut.
4) Share the spotlight. Provide opportunities for others to be involved, test their abilities and network across the organization.
5) New problems need new teams with new skills and new ideas. One size doesn’t fit all; meaning no matter how good the skill sets are of a hand-picked team, those skills may not be useful in solving a wide range of problems.
6) Innovation benefits agility which benefits from fresh eyes.
7) Special projects assignments are short-term. It’s time to return to the fold and re-join your old team. It’s time to change who holds the role of project champion. That’s what improvement is all about, letting others share in fostering the climate for innovation.
What do you think of Will’s list? Are there items you would add, change or delete?
Please share!
Drawing source before quote: morgueFile.com