Category Archives: Personal Development

Personal development posts

Continuous Improvement, Working Without a Safety Net

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What gets in the way of improvement?  Stated differently, what gets in the way of on-going success?  Understand that today’s success is tomorrow’s mediocrity.  I believe the answer is related to our clarity of vision, our focus. We have heard the cliché, “Keep your eye on the ball”.  The question is which ball?

I believe that the answer is also related to how much energy we spend on maintaining the status quo. We can easily create an overload of rules, processes and metrics that keep us from doing our best work.  Like the swimmer who spends their energy treading water to avoid drowning, instead of swimming to shore.

Compare that to the stories behind Lockheed’s Skunk Works and the Manhattan Project.  These folks embraced the horror of working without a safety net (the status quo).  The risk of failure became the challenge and the motivation to accomplish great things.

Consider the following questions:

  • People do what you incentivize them to do, so are we incentivizing the maintenance of the status quo? Or for seeking excellence? Do we spend energy defending our performance? Or for striving to get better?
  • Are we accountable for maintaining the targeted goal? Or accountable for pushing past it?
  • Focusing on who to blame, or reward, will prevent us from winning the race. This is called siloing. “This is my sandbox, stay out”.  Do you welcome ideas from outside your group and seek constructive criticism?
  • What do you spend your time doing?  Are you making a case for why you are OK?  Or what you intend to do to make it to the next level of performance?

Here, I believe is the secrete sauce:

  • Cooperation. Working together to drive improvement.
  • Open mind to the ideas and criticism of others.
  • Willingness to fail, in order to succeed.
  • Getting out of your comfort zone. Comfortable folks are those to whom the status quo is a good thing, and change is a bad thing.
  • Being just a little bit dangerous.

In my life, I have been most successful when failure was a real possibility.  It makes you come alive to potential.  Answering the difficult questions and tackling the difficult problems give the biggest rewards.  Let’s become dangerous to the status quo.

Note to My Son

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A few things I know:

It is obvious that you are being called to make a difference, just like I am.

You are making a difference, you just don’t think about it that way.

You need to get back into a group leader situation. Your group was always involved in helping people. I believe that you miss and need that.

When frustrated, do something. Remember that you can’t eat the elephant in one bite. You can’t solve the world problems all at once either. Start in your back yard and move out from there.

Note to My Son

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That would be you. Nothing wrong with trying to find the “best” solution or answer.  The problem is the definition of “best” changes with circumstances.  There are no perfect solutions to many of life’s problems. The best you can do is have a positive attitude.  “I will be successful at whatever I do” attitude.

I know you well enough to say that you are going to be successful in whatever you chose.  It is more difficult for you and your generation than it was for me and mine. I really believe that luck played a major role in success in my generation, but persistence is more important in yours. Your grandfather told me that I should be the very best at whatever I did, not matter what the circumstances. That way I would rise to the top of whatever heap I was climbing.  Good advice.

This being said.  If you stay at CL, be the best they have and good things will happen. If you go to work with B, be the best that he has and good things will happen. In other words there are no “best” solutions or answers, only best efforts.

Reality

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One of the most important responsibilities of a leader is to define reality for those they lead.  It is also a significant failure point for leaders.  From a simplistic point of view, there are three realities that we typically deal with.

As we think it is universe: This universe is defined by our opinions and prejudices. It is not basedin reality. An expression of this is when we think for the customer instead of consulting with them. These can be internal or external customers. These leaders will be described as poor listeners or defensive. It takes very little time for leaders using this universe as a model to lose the confidence of their followers and be left with nothing but position power. Self-limiting decisions or failure to achieve the best results are the result.

As we want it to be universe: This is the denial universe.  It, just like the as we think it is universe, is not based in reality. These leaders will be seen as naïve or in denial of the facts and have no credibility with others. They still have their position power, but that will not be enough.  Failure will be the result.

As is universe: This universe finds its basis in the current reality.  It takes discipline to gather the information that defines this reality, but the results are well worth the effort.  These leaders have the confidence of others.  A trait of these leaders is that they listen more than they speak.  Another is that when they do speak, the listeners see alignment in what they say with their own personal experiences. The result is synergy with others and the best chance of success.

Analogy: If you are working in a sewer, and a person in leadership says “It doesn’t smell in here”, the leader has no credibility.  If you are working in a sewer, and a person in leadership says “It smells in here, but we are going to have to deal with it”, that leader has credibility.

Who do want to work for?  Which leader do you want to be?

The Leadership Riddle

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As a leader I find my fulfillment within the success my subordinates’ experience while executing the strategies and plans that we have put in place. This amounts to me experiencing success in the third dimension by watching others succeed.

I first learned this as a basketball coach, watching my kids on the court successfully execute strategy we had worked on in practice. That was the expression of my success. The more they were recognized the more successful I felt and the more successful I really was.

This is an important lesson in leadership for anyone who wants to be in a position of leading others, either on the field of play or in the boardroom. As I have said many times before, you cannot be a leader if no one is willing to follow you, and no one will be willing to follow you if they don’t trust you. This means that leadership is really about service and about facilitating. It is about allowing the success of others on your team to lift you to greater heights of achievement.

The question becomes this. What is in the wake of your life. Is it broken promises, people who don’t trust you, people who don’t like you, people for whom your presence in their life has been a negative. Or is it kept promises, is it people whose lives have been enriched and lifted up because of your presence in their life.

This really becomes the definition of leadership from the third person perspective. Consider an individual who is looking back at your life objectively, without political spin. It’s not a question of “What’s in your wallet?” as the commercial asks. It is instead a question of “what’s in your life” and the impact of what’s in your life on others.

In other words don’t measure your success as a leader from your own perspective. That will always be biased. Measure instead from the third party perspective, which represents how others feel about you and your leadership role

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Taking Risks verses Taking Chances

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For the most part, all of us have a robust fear of failure. We are good at counting the cost of trying and failing. We are also pretty much aware of what we don’t want to lose.  The result is that we miss opportunities due to not taking the risk of possible failure.

What we are not good at, is evaluating the risk of not trying. We decide to play it safe. Understand, though, you are guaranteed to fail if you don’t try. By playing it safe all the time, you limit your opportunity for success.
So what risks should you take? Fortunately, you are the only person who can answer this question. Do you have a plan? Do you know why you are interested in taking the risk? Is success tied in some way to your effort? These are just a few of the questions involved.
It comes down to balancing the difference between taking risks or taking chances. Taking a “calculated risk” is meaningful, but no one has ever heard of taking a “calculated chance”. A calculated risk is where you know what you need to do in order to be successful and you have some control over the criteria for success. For example, deciding to seek a Six Sigma Black Belt certification involves the risk of not making a passing grade. You control that risk with your effort.
Taking chances involves activities that put you in jeopardy in situations where no matter what you do, success is controlled by chance. For example, mortgaging your home in order to buy lottery tickets. You have hope, but understand that hope is not a plan.
The definition of an entrepreneur is someone who has a passion for seeing their dreams become reality. They live in fear of not trying. While other people fear losing something they already have, entrepreneurs fear not gaining something they want but don’t have.
So here is the point. Be an entrepreneur with your life. It is wise to be aware of the cost of failure, but at the same time be aware of the cost of not trying.

A Father’s Legacy

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My dad has been gone from this life for 6 years. Still, not a day goes by that I don’t think about him. These thoughts usually come by way of considering how he would handle a situation or how he would enjoy hearing a certain piece of news.

For a long time, remembrance was painful. It was unclear if the loss would ever quit hurting. Now though, remembrance brings a smile as his wisdom aids me in the day’s troubles.
My dad never got to meet my son’s wife or their two boys. I know how he would love them. The good news, though, is that his memory and legacy live on in me and my son.
This then is the point of life. To live so that the wake of your life leaves a positive impact on others long after you have gone. My dad accomplished this. It is my sincere hope that I can too.

Keeping the Main Thing the Main Thing

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One of the challenges that we have as leaders is to keep our eye on the ball. Since we are responsible for driving our organizations to the finish line using the least amount of resources possible, and at the same time achieving the greatest value possible, we cannot afford to get distracted by non-core issues.

When the boat is sinking, the color of the bailing bucket is not all that important. Yet, all of us have seen leaders get caught up in issues that do not move the organization forward. Examples of issues that get in the way of progress are office politics, finger pointing, whose job it is, etc.

This is related to a leader’s ability to do only what they are uniquely to do and delegate the rest. A leader who is busy making decisions that should be made by others is, by definition, not busy making decisions that only they can make. This inefficiency leads to mistakes, demotivation and re-work.

Let’s apply some management 5S to the problem.

Sort: Separate what takes you to the finish line and what does not. Get rid of tasks and decisions that do not need to be dealt with right now (or ever). Remove politics and finger pointing. Reward those who take responsibility. Have meetings only when meetings are necessary and keep them short.

Straighten: Every task is assigned to the person or group most qualified to complete it according to the demands of the business environment. Don’t play favorites, just work on getting the best qualified people focused on what they do best, and get out of the way.

Shine: Re-assign tasks to appropriate individuals or groups. Delete tasks from all individuals and groups that are not essential to their core mission, or need to be given to another person or group.

Standardize: Document the decision and task matrices. That is who should be making what decisions on what criteria and who should be completing what tasks according to what criteria. Use these matrices going forward to avoid backsliding into inefficiencies in the future.

Sustain: Audit the team’s task and decision matrices frequently enough to maintain organization effectiveness.

The 5S principles can be applied to just about any business process. I encourage you to get out of the box and think like a champion.

Walt’s Incomplete Guidelines to Success in Life

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Can you remember when you graduated from high school or college? The feeling that you could change the world and that you could be and do anything you choose? Can you also remember the day you realized that maybe you were not going to change the world and that you were limited to what you could be?

I can. I can also remember feeling disappointed in myself when my dreams for success did not immediately come true. Fortunately, I had a wise advisor in my life that helped me put things into perspective.

My dad would always tell me to keep the faith and keep moving forward in my life. Dreams are what they are because they are not easy to achieve. They require hard work. He was right.

He told me a story once about his first job out of high school. It was a manufacturer with seven assembly steps.  When hired, he was trained to work one of the assembly steps. What he did next was the difference maker. On his breaks and weekends he would have the other operators train him to operate every piece of machinery and every assembly step. His goal was to become the most knowledgeable and most valuable employee at the plant.

The result was that two years later he was the highest paid non-management employee in the facility. This was due to the fact that he out worked everyone. He became the MVP to plant management by paying a higher personal price than others in the facility.

I have had to re-invent myself three times during my career. One was by choice and two were forced on me. In all three cases I had to take a step back in pay and prestige in order to keep forward momentum in my career. Also in all three cases, I worked to learn and grow in the new field and eventually found myself with better pay and position than the earlier jobs.

Challenge is not to be feared and neither is change.  These “C” words should be embraced because they are opportunity in disguise. If you are not facing challenge or change in your life, you are not moving forward. Consider them blessings.

Here are Walt’s Incomplete Guidelines to Success in Life:

  • Do not seek money as a goal. It has no staying power. When you spend it, it’s gone and so is its value.
  • Set goals around things that have lasting value no matter what happens to you or the economy. Knowledge, reputation, and character are good choices.
  • If you don’t ask for it you won’t get it. Not asking for help when you need it is one of the biggest failures you can have. We always stand on the shoulders of those who have gone before us. If you don’t know something, ask.
  • Seek to be the “go to” person in your organization.
  • You will reap what you sow. Invest in your growth.  Learn everything you can, seek opportunity and challenge, become the person you dreamed of being.
  • If success is where preparation meets opportunity, then you better focus on being prepared. You cannot always control opportunity, but you are totally in control of being prepared. Don’t be the person who just saw the best opportunity flash by them, but were not prepared to seize it.
  • Big successes are made up of small successes. Pay attention to detail and the “small stuff” so that the “big” stuff is cut down to size.
  • Know your tools and use them. When I exercise on my treadmill, I will watch YouTube videos to expand my knowledge.  Recently I needed to help a client with a software development problem.  I found several videos that specifically covered how others had dealt with the same issue. The following week, when talking with my client, he stated that he didn’t know I had that level expertise in software development.
  • You cannot claim greatness. Greatness is attained by accepting the challenges life gives you.

There is more to this discussion, but I will leave to the reader to continue the discussion.  The list is incomplete because your life is different than mine. What we have in common are the true north principles of life. These are the things that do not change with the ebb and flow of our lives.

Don’t be discouraged with where you are now. Instead have a vision of what you want to be and what you want to do. Then set out to make it happen.