S2A

"When I was younger I always conceived of a room where all these strategic concepts were worked out for the whole company. Later I didn't find any such room . . . The strategy may not even exist in the mind of one person. I certainly don't know where it is written down. It is simply transmitted in the series of decisions made." – GM Executive, 1972 Downsizing Case

I love this quote from James Brian Quinn's "Logical Incrementalism". While Agile is all the craze, its foundational concepts are nearly 50 years old. Mintzberg, Quinn, Ghoshal (who passed far too soon) and other brilliant thinkers have advocated an iterative approach for longer than many mangers have been alive!

The 5x5 Rule:

Devoting 5 minutes a day, 5 days a week, to your professional development will put you 100% ahead of your peers. Every additional 5 minutes adds another 100%... spend a half hour a day on your professional development, move ahead 6 spaces (or 600%). Here’s the math:

According to a study by Deloitte, “1% of a typical workweek is all that employees have to focus on training and development” – most of which is focused on technical skills and corporate objectives. In other words, the average employee spends roughly 25 minutes a week on training and development. And those 25 minutes are focused on the 80 percent of activity (technical skills) that drives less than 20 percent of business results. That’s 5 minutes a day, 5 days a week, on average. Therefore, if you spend an extra 5 minutes a day, 5 days a week, on your professional development, you move ahead of your peers by 100%.

You can multiply the effect of your 5 minutes a day by focusing on the 3 skills that determine more than 80% of on-the-job success: critical thinking, emotional intelligence and strategic thinking. Most people understand the importance of these 3 skills. Most people understand these skills account for 70-90% of career success. Yet, the gap between what we know and what we do about what we know is wide. Less than 5% of all managers say they are actively working to develop these skills.

5-10 minutes a day developing these skills pays disproportionate dividends! Not sure where to start? Let me know… I can direct you to a number of excellent (and free) resources. Or build your own development plan.

Whatever you decide, keep it simple and make sure you can stick with it over time.

Why do most managers seem hellbent on making things complicated?

They don’t do it on purpose; but unfortunately, few problems show up with simplification instructions attached. In conference rooms big and small, managers muddy the waters, confuse the issues and find the right solutions… to the wrong problems. Why?

1. They don’t understand the problem.

Einstein said, “If I had an hour to solve a problem, I’d spend 55 minutes thinking about the problem and 5 minutes thinking of a solution.” This isn’t what happens in most companies. Instead, they toss a poorly framed problem on the table, discuss it for a minute or two, then jump headlong into “brainstorming” session to find a solution. Seek first to understand the problem! Go see it for yourself, if possible.

2. In an effort to look smart, they ask complicated questions.

In most meetings, the questions aren’t designed to uncover simple truths… they’re designed to showcase intelligence. If you want to simplify the problem, ask simple questions. Ask questions like Socrates... questions that:

…clarify what the other person means.
…probe assumptions.
…look into the facts the other person is using.
…examine other perspectives.
…consider the implications.

Complicated is easy and ugly. Simplicity is hard and beautiful.

There are 1440 minutes in a day. Can you spare 10 of them?

A friend of mine has been shooting through the ranks of large Midwest company. She started in production scheduling almost 15 years ago. She excelled and soon found herself in charge of the company’s ERP modernization project. Again (against all odds), she excelled and was promoted a third time to Director of Enterprise Projects.

About 6 months ago, she set her sights on a new opportunity – VP of Informatics. The position is currently held by her boss, who announced that he would be retiring at the end of the year. While my friend certainly has the inside track, it’s expected to be a very competitive process, with many internal and external candidates.

We met for coffee after the announcement, and to my surprise, she expressed concerns about her qualifications for the role. Specifically, her lack of understanding of corporate finance (a preferred qualification for the position), coupled with her lack of time to learn the subject.

I asked, “Can you spare 10 minutes a day?”

It’s a rhetorical question, of course. We can all spare 10 minutes a day. Here’s the magic:

10 minutes/day * 5 days/week * 48 weeks = 2,400 minutes

That’s 40 hours in under year! Considering it takes the average reader 4-6 hours to read a 300-page book, you could read 6 to 10 additional books a year.

Armed with this information, I made a list of 5 must read books and 2 excellent magazines on the subject of corporate finance to help her navigate the gauntlet of interviews to come.

What new skills or subjects could you learn in just 10 minutes a day?

My 10 favorite quotes on bargaining for advantage:

10. "You can get much farther with a kind word and a gun than you can with a kind word alone." ~ Al Capone

9. "Tact is the ability to tell someone to go to hell in such a way that they look forward to the trip." ~Winston Churchill

8. "When the final result is expected to be a compromise, it is often prudent to start from an extreme position." ~John Maynard Keynes

7. “Don’t bargain yourself down before you get to the table.” ~Carol Frohlinger

6. “Place a higher priority on discovering what a win looks like for the other person.” ~Harvey Robbins

5. "The fellow who says he'll meet you halfway usually thinks he's standing on the dividing line." ~Orlando A. Battista

4. "A diplomat is a man who always thinks twice before saying nothing." ~Marion Howard

3. “Never forget the power of silence, that massively disconcerting pause which goes on and on and may last induce an opponent to babble and backtrack nervously.” ~Lance Morrow

2. “Diplomacy is the art of letting someone else have your way.” ~Sir David Frost

1. " Never cut what you can untie." ~Joseph Joubert

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My 10 favorite quotes on grittiness...

10. “Every great story happened when someone decided not to give up.” ~Spryte Lorian

9. “The difference in winning and losing is most often, not quitting.” ~Walt Disney

8. “I like things to happen. And if they don’t happen, I like to make them happen.” ~Winston Churchill

7. “If you wait for perfect conditions, you will never get anything done.” ~Ecclesiastes 11:4 (TLB)

6. “Enthusiasm is common. Endurance is rare.” ~Angela Lee Duckworth

5. “The most effective way to do it, is to do it.” ~Amelia Earhart

4. “The future bears down upon each one of us with all the hazards of the unknown. The only way out is through.” ~Plutarch

3. “To be gritty is to fall down seven times, and rise eight.” ~Angela Lee Duckworth

2. “You have a choice! You can throw in the towel, or you can use it to wipe the sweat off your face!” ~Unknown

1. “A determined soul will do more with a rusty monkey wrench than a loafer will accomplish with all the tools in a machine shop.” ~Robert Hughes

I love Grit! I’ll take the determined soul with the rusty monkey wrench over the well-equipped loafer every single time.

The Goat Game: Save your goat. Play a game.

"Karen really gets my goat!" What a curious expression, meaning to irritate, annoy or anger someone. It comes from a tradition in horse racing. Thought to have a calming effect on high-strung thoroughbreds, a goat was placed in the horse's stall on the night before the race.

Nobody likes to get their goat gotten, least of all a high-strung thoroughbred. So I devised the Goat Game to keep your goat safe in your stall. Here's how you play:
The next time someone takes a position that really gets your goat, ask yourself, "If I had to argue in favor of (Karen's) position, what would my argument be?"

You accumulate points in the game by finding ways to strengthen the goat-getter's argument. Playing the Goat Game has 3 great benefits:

1. It slows you down (like your mom telling you to count to 10 when you're angry).
2. It forces you to acknowledge opposing positions.
3. It helps you spot possible flaws in your own position.

Contrary to popular belief, you don't win the Goat Game with your original position, but by creating a new and better informed position.

The Staple Rule: If it has a staple, I probably won't read it.

The 3C Corollary: When communicating, be clear, concise and compelling.
I learned the staple rule and the 3C corollary as a junior officer in the Navy writing program status reports for remotely located senior officers.

A flag officer once told me, "It's 4 miles from the Pentagon to Capitol Hill. It takes my driver 12 minutes plus or minus a few depending on traffic. I try to read 4 to 6 status reports each trip. If your report has a staple in it, I probably won't read it. Learn to be clear, concise and compelling. Use plain language, keep it brief and make your point."

I still consider this to be some of the best and most practical advice I've ever received. I've adopted it as my own and I share it with every project manager I train and develop.

Too often we refer to "strategy" as a noun... i.e. a plan. But what about "strategy" the verb... strategy as an ongoing, always occurring, evolutionary process? I prefer to think of strategy as, "An ongoing process of filtering ideas and making decisions about future courses of action." The plan is just an output of the strategy making process, not the strategy itself. I enjoyed this Economist piece and hope you do too!

Why a strategy is not a plan Strategies too often fail because more is expected of them than they can deliver

Consider this... "Ninety years ago, Stanford psychologist Lewis Terman began an ambitious search for the brightest kids in California, administering IQ tests to several thousand of children across the state. Those scoring above an IQ of 135 (approximately the top 1 percent of scores) were tracked for further study. There were two young boys, Luis Alvarez and William Shockley, who were among the many who took Terman’s tests but missed the cutoff score. Despite their exclusion from a study of young “geniuses,” both went on to study physics, earn PhDs, and win the Nobel prize."

How so? Read more about the power of Spatial Intelligence...

Recognizing Spatial Intelligence Our schools, and our society, must do more to recognize spatial reasoning, a key kind of intelligence

“If you think education is expensive, try estimating the cost of ignorance.” ~Howard Gardner... and 34 more gems on the importance of having a learning mindset!

35 Inspiring Quotes About Learning Learning anything requires the ability to push through the dip until reaching competency. These 35 quotes about learning will keep you motivated.