September 17, 2021 - Are You Looking at Reality from the Right Perspective?

Main Idea:

When you look out the window and it is dark, is it night time?  When an employee tells you that a customer is being unreasonable, do you know if that is correct?  Can someone tell you the truth and still be completely wrong?  If your financial statements show that you are losing money, is that a bad thing?

Expansion of the Idea:

I have a picture in one of my conference rooms that shows a winding garden path.  There are a million pictures that show garden paths.  The unusual thing about this picture is that if you stand to one side and look at it, the picture shows summer.  If you move three feet to the left, it will show the same picture in winter.  This technique is called lenticular display.  When I saw this at an art show, I immediately bought it.  This is a great reminder to me to look for reality from multiple points of view.

Most of us get into ruts in how we see our business, our employees, our friends and even our enemies.  It is easier and quicker to take the previous view of the world and just use that.  And that will work for a period of time.  However, the world is changing rapidly.  For anyone in a service business, you may or may not need to be located close to your customers.  Amazon has completely changed retail and distribution businesses. There is disruption everywhere and you can’t afford to be the last person at a game of musical chairs.  We need to look at everything from multiple perspectives, including those of our customers and employees.  There is no real definition of reality.  There are just multiple facets of it. 

Likewise, there is no perfect way to address this situation.  The most important thing is to realize that our perspective may seem right for us but it isn’t always right for others.  By looking at all points of view, we may find better solutions for all interactions.  This could include:

• Learning more about your customer, employee or vendor

• Asking questions on different perspectives

• Invest time to see how your products or services are used

• Look back at some recent conflicts, lost employees or customers to see if there was some information that you were unaware

One of Stephen Covey’s Seven Habits for Highly Successful People was to seek first to understand and then to be understood.  I think a completely consistent version of this would be to seek first to understand and then build a better solution.   

Places to Start Looking at Different Versions of Reality:

1. Are there issues going on in your business that you don’t understand

2. Revisit important conversations you had with team members to see if your understanding of that conversation was the same

3. Meet with clients to understand their view of what you offer them

4. Talk to outside advisors, including your banker to evaluate their perspective of your service offering

5. Spend some time watching how work is done in your business

6. Ask your team if there are areas that they think you should focus on

I plan on having a zoom conference call on Constraints and Conflict Resolution on October 27 at 1pm CDT. This will explain how to identify your constraints and use the constraint to grow your business.  I know that this sounds like an oxymoron but it works.  I will also introduce a special conflict resolution process to help in your thinking. Looking at reality from different perspectives is absolutely critical to exploit the constraints. This zoom call will be beneficial for all managers, whether in a business or nonprofit.  If you are interested in reserving your spot, please email me at your earliest convenience. 

September 9, 2021 - Is Your Thinking Holding Your Business Back?

Main Idea:

Is “That’s the way we do it here.” popular in your business?  Do you have a lot of debate on how to handle issues?  Do you know what your constraints are?  Are any of them impossible to fix? How creative are you and your team?  When was the last time you took 8 hours off to just think?

Expansion of the Idea:

Two weeks ago, I reread 2 books by Eliyahu Goldratt.  They are “The Goal” and “It’s Not Luck”.  My copy of It’s Not Luck is literally falling apart because I have reread it so many times.  I generally reread these books every 2-3 years.  You might look at them and question my intelligence.  They are simply two business parables with a few key insights.  Yet I find it is important to me to reread these books.  The reason is that some of the answers to business problems are so profound that I need to reread them to keep me focused on the answers.  Like everyone else I can fall into ruts in how I think.  The real genius in the books is the alternative way that Eliyahu Goldratt approaches bottlenecks in business and various conflicts in problem solving.  The key to everything is identifying what your true goals are, looking critically at your situation from the other person’s point of view or sometimes from just another point of view.  As Mark Twain said:

It ain’t what you don’t know that gets you in trouble. 

It’s what you know for sure that just ain’t so.

The last two years have created a lot of issues that we have to deal with.  Almost everyone has employee problems.  Anyone that sells products also has supply chain problems.  If you don’t sell products then you go back to employee issues.  Customers have changed buying patterns, maybe a couple of times.  Taxes have changed as often as a parent changes a newborn’s diaper.  And no one knows really what to expect going forward.

What should we do?

We really need to think about three things:

1. What are our goals?

2. Where do we stand right now?

3. What is holding us back from achieving our goals?

Most of us have a bottleneck or constraint in our organizations. This bottleneck is neither bad nor good.  It is just a constraint.  All of our competitors have constraints also.  The issue for us as managers and leaders is to figure out how to exploit the constraint.  However, to do this, we need to get rid of our old way of thinking that includes:

1. We definitely can’t afford to do that.

2. We never want to offer that service.

3. I am the only one who can do this task.

4. My team is holding me back.

There are a number of other phrases that I could write.  But I think you get the point.  We have a no in our mind and that “No” cannot be sandblasted out of there.  However, instead we need to think about doing something that we think is impossible and figuring out how to make it happen.  Too often, the only thing holding us back is our thinking.  And the next thing holding us back is our team’s thinking.  To move forward, we need to establish a culture of trust where the team can share their opinions and ideas in a safe environment.  And we need to share with them.  I like Benjamin Franklin’s quote:

We must all hang together or we will all hang separately.

Wherever your business or organization is right now, we need to improve.  And like most things in life, the improvement needs to start with us. And it doesn’t cost us anything to change our thinking.

Questions or Ideas to Consider:

1. Read the book “The Goal”

2. Do you have clear goals?

3. Do you know where your constraints are?

4. Do you have a solid plan to address those constraints?

5. Do you have a safe culture?

6. Does your team think you have a safe culture?

I plan on having a zoom conference call on Constraints and Conflict Resolution on October 27 at 1pm CDT. This will explain how to identify your constraints and use the constraint to grow your business.  I know that this sounds like an oxymoron but it works.  I will also introduce a special conflict resolution process to help in your thinking.  This zoom call will be beneficial for all managers, whether in a business or nonprofit.  If you are interested in reserving your spot, please email me at your earliest convenience.