The more effectively you can master your mindset and how you approach the world around you, the more successful you can be and the better your outlook on life can become.
Today’s post is by Kavita Sahai, CEO and Founder of Have BIGplans, LLC.
“The thought manifests as the word; the word manifests as the deed; the deed develops into habit; and habit hardens into character.” – Ancient Proverb
Are you struggling to master your mindset? Success boils down to the way you think, as the proverb suggests. More and more research is supporting the power of positivity.
We create the reality around us, and by taking steps to be more positive, we can master our own domain.
Mastering Your Thoughts
A recent study conducted by the Journal of Research in Personality examined a group of 90 students split into two groups. One group wrote about a positive experience each day for three days, while the other group wrote about a control topic.
Three months later, the students who wrote about positive experiences enjoyed better moods, fewer visits to the school health center and fewer illnesses.
Start Keeping a Gratitude Journal
So how do you harness the power of positivity? By expressing gratitude. Record five things to be grateful for each day. As you keep a journal, being grateful for the abundance of good in your life will come more naturally. This “glass half full” mentality has been proven to foster happiness and success.
Get Enough Exercise
150 minutes of exercise a week is one of the most effective ways to boost your mental health. Getting regular exercise improves memory, relieves stress, boosts overall mood and helps you sleep better. See https://health.gov/paguidelines/guidelines/summary.aspx for more details on the benefits of exercise.
https://i0.wp.com/www.thoughtleadersllc.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/20230918-Mindfulness-Paper.jpg?fit=1920%2C1280&ssl=112801920Trevor Joneshttps://www.thoughtleadersllc.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/logo.pngTrevor Jones2023-09-18 08:02:002023-09-18 00:02:00The Power of Mastering Your Mindset
Your job as a leader is not to mediate conflicts and be a referee. Instead, you need to teach the members of your team how to resolve conflicts with one another.
More often than not, high performing teams operate in high pressure environments. And many times on a high performing team, you have some strong personalities at play. When you combine pressure plus strong personalities there are plenty of opportunities for conflict between the members of your team.
Your job as a leader is not to mediate those conflicts and be a referee. Instead, you need to teach the members of your team how to resolve those conflicts with one another. It’s going to help them build relationships, ultimately it will build their interpersonal skills, and it keeps you from having to dedicate a significant amount of time and energy every time somebody has a conflict with another member of the team.
Your job, when there’s conflict, is first to recognize it. Identify when you have team members who are butting heads and figure out what the root issue is. Then you should suggest that they go figure it out and come back to you when they’ve developed a solution on their own. Hopefully if they’re really high performers they can go in a room, hash it out, come up with a solution that will be acceptable to both of them.
However, there will be certain opportunities that you’re going to have to take advantage of to get involved in it and teach them how to resolve conflict better. When you do so, first sit them down and acknowledge the conflict. Hey look, I know you have a problem with this perspective that the other individual has. Get to the root of the issue and focus on the facts. Here are the facts, let’s remove the emotions from it. What do we disagree on? Then have them define a goal for resolution and what the desired behaviors should be in terms of how they perform with one another. Drive it to the level of specific behaviors where they had points of difference with one another. And then, teach them how to give constructive feedback to one another going forward so they can apply it in their day-to-day conversations with each other.
There will be times where they won’t be able to resolve the conflict on their own. And in those situations you’re going to need to mediate that conflict, but this is a last resort. If they can’t resolve the issue, talk them through the resolution but do so one step at a time. Don’t just jump to the end and say, I know what the answer is, here’s my decision, go make it happen. Because you’re not building their skills in doing so. Instead, talk them through it. Okay, what’s the issue? And have them describe it and have them figure it out. And then ask, what are the emotions that are involved here and why are those emotions coming up? And they’ll talk through that. Then ask them, how are those emotions getting in the way of a resolution?
So for each step of that conflict resolution process, all the way through identifying alternatives and desired behaviors, and then coming to a decision they can live with, you should walk them through that conversation rather then just giving them the answers. At the end, when they’ve identified a solution that’s acceptable to both of them, get their commitment to resolving the issue that way and more importantly set expectations that the next time there’s conflict between them, that they go through this process on their own, before they involve you to mediate the conflict.
By doing so, you’re going to build their skills and their capabilities, you’ll spend less time mediating conflict going forward, and your team members will be able to focus more on execution than arguing.
Want to learn more about building high-performing teams? How about taking an entire course on it? Check out the video below to learn more about the course and get started. Or you can go directly to the course and start learning how to build high-performing teams. The entire course is available at LinkedIn Learning. Enjoy!
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Our reader poll today asks: What’s your view of how veterans are treated in your organization?
They’re highly respected and we see them as a diverse population that needs help 21.78%
They’re respected and we know they’ve faced some challenges but are basically equal to everyone else 45.97%
They’re not seen or treated any differently than any other employee 29.84%
They’re looked down upon and we make it tough for them to advance 2.41%
Veteran talent and challenges. The vast majority of you report the veterans in your organization are respected and treated fairly. For the 22% of you reporting they’re seen as a diverse population that needs some help, your conclusions are well grounded. There’s a comprehensive report authored by LinkedIn that highlights the talents veterans bring to their organizations and also the challenges they have to overcome in their careers. They’re routinely undercompensated and face larger advancement challenges than their civilian peers. It’s worth taking a moment to understand this untapped population and see where you can make your organizations more veteran-friendly. You might be surprised by some of the disparities that exist. For the 78% of you who report not treating veterans differently, you might be surprised by the challenges they face. Tapping into this population and helping them catch up to their peers could have a significant positive impact in your company.
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Members of high performing teams are going to be the most satisfied when they feel like they can have an impact on the outcome of their work.
Members of high performing teams are going to be the most satisfied when they feel like they can have an impact on the outcome of their work. To get to that point you need to understand the difference between accountability and responsibility and how authority interplays with both of them.
Accountability is an external force. That’s where somebody tells you, “You are responsible for these results and I am going to hold you accountable to meeting them. If you meet them, there are benefits and if you fail to, there are consequences.” Responsibility is when we as individuals hold ourselves accountable. We find that inside and say, “Here’s the standard and I’m going to make sure that I achieve that goal.”
Making sure that people are able to be satisfied in performing those activities requires you, as the leader, to give them authority. Authority is the power to make decisions. It requires you to delegate and accept risk if someone makes a mistake. It empowers people to give them authority and it makes them feel like, “Hey boss, you trust me. You’re letting me make these decisions where I’m accountable for the results.” It’s really unfair to hold someone accountable for a result if we don’t give them the authority to impact the outcome.
At one point in my career, I was responsible for making acquisitions for our division. We would buy companies that were out in the marketplace and try and grow our business unit in doing so. My boss said to me, “You have to do this many deals a year and we need this type of financial return. You’re going to be measured on your performance on how well those deals go. Whatever you have to do to make that deal happen, you are empowered to make those decisions.”
Now the critical piece of this was my boss gave me the authority to impact those decisions. There was one deal that came up where it was pretty contentious between us and the person we were trying to purchase the business from. I personally got to negotiate with this other business owner. I tried multiple different deal structures. I offered certain things and in return asked for others. I was able to negotiate the entire deal, but my boss had empowered me to make those trade-offs and make those decisions.
Ultimately, I was able to hold myself responsible for the performance of that deal. The deal went well, but more important that than was I felt like my boss trusted me. I felt like I had the ability to control the outcome of my work. I probably worked harder on that deal than I’ve worked up to that point in my career because I was excited about it and I owned the result.
As you think about your people and what you hold them accountable to in terms of metrics and performance, you have to be willing to give them the authority to make those decisions. Because if you don’t, it’s unfair to hold them accountable for the result when they can’t affect that result with the decisions that they make. That empowerment is going to be the key to their satisfaction with their work.
Want to learn more about building high-performing teams? How about taking an entire course on it? Check out the video below to learn more about the course and get started. Or you can go directly to the course and start learning how to build high-performing teams. The entire course is available at LinkedIn Learning. Enjoy!
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Women face exceptional challenges in the workplace. To succeed, women must understand that they can have it all by defining their “why.”
Today’s guest post is by Raquel Gomes, Founder & CEO — Stafi
When Spanx founder Sara Blakely was a door-to-door fax machine saleswoman, she abhorred the thought of having to wear pantyhose in the sweltering Florida heat, but that same frustration gave birth to an idea — one that would eventually make her a billionaire. Her “why” was discovered early by seeking to solve an issue she knew she did not face alone.
Although women in the workforce have made incredible strides in the past few decades, they still face considerable challenges on the road to success. Those who are able to burst through the storied glass ceiling and succeed as Blakely did are those that land on their “why” — the driving force that fuels their passion to succeed.
The pressure to do it all and have it all
If the pandemic showed us anything, it was that women in America were facing a crisis. An estimated 12 million women left their jobs during the pandemic to care for and teach their children at home. They chose to leave in far greater numbers than men, and many chalk these statistics up to the expectations heaped on women to be everything to everyone at all times — pandemic or not.
Women who strive for career success often wrestle with the guilt and shame that can come with being away from their children, or even choosing to be child-free and focus on their careers instead. While the popular rhetoric of the second wave of feminism told women they could “have it all,” many women in the 1990s and into the 2000s found they were still expected to maintain the management of the household and the children, even if they went after their career goals. This led to burnout, some women choosing one over the other, and a slower climb to equity in the C-suite.
Finding your “why”
I hail from a family where my mother never worked outside of the home and my father was the sole provider for the family. As I grew into adulthood and began to forge a career, my mother’s financial dependence on my father was a lesson for me that I didn’t forget. I wanted to make good money and have a seat at the table, so I knew financial independence was incredibly important to me as I began my career. That was my initial “why.”
For some women, chasing a successful career is simply what they feel they must do in the name of all women, while others may live out the dreams of their parents or work as single mothers who have no choice but to hustle for every dollar they earn. These are all “whys,” but they may not be “whys” that are ultimately successful.
Every person has their own things they are passionate about and their own idea of what defines “success.” Landing on one’s true “why” is a way to instill drive in oneself to go after what will ultimately bring about that idea of success. If one knows why they are doing something, and what their passion is leading them to do, they will be more likely to make the best moves towards achieving a successful end.
There are several approaches to finding your “why.” Think of it as your calling or mission statement, your reason for getting up every morning and doing what needs to be done to get closer to your goal.
When seeking your own “why,” ask yourself the hard questions. What are your first thoughts when waking up in the morning? What do you dream about? Who are the important people in your life? Where do you see yourself in five years, or 10?
By delving into what you truly want, the “why” will begin to reveal itself. “Whys” are also not set in stone — they can be revised and altered depending on circumstance, since our passions can change and shift with time. Perhaps you believed their passion was music when you were younger, but then you find a course in college that lights a fire inside you so that all you can think about is drawing, photography, researching, or building. Your passion can pivot and your “why” can change, but your ultimate “why” boils down to the same answer: “Because it lights my soul on fire.”
When you find your “why,” you will discover that you too can “have it all,” you just can’t necessarily “do it all.” So, you begin to structure your career trajectory in a way that allows for help, delegation of tasks, and a path to success that makes sense.
The internal fire
The internal fire that drives women to succeed is in every single one of them — it simply looks different for each person. The common thread that runs through each story of successful women, however, is that they did not walk their paths alone. Even those deemed “self-made millionaires” had help along the way.
Women can still have it all, they just need to recognize that they cannot — nor should they be expected to — do it all. By recognizing one’s “why” and being thoughtful about one’s plans and path, more women can succeed in their chosen fields and continue to make strides toward equality.
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Our reader poll today asks: How good are you at fulfilling commitments you set for responding to people’s requests?
I’m great: when I tell someone I’ll get back to them by a certain date, I never fail to do so 30.77%
I’m good: every once in a while I fail to meet a self-imposed deadline 57.90%
I’m okay: I generally meet self-imposed deadlines but miss a bunch of them too 8.51%
I’m not good: I often fail to meet response deadlines I set 2.02%
I’m bad at it: It’s rare that I meet a response deadline I set for myself and them 0.80%
Commitments matter. 89% of you report meeting self-imposed commitments for responding to people’s requests. Obviously this is great news especially because people on the receiving end of these commitments are planning their work according to what you tell them. It all comes down to communication. People understand if something comes up and a commitment needs to change, too. What’s important is letting them know as soon as possible when you know the commitment will shift so they can change their plans accordingly. For those who are challenged with fulfilling commitments, ask yourself if it’s because the deadlines you set are too aggressive or if it’s because you don’t hold yourself accountable. If it’s the deadline setting, start padding your commitments by 25% and see if that makes things more manageable. If it’s an accountability issue, impose consequences on yourself and focus on the negative impact your missed commitment might have on the other person. When we see how our actions affect others, we’re more likely to live up to those commitments.
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For you to get the most out of the members of your high performing team, you need to empower them.
For you to get the most out of the members of your high performing team, you need to empower them. Remember, on a high performing team, those team members are typically very self-motivated, and they like being self-directed. You need to understand how letting go of your agenda, creating space for them to flourish, and then accepting that there are different ways of doing things is going to bring out the best in your people. Setting direction is critical for those people, but then as the leader, you need to get out of the way and let them run.
I like to use what I call a concept of lanes where you set a direction for a team member. Say the goal is here, and here are the boundaries within which you can operate. But it’s up to you to decide how you get from here to that goal. You’ll also need to accept, if you’re giving them those lanes, that there are different ways of doing things. A team member may take an approach that you fundamentally disagree with. The measure of a good leader is being willing to step back and say, “Hey, I think you might be going the wrong way. Here’s a different way to think about it. But ultimately, it’s up to you how you want to proceed, and the goal is the same. Let me know what you need from me to be successful.” You have to let go of that agenda and give them the resources, then get out of their way.
I had a great leader I worked for at one point when I was in the army. He was my company commander. He had very specific ways that he wanted to deploy our unit. He would make no bones about it and say, “This is what I want you to do, here’s the map, here’s the route I want you to follow, and here’s what I think will get us the best results.” But what was great about him was he would then say, “I understand when we hit that line of departure, I no longer have control. And you know what the objective is and I want you to go out and achieve it. And if you see a different and better way to achieve it, I’ll support you in that. Now, here are the rules of engagement, and don’t do anything outside of them, but ultimately, it’s up to you how you perform.”
Now there were times I was right and everything worked out great. Even though I didn’t follow my commander’s plan exactly, we got a good result. There were also plenty of times that I made mistakes. I took a course of action that was different than what my company commander told me to take and I learned from it. We had those learning moments because we were able to explore and learn what does and doesn’t work.
So as you think about the members of your team and trying to get the best out of them that you possibly can, take a minute and set a direction, think about the boundary conditions, and then let them go and see what happens.
Want to learn more about building high-performing teams? How about taking an entire course on it? Check out the video below to learn more about the course and get started. Or you can go directly to the course and start learning how to build high-performing teams. The entire course is available at LinkedIn Learning. Enjoy!
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Our reader poll today asks: When is the last time you went out of your way to thank a team member for their contributions?
Within the last couple of days: 79.55%
Within the last month: 17.73%
Sometime this quarter: 0.91%
Sometime this year: 1.36%
I don’t go out of my way to thank them: 0.45%
The High ROI of a “Thank You” – Taking time to say “thank you” so someone on your team or in your organization is a simple investment to make and the vast majority of you have done so recently (97% have done so within the last month with 80% of those doing it in the last few days). It’s the right thing to do, it’s appreciated, and it makes people feel seen and valued. If it’s not part of your regular habits, start by adding a reminder to your calendar to drop someone a note. Saying “thank you” in person or on the phone is best because it personalizes it and shows them you’re making a point of seeing them. While emails can suffice for expressing gratitude, a handwritten note can be seen as exponentially more valuable. If you’re in the minority that doesn’t thank people for their contributions very often, give it a try and see how rewarding it can be for both of you. That might create a positive reinforcement loop that gets you saying thank you more frequently.
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You can either hoard talent on your team or you can develop it and export it. If you’re a net exporter of talent, there are huge benefits both to the broader organization as well as your individual team.
Some of the strongest leaders I know are what I call net exporters of talent. You can either hoard talent on your team or you can develop it and export it. If you’re a net exporter of talent, there are huge benefits, both to the broader organization as well as your individual team because you’re bringing people in, building them, helping them grow, and then sending them off to new roles outside of your team.
So, let me tell you what it means to be a hoarder of talent. The way the cycle works is: That leader hires somebody and brings them into their team. That individual performs well and they grow and eventually, they become a high performer on that team. But then, the leader fears losing that person because they’re critical and they start discouraging that person from moving elsewhere, which is very selfish from the leader’s standpoint. Ultimately, that individual gets frustrated or they get bored with the role they’re in and they start becoming a poor performer. Their morale drops or they leave the company and go take on a bigger role, something that’s more challenging on a different team outside of the organization.
And then, even worse, that individual might start discouraging other people from joining that leader’s team, saying things like, “Well, you don’t want to go to that team because it’s a dead end. You’ll get there and you won’t grow. You won’t be given new opportunities and you won’t develop.” And ultimately, what happens is the high performers start leaving and that leader is then left with B players and C players who are comfortable where they are. All the great talent eventually flees that team and that leader has a really difficult time finding new people to come into the organization. The negative spiral continues.
Let me offer what it means to be a net exporter of talent. The way the cycle works is: The leader hires somebody to come onto the team. That individual performs well and they grow and they become a high performer in the organization. The leader steps back and says, “Wow, this person’s doing great and they’re running out of head room. They’re running out of challenges to grow and expand.” So, I have to do one of two things as that leader. I either need to expand the individual’s role and their scope on my team or if I don’t have the ability to expand their scope, I should find them another role but within my company because I want to retain that talent within the broader organization.
I then send that individual out to the new role that I’ve helped them find and that I’ve advocated for and they go into that next role and they become a high performer there. They start speaking highly of that leader who’s the net exporter because that leader helped them find that great new role that they’re very excited about. Then new talent within the rest of the organization starts hearing that if you go to that team where that leader is an exporter of talent, you’re going to have some great opportunities. The roles there will enable you to grow and expand your capabilities. Many times, even people outside of your company hear that that team is a destination for growth and development.
The great thing that happens for that leader who is a net exporter of talent is that leader never has a shortage of people seeking roles on their team and the members of the team are actively engaged and growing and contributing first to that leader’s team, but then to the broader organization as they move into new roles. And the leader is also helping those other parts of the organization improve their overall performance because that leader is sending great people out into other corners of the company where they can be high performers in that next role.
Want to learn more about building high-performing teams? How about taking an entire course on it? Check out the video below to learn more about the course and get started. Or you can go directly to the course and start learning how to build high-performing teams. The entire course is available at LinkedIn Learning. Enjoy!
Did you enjoy this post? If so, I highly encourage you to take about 30 seconds to become a regular subscriber to this blog. It’s free, fun, practical, and only a few emails a week (I promise!). SIGN UP HERE to get the thoughtLEADERS blog conveniently delivered right to your inbox!
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Stepping into senior management brings unexpected surprises and overwhelming responsibilities. As you ascend the corporate ladder, you’ll encounter nuances and challenges not found in textbooks.
This article explores these topics, revealing hidden truths about leadership. From decision-making to strategic management, we’ll uncover the multifaceted nature of senior leader roles.
You can’t blame senior management for everything anymore, and you learn why you never should have.
Becoming senior management means you can no longer blame what you perceive as corporate mistakes (or anything you don’t like about work) on senior management. Suddenly, you are senior management and hold the cards. The decisions are yours, and your decisions will not please everyone.
You realize that you cannot optimize every aspect of the company to meet every goal. Some of the goals have inherent conflicts. You are privy to a set of facts and data that only you and your team, and sometimes only you need to manage. With that data, you will make a decision that optimizes what is most important. And some people will be disappointed. It will look like a mistake to them. But no one else knows all the factors that went into your decision.
You must get used to looking out of touch, while the truth is that you are looking at a wider lens than others in the company have access to seeing. Suddenly, you rethink those times you complained about decisions that worked against your line P&L, and you realize senior management wasn’t dumb after all. Becoming a senior manager makes you rethink your opinion of every leadership team you ever worked under.
Organizations and employees don’t always grow in the same direction, at the same rate.
Another hard thing is making decisions about employees who have either been promoted above their ability or whose job effectiveness has changed due to new technology or partnerships. They may be marginalized through no fault of their own but remain key employees because they are well-regarded and influential. For their part, these employees can become frustrated and angry about the company. You want to find a way to keep them happy, but you can’t turn back the clock.
The difficult decision is whether to tip your hand that this individual may be looking at a severance package if they don’t accept the way things stand now and are open to new possibilities. If you don’t share this information, getting the kind of attitude change you need is rare. If you do, you will lose the employee. Maybe not soon or physically, but they will become disengaged.
This decision never gets easier, and the results rarely change. The few times I have done this successfully, it was with key employees intellectually curious enough to join a new field within the organization and enjoy a steep learning curve while applying their senior management skills. This issue is going to become more prevalent in the next three to five years as new skills for managing AI move up the chain of command. My hope is that brighter people than me can figure out a systematic way to address the issue better.
There are tons of resources available to make you a better speaker. You must learn the hard way how to become a great listener.
You get trained in public speaking, and the value of projecting confidence as a leader. But one of the things you don’t get trained in but must learn the hard way up the management ladder is the value of listening. In senior management, where everybody wants to tell you about what they are doing, being able to listen and ask questions is what is important. When you don’t have to care what other people think, it frees your head space for you to listen to, understand, analyze, and react to what others are saying! I wish I had learned this enormously freeing truth earlier!
Early, I would be distracted worrying whether my questions or comments would cause people to judge me. As I grew in my career, I learned people around the table had these same conversations with themselves in their heads. There are no dumb questions. We all need to worry less about being judged and more about listening.
You don’t HAVE to waste time in meetings.
You can say: “Unless you can prove to me that this meeting is not a waste of my time, I won’t attend.” If someone asks for your time, you have a right to know the objective in advance to prepare. You have a right to know why you are being invited and understand what you will be asked to contribute. After the meeting, you deserve to understand what follow-up you are accountable for as a result, when it is due, and how it fits into the objective of the group. This is not a pet peeve because wasting your time in meetings means wasting the company’s money in meetings. You can also let your team know that everyone needs to feel empowered to ask that meeting time be well spent.
The team you have is the team you have.
Everyone is in their role for a reason, and they directly report to you because they have had a series of wins that got them there. It is your job to work with them to find out what their secret sauce is and how you can leverage it to the most significant advantage in their current role. Changes to senior leadership are not only expensive from a cash perspective, but they can cause a reduction in productivity and engagement and send changes throughout the organization. You may not have the team you want, but you must make best use of the team you have.
Embracing the tips above can equip you with a more comprehensive understanding of leadership. Embracing the complexities of decision-making, team dynamics, and personal growth will not only enhance your effectiveness, but also pave the way for a more impactful journey.
Amy Feind Reeves is a distinguished career coach and author of the book College to Career, Explained with a wealth of experience in guiding individuals towards achieving their professional aspirations. With a proven track record in helping individuals navigate the complexities of career development, Amy is a trusted partner for those seeking to unlock their full potential in the professional world. Recognized for her exceptional ability to connect with clients on a personal level, Amy continues to make a significant impact in the realm of career coaching.
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https://i0.wp.com/www.thoughtleadersllc.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/08/20230821-Five-Hand.jpg?fit=1920%2C1280&ssl=112801920Trevor Joneshttps://www.thoughtleadersllc.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/logo.pngTrevor Jones2023-08-21 08:02:012023-08-21 06:54:46Five Things No One Ever Tells You About Becoming Senior Management
Our reader poll today asks: What is your opinion of diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) efforts at your company?
They’re great! Everyone needs to feel respected, fairly treated and included 41.78%
They’re okay. I get the principle but sometimes it doesn’t work as intended 34.23%
They’re a distraction. We have more important issues to deal with 8.00%
They detract from our work environment and aren’t helpful 8.88%
They’re really bad and don’t have a place in our work environment 7.11%
Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Matter. 75% of you feel DEI efforts are important in the workplace. Getting the most out of people requires understanding and accepting them for who they are. DEI efforts are often a way to build awareness of the importance of these dynamics. For those who feel negatively toward these types of efforts, ask yourself if it’s a question of how these efforts are being executed at your company or if it’s because of personal views you have toward the importance of DEI in the workplace. If it’s how the efforts are being carried out, get involved. Offer your thoughts on how these programs could be more effective. If it’s because you don’t see the value in diversity, equity, and inclusion, I encourage you to spend some time with your colleagues who feel otherwise and understand why they see it as being so important. The better we understand one another’s perspectives, the more effectively we’ll all work as teams.
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We are experiencing one of the greatest revolutions the business world has ever seen and unlike any other we have experienced in our lifetimes.
Are we ready for this?
In 1965, Gordon Moore saw it coming. He posited that the computing power of microchips would double every two years. A prediction he confirmed a decade later, concluding it would likely continue. “Moore’s Law” has since been used to describe the ever-increasing speed of technological innovation. But Mr. Moore and his Law could not have predicted the impact the latest technological developments, such as automation and artificial intelligence (AI), would have on virtually every industry and aspect of business.
Let’s take a moment and define some important terms. Automation is our ability to use software scripts to perform what were historically human tasks in a fraction of the time, reducing the need for manual labor and ostensibly increasing efficiency. Artificial Intelligence (AI) is our ability to use new technology platforms for processing data, recognizing patterns, and making decisions, all while constantly learning and improving their effectiveness, very much like humans.
What jobs and industries will be impacted by automation, if not displaced? What about AI and the ripple effect it already has had on creativity and informed decision-making? How will automation and AI continue to drive the current wave of digital disruption, and will we even need accountants or fast-food restaurant order-takers, after they become ubiquitous and widely adopted? Conversely, what jobs and industries will be created as a result? Who will be the winners and the losers?
Now, more than ever before, it is essential for today’s leaders and their organizations to adopt a decisive and agile mindset; one which can monitor the horizon, identify opportunities and threats, and make the types of productive decisions required to achieve their objectives and goals. I assure you that those who are decisive and agile, able to quickly pivot and pursue new opportunities will come out on top.
So, how do we do this and do it consistently?
First, we have to realize that decision-making is a process, not an event. It is the ability to assess and identify when you are being prompted by a change of any kind. The current big change is a technological change of the first magnitude. But the truth is, change of one kind or another is happening all the time in organizations. Those changes may create less urgency than what the current wave of digital disruption is creating, but they need to be successfully managed, nonetheless.
Over the past two decades, I have worked with and in top organizations. It was clear to me that some were far better at making decisions than others. Several years ago, I began to develop a decision-making framework that I call ‘The Decision Switch’, based on proven principles I have myself adopted. I have used it extensively and taught it to my teams with remarkable results. Seeing a growing need, created by an increasingly complex and less forgiving business climate, I sought to address a critical development need for leaders and authored my new book, The Decision Switch: 7 Principles of Successful Decision-Making.
The framework for The Decision Switch:
Triage First: Increase your productivity by assessing and prioritizing before taking action
Follow Your North Star: Defining a clear objective serves to align all subsequent decisions
Collaborate with Others: The power of numbers helps to achieve your goals
Recognize Cognitive Bias: Eliminating mental blinders creates more productive outcomes
Establish a Champion: Visionary leaders are able to provide credibility and influence others
Manage Fallout: Integrity and legacy start with awareness, empathy, and: helping others
Practice Self-Reflection: An acute sense of self-awareness empowers personal growth
A framework built on the validated premise, decision-making is a process and not an event. While not necessary to follow it in the exact order, all the steps are important in whatever order they are taken. Following it will keep leaders from making knee-jerk or uninformed decisions and ultimately, mistakes. It will help identify potential risks and impediments and enable you to establish a clear path forward. Allowing you to move forward confidently, knowing you have asked the right questions and made the most optimal choice available.
While digital disruption is creating tremendous opportunities for those able to catch and ride the wave of change, it is sure to wreak havoc on those paralyzed by fear and anxiety, due to a lack of understanding and heightened uncertainty about the future of their business or career.
The decisions that will be made around these new and quickly evolving technologies and yet-to-be-developed innovations, will need to be continually assessed to determine whether you or your organization is ready for what’s next, and how to proceed with confidence in your choices and actions.
At the end of the day, it’s a simple equation: Better Decisions = Better Outcomes. It’s completely possible and that’s good for everyone involved.
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https://i0.wp.com/www.thoughtleadersllc.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/08/20230814-Yellow-Door.jpg?fit=1280%2C683&ssl=16831280Trevor Joneshttps://www.thoughtleadersllc.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/logo.pngTrevor Jones2023-08-14 08:02:152023-08-14 01:52:27Why Making Great Decisions Matters Now More than Ever
