Last
Friday I attended a fascinating presentation, Why Do People Do Stupid Things?
by Thomas Hoffman of
PScience Associates.
There was a lot of meat in his presentation, and the most valuable
idea I took away is that there are a half dozen exercises I can do
before taking action that will improve my results (reducing common
stupidity).
That
doesn’t mean I will always succeed, but I believe I can improve my
results on a case-by-case basis. Valuable morning.
Here’s
the kicker. Doing all six exercises on a formal basis should take
all of ten minutes. Oy!
I
spend a lot of time in meetings. My butt is not shy about
communicating when I’ve spent too much time sitting instead of
moving forward.
So
if there is a ten minute rocket docket to better performance, why do
committees continue to keep the minutes and waste the hours?
One
time I was installed to run a startup after an investor coup. I met
the new VP Administration, who was also recruited by the investors.
She was very accomplished, but curious how we were going to make
headway with a mulish workforce. I bought her a copy of Robert’s Rules Of Order, and said we would run every meeting for the benefit of the minutes, since
we were being closely watched by the investors, and had to report
several times a week anyway.
Documentation
quickly trumped chaos, and shortly thereafter our direct reports
became barracks parliamentarians. It wasn’t a perfect system, but
it was better than what they were wallowing in before we arrived.
Often
I see that managers want a system to improve their decisions and
without a formal framework, spend their time going round in circles
like Little Johnny With One Foot Nailed to The Floor. Especially in
the current economic climate, they end up fully engaged in paralysis
by analysis.
Better
to adopt one system, any system, and start moving, because as soon as
the system is mastered, it starts being modified, sometimes for
better, often for worse.
The
point is that you can’t lose if you never leave the planning/consideration stage. Of course, you can’t win, either. In the
end, it’s the number of wins, not the number of losses that count.
Indeed, it is most often a series of quick losses right up to the
ultimate (and important) win.
Join
us at the Capital
Technology Management Hub on February 12 at 6:30 for 300 seconds
of Rainmaker 18 –
Leadership, Technology, and Change before
Michael Clark presents Social
Media: Evolving in the Work Place at TeqCorner.
