David M. Dye

Abraham Lincoln’s Guide to Getting Things Done (Video)

David M. Dye — Tue, 22 May 2012 09:00:31 +0000

Are you neglecting the most fundamental work you’ll ever do to be effective?

Check out Abraham Lincoln’s advice on being effective in this video:

If this has helped you, please pass it on to someone else it will benefit.

12 Most Inescapable Leadership Teachings

David M. Dye — Mon, 21 May 2012 09:00:21 +0000

I originally posted this list of back-to-basics reminders at 12Most. I encourage you to add your own ‘inescapable teachings’ in the comments!

Leadership is a journey where the first steps are often the most difficult. Throughout that journey you learn through your own experiences and the lessons of others. However, those early lessons are often the most critical. These 12 most inescapable leadership teachings are a combination of both types of learning: wisdom gained from early mentors as well as experiences along the way.

These early lessons apply as much today as they ever have – you can’t escape them! I hope they help you build a solid foundation or refresh you on your journey to change the world!

1. Your number one job is to build your replacement

The most important work you’ll ever do is to invest in other people. You simply cannot change the world on your own. Leaders build leaders. If you want additional responsibility or increased impact, help others learn to do what you’re doing.

2. Don’t believe your own press release

Success can easily turn sour if you start to assume all the good things you hear about yourself or your organization are automatic…that things will go well because they always have in the past. Enjoy praise and affirmation when they come, but remember the work it took. That work usually took place where no one could see it.

3. People don’t argue with their own information

You may have a great solution to a problem others don’t even know exists. The time you take to outline problems and get input from others will pay for itself ten times over. It is critical to involve stakeholders in problem solving. We are all more likely to implement solutions we have helped craft.

4. All of us are smarter than one of us (sometimes)

Crowd-sourcing has demonstrated this one in many ways. No one person has all the answers or knows all the facts.

But I say (sometimes) because crowds can also make pretty dumb decisions. Your job as a leader is to set clear criteria and a vision of what we can accomplish. Leaders help all of us to be smarter than one of us.

5. The greatest are the least

Humility is fundamental to influence. Humility can take many forms, but at its core:
Humility says “we are both human beings with value”
Humility says “I know enough to know I may be wrong”
Humility says “How can I help?”
Humility says “Come and join me” not “go do this for me”.
People intuitively know if you think you are better than they are. No one follows that.

6. We, not I

Leaders say “we”, not “I”. It’s not about you, it’s about the team.

7. Bring people with you

Once I was leading a group of fifty or sixty people from outside an arena through doors, around the concourse, and down to a bank of seats on the arena floor. We each put a hand on one another’s shoulder and I set off. When I got to the chairs, however, only three people had made it with me. I had gone too fast and the team broke apart.

I was a great scout that day – I found the chairs. But leaders take people with them.

8. No responsibility without authority

This one I learned very early in life. As the oldest of six, I was asked to get the house clean by the time my father returned home. I was given responsibility…but I was 12 years old. 12 year olds don’t have a lot of authority.

Effective leaders do not give responsibility without also giving authority to go with it.

9. Say Thank You

No one must do anything for you.
They choose to.
Acknowledge that miracle!

10. Apologize

When you’re wrong, own it. Apologize and make it right.

A real apology acknowledges that you were wrong.

11. Flowers bloom in their own time

As a child I would be so eager for the first spring roses or peonies to bloom that I sometimes “helped” them along. I would pry open the green leaves covering the blossom and try to coax the interior petals into the semblance of a flower.

Of course it ruined the whole thing.

Flowers bloom when they are ready and you cannot force them. People also have natural seasons and you can ruin good people by forcing things. Sometimes you have to go slow to go fast.

12. Protect people’s dignity

Extend worth to everyone. Celebrate their contribution to the world. Do not spend time with those who steal another’s dignity.

Even in difficult situations such as ending someone’s employment, extend dignity. There is never a reason to belittle or make someone feel small. If you do, you will lose credibility as well as lose the person and their network.

Sometimes the early lessons are the most important. They serve as a beacon to call us back to sanity when life gets complicated. What has been your most inescapable leadership teaching? How did you learn it?

Take care,

David M. Dye

Post republished with permission, courtesy of 12Most.

(Photo by Hartwig HKD)

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11 Time Management Secrets You Can’t Live Without

David M. Dye — Mon, 14 May 2012 09:00:13 +0000

Early in my career I had some teammates that arrived late to a time-management seminar…

The facilitator made them sit in front.

If you can empathize with them or if you’re a leader frazzled by everything demanded of you, this list should help.

Take a deep breath and begin with the most important truth:

1. There is infinite need, but finite me

I think this is the most important item in the entire list.

You cannot begin to think about how to use your time until you get rid of the idea that you can do it all.

It is paralyzing to just keep adding projects, tasks, meetings, and social appointments with no thought to what you’re actually capable of.

Don’t feel guilty. Take another deep breath and repeat after me:

“In any day there are an infinite number of things I could do. I can only do a few of them.”

I’m serious about this. On days where you are frazzled and overwhelmed, come back to this bedrock reality:

Relative to the millions of things you might do, you can only do a few.

This truth releases you to work through the rest of the list.

2. You have a choice

Ben Franklin, quoting others before him, said that nothing is certain except death and taxes.

You have to die. And you generally have to pay taxes (or pay the penalty), but after that, everything is a choice.

Don’t skip this!

Most of us surrender our ability to choose and get frustrated. If you are letting others choose for you…that is a choice you’ve made. Even when someone holds a gun to your head – you still have a choice about what you do!

This is an amazing, incredible reality. It’s also scary – so scary that many people refuse to acknowledge it and prefer to live in a constructed reality where they “don’t have a choice.”

But our ability to choose is vital – with “infinite need, but finite me”, your ability to choose is your only tool.

Choice is the swiss-army knife of time-management.

3. Know your mission and your values

A quick review:

You can’t do it all.
You can choose what you will do.

Now, how do you make those choices?

You use a filter.

That filter is your own mission in life and your values. What are you trying to do? What is vitally important to you as you do it?

Hopefully, you make the choices that help you accomplish your mission in life and that are consistent with your values. If you’ve chosen to lead a team or an organization (there’s that choice again!) then the organization’s mission and values are important as well.

If you’ve never taken the time to think through your own values and what you want to do in the world, I encourage you to do that work. You can’t make some of the more difficult choices without it. This is where a coach can help. Contact me if you want to learn more.

4. Stopping is more important than starting

With a mission and values in front of you, the biggest challenge isn’t what to do – it’s what NOT to do.

A quick personal example:

Growing up, I had always aspired to be a master-level chess player. However, as I worked on that specific passion, it became clear to me that the time investment and work for me to succeed in chess would interfere with another even more important goal – to be a good husband and father.

In my case, I couldn’t do both (although there are some smart people out there that do, I wasn’t capable of it) so I stopped. I chose to play only casually (and last year my nephew beat me

If you’re leading an organization, you can waste time in a hundred different activities that seem important or that are important to someone else. But you’ve got to choose what not to do.

If it doesn’t help you accomplish your mission in any way, then why do it?

5. More time isn’t the answer

Remember, there are an infinite number of things you could EVERY DAY.

Even if you had the ability to create time, without items 1 – 4, it would just be consumed in the same way it is now.

6. It’s okay to close your door

Sometimes you need to close your door and focus on a project or a task or allow yourself to think about a problem.

There are lots of ways to ‘close your door’:

Go for a walk
Actually close the door
Listen to music
Talk with chronic office-wanderers about skipping yours

“But wait!” you say, “we have an open door policy…”

An open-door policy has become a cliche that was intended to mean managers want to hear about problems. “My door is always open…come talk to me.”

It’s a nice-sounding concept, but it doesn’t mean you are available to be interrupted at any moment of any day. You close your door or move to a conference room for sensitive conversations, right? You can also close it to get some vital work done.

If someone legitimately needs to talk, make the choice to have the conversation right then or to offer them an appointment later that day or the next.

[Note: an 'open door' policies won't help you learn what you need to learn about your team and organization either, you need to engage outside of your office for that.]

7. Your brain can’t do it

You may have dozens of different projects in progress at any one time. Some are personal, some professional. Some take days, some months, some years.

Your brain can’t keep track of all this.

The demands of organizational leadership exceed your brain’s unaided capacity.

Fortunately, we’re not limited to our unaided-brains.

Get a system that works and use it.

I had to start using a calendar near the end of college when I was working two jobs and volunteering. My brain could not keep track of everything.

It might be a simple pocket calendar. Maybe you prefer a phone. Maybe it’s one of those fancy paper-based systems. Maybe it’s a combination of google calendar and tasks.

Maybe (like me) you prefer David Allen’s Getting Things Done system. Maybe Covey works for you.

It doesn’t matter – find a system that works for you and use it.

Give your poor brain a break!

8. Turn everything off

The modern world is full of disruptions that keep our brains functioning in short shallow bursts. Email, texts, IM, twitter, 30 second news stories, facebook, blogs, and on and on and on.

Turn it off.

Not forever…just for an hour or two while you work on that project or talk to that person.

Be present with what you’re doing. When you’re checking email, do it intentionally, with focus, and do it once.

Use your technology to accomplish your mission and values. Don’t let your technology use you!

9. “Sleep is a weapon”

This is a line from one of Robert Ludlum’s Bourne series. Jason Bourne, an amnesiac super-spy is being chased around the world by all sorts of dark government bad guys while he tries to unravel mysteries and stay alive.

Part of the super-spy special forces training he remembers is that “sleep is a weapon”.

Staying sharp, focused, and able to pursue our mission requires us to sleep.

Sleep is an investment in your mission.

If a hunted super-spy understood the importance of sleep, then you and I should get some too (along with exercise, rest, and laughter!)

10. Changing roles requires changing systems

As you change roles and responsibilities you’ll probably find that the systems you use aren’t as effective as they use to be.

My paper pocket calendar took me through those late years of college all the way to mid-career. And then I needed something more. I began leading bigger and bigger teams and my trusty pocket calendar wasn’t working any more.

You may find your current system can scale and work for larger assignments. Great!

But if not, understand there’s nothing wrong with you or ‘old reliable’. It was good for the time. Now it’s time for something that works for your new situation.

11. The bottom line isn’t

Don’t measure your use of time only by looking at a financial statement or productivity report.

That may be important for your mission, but I hope your bigger mission includes a life well-lived, meaningful relationships with friends and family, and making a positive impact on the world.

How to Make a Perfect Decision

David M. Dye — Mon, 07 May 2012 09:00:25 +0000

Confusion

There are seasons in your leadership where you will feel lost. The path forward isn’t clear. Your team is uncertain, distracted, or lost.

You search for the perfect decision, but you can’t find it – there are too many unknowns, too much analysis, no way to know for certain…

In times like these your leadership is needed more than ever.

Have You Seen Apollo 13?

If not, I strongly recommend it. It’s a great movie about people overcoming and surviving odds stacked almost impossibly against them.

A quick recap: American astronauts on a mission to land on the moon fight to make it home alive after an explosion damages their ship.

In a powerful scene, the three men on board are circling the moon before their trajectory carries them back to earth. Two of them are looking out the window, dreaming about what they missed, when their captain, played by Tom Hanks, asks them a simple question:

“Gentlemen, what are your intentions?”

Once he has their attention, he tells them, “I want to go home.”

With that simple statement, he refocuses the team, provides the clarity they need, and energizes the team to take next steps.

The Perfect Decision

If you feel lost, casting about for the perfect decision, take a cue from Apollo 13.

There is no ‘perfect’ decision. There is only today’s decision.

The only perfect decision is the one you make today with the facts you have available. Like the astronauts on Apollo 13, you want to be clear about where you are trying to go.

Once you have that clarity, you can begin breaking down the task into specific jobs.

You’ll Never Have Enough Information

Imagine if the captain had waited to declare his intent to return home until he had every bit of the plan figured out.

They would never have made it.

What’s important is absolute clarity about what you’re doing today.

What is the objective?
What’s the vision behind it?
What problems need to be solved?
What steps need to be take to solve them?
Who will do what?

Final Thoughts

Some leaders fail to provide clarity because they worry that new facts will cause them to change their mind.

That happens.

It’s okay. Learn all you can in the time you have and be clear based on what you know today.

When new facts surface, be clear about those and the reasons for changes.

At the same time, you don’t want to go off half-cocked. Get all the wisdom and information you can in a reasonable amount of time. Then make a decision.

There are no perfect decisions, just today’s decision.

“A good plan, violently executed now, is better than a perfect plan next week.” -General Patton

“Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts.” -Winston Churchill

What are your intentions?

Take care,

David M. Dye

Book Review: Everyone a Leader

David M. Dye — Sat, 05 May 2012 16:54:30 +0000

Waiting for Help?

If we wait on our identified positional leaders (CEOs, Presidents, etc) to do what needs to be done, we will be waiting a very long time.

For decades now, people have been suggesting that we need leaders at every level of every organization – whether its a company or our country, positional leaders cannot do everything that needs doing.

If the alley behind your house needs to be cleaned up, certainly no one in your nation’s capital will get it done. Maybe an identified city leader can help…but without a doubt, you and a few motivated neighbors could take care of the problem.

Many have written of the need for this type of leadership, but relatively few have offered practical guidance on developing the skills needed to lead effectively when your positional leaders are remote and disconnected. (Another resource on this topic is John Maxwell’s The 360 Degree Leader.)

The subject of today’s book review calls this concept grassroots leadership. Everyone a Leader: A Grassroots Model for the New Workplace by Horst Bergmann, Kathleen Hurson, and Darlene Russ-Eft is an excellent resource for emerging grassroots leaders.

If It’s To Be, It’s Up To Me

I love the first chapter title: “Because If You Don’t, No One Will”.

It sets the tone for the rest of the book. Simply put – large complex organizations (companies, cities, or countries) cannot thrive without individuals taking responsibility and exerting positive influence at every level.

The authors do a good job illustrating these realities with real-world vignettes that most readers will readily understand. The frustration encountered when you see something that isn’t your responsibility on paper, but you seem to be the only one who sees it, and consequently the only one to work with others to solve it.

This is the work of leadership.

How Badly Do You Want It?

It begs the question, however: How much do you want things to improve?

This is not a book for those who would rather let things slide, put their head down, and ‘let someone else deal with it’.

If you want to learn how to make a difference where you are, with what you have, then this is an excellent resource.

The authors provide practical advice and real-world suggestions on how to create a compelling future, make decisions that have buy-in and will be executed, build credibility and trust, as well as other foundational leadership skills.

These aren’t just random ideas. All of the specific recommendations are based in strong research about what will help you be effective working where you are with what you have.

Of particular note is the chapter on “The Emotional Labor of Grassroots Leadership”.

I’m not sure I’ve read a more realistic assessment of the emotional challenges (and opportunities) facing leaders. It’s easy to say “keep your calm” or “use strong emotions to help the situation”, but it’s another thing entirely to address these concepts through real world examples and provide the reader tools to accomplish these objectives.

This is a great chapter.

Tools

The final aspect that sets Everyone a Leader apart from most other leadership resources is its extensive set of tools. Nearly half the book is an inventory of various tools you can use to meet leadership challenges you encounter on a daily basis.

Need to work on handling emotions under pressure? You’ll find tools to help on page 199.
Want to bring out the best in others? See the tools for coaching starting on page 160.
Or perhaps you need help raising difficult issues with your team. Learn how on page 182.

You get the idea.

If I can summarize Everyone a Leader briefly it would be:

They get it. It’s real. There are tools to help.

I strongly recommend Everyone a Leader for anyone not in an executive-level leadership position AND for executive-position leaders who want to help develop effective leaders at every level of their organization.

Happy Reading!

David M. Dye

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Give Me 3 Minutes and I’ll Make You Smarter

David M. Dye — Mon, 30 Apr 2012 09:00:14 +0000

What Do You Know?

Recently a friend of mine hopped on Facebook and asked his friends to recommend a local carpet-cleaning company and a moving company. (There must be a good story there, but that’s not why I bring it up.)

Within an hour he had several solid recommendations with one moving company clearly favored above any other.

What’s that got to do with smarter leadership?

Everything!

All of Us Are (Usually) Smarter Than One of Us

Crowdsourcing has demonstrated this truth in many ways. From Wikipedia to finding untapped veins of ore to locating a good moving company, the reality of collective intelligence is hard to ignore.

The most knowledgeable, super-intelligent person on earth still only knows an infinitesimal amount compared to the sum of human knowledge.

If you want to be a smarter leader:

Stop trying to make all the decisions on your own and tap into the power of your team.

The people with the most up-to-date knowledge for whatever your organization does are not the managers – they are the people doing the work.

If you’re leading like you know more than your team, you’re not only irritating your people, you’re also missing out on a huge pool of essential knowledge.

There is a caveat, however – that’s why I say “usually” smarter and it is also the reason leadership is still important.

Leadership In the Era of Crowdsourcing

While groups can be smarter than individuals, crowds can also be pretty dumb.

That’s why your leadership is critical.

That job is not to be smarter than everyone and make all the decisions.

Your role as a leader is to help the team make the best decisions.

In the era of crowdsourcing and the reality that your front-line people have unique and vital knowledge, you help your team make the best decisions by:

Studying the environment – Your team has its unique knowledge. You also need to bring unique knowledge – the awareness of what is going on in the rest of the world that is relevant to your team. Part of your responsibility as a leader is to look outside your organization and pay attention to what is going on out there.
Asking the right questions – Forget having all the answers. You’ll be far wiser and make better decisions if you’re asking good questions. Questions about what is possible, why things are the way they are, and how to get from the present to the possible future.
Making solution criteria clear – What conditions must a solution satisfy? People can be incredibly creative and smart if the essential boundaries are defined. That’s part of your job.
Helping teams decide – be clear about how the decision is to be made and in what time frame. If you will make the final decision after getting everyone’s input, be clear about that from the beginning. Once decisions are made, ensure everyone knows who is doing what, by when, and how others will know its been done.
Helping teams to act – Once the decision is made, help them to act on it. Get them the training and equipment they need. Help resolve conflicts. Keep the vision and criteria in front of everyone. Hold everyone accountable for their commitments and celebrate success.

As a leader, you help “all of us” to be smarter than “one of us”.

And if you’ll do it, that makes you smarter than you were three minutes ago!

Take care,

David M. Dye

(Photo by Stuart Richards)

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19 Ways to Keep from Missing What’s Right in Front of You

David M. Dye — Thu, 26 Apr 2012 09:00:37 +0000

Right in Front of You

It’s a flash of the blindingly obvious…

One of those realities you immediately nod and agree with…

But it’s something too many leaders and managers take for granted and ignore.

When you leave it that way, it devastates your credibility.

Simple, Yet Profound

A recent commenter said he appreciated the humanity in my approach to leadership.

It got me thinking: What else is there?

The simple, yet profound truth…the flash of the blindingly obvious is simply this:

You Lead People

That’s it.

Everyone you lead is a person.

You are a person.

The results you accomplish – they affect people.

And those results – they only happen because of people.

Sad Reality

The world is full of examples where this simple truth is forgotten.

Employees reduced to the status of pieces in a machine.
Wars fought on the basis of people’s color or religion.
Your alienation from that person who acted like an idiot.
Leaders so divorced from their own humanity they kill themselves through work, food, sex, or drugs.

Stop the Madness

It’s easy to fall into this trap. But it’s also a simple process to climb back out. Every day, work to see people as people:

Treat yourself as a human being – Create room in your life to laugh, to love, and to grieve. Invest in relationships that connect you to yourself and to life. It’s hard to treat others with human dignity if you don’t first do it for yourself.
Listen – hear the joy, grief, frustration, and enjoyment in others. Learn their values, what motivates them.
Create times to share life with your team. Something as simple as a meal and a discussion of dreams and accomplishments connect you to the people around you.
Do not take yourself too seriously. The engineers sending astronauts into outer space factor in some margin of error – you are permitted to make mistakes. Learn from them. Then try it again.
Invest in healthy conflict – from Crucial Conversations: when you’re upset with someone, ask yourself why a reasonable, rational person would do such a thing, find out what part of the story you’re missing, focus on solving the problem AND building the relationship
Make eye contact, greet people, wish them well. Ask “how are you” and wait for the answer.
When team members are struggling, ask how you can help.
When you screw up, apologize.
Acknowledge tough decisions – don’t sugarcoat difficult truths. Be upfront about suffering and appreciate individual and team sacrifice.
Be sincere. If you can’t talk about something, say so.
Once you’ve trained and equipped, get out of the way.
Celebrate success. Celebrate failed experiments. Celebrate the past, celebrate progress, celebrate present persistence.
Expect excellence, practice fairness. Firm, but fair.
When someone’s spouse or child is very sick, send them home.
Say thank you.
Imagine yourself in the other person’s situation. How would you want to be treated?
Always, always, always treat people with dignity. Even when terminating employment, you are talking to another human being. Your own humanity is at stake. Don’t compromise it.
People are never problems. They may not be a good fit. They may have stolen something. They may be quarrelsome. You may have to remove them from the team – but those are problem behaviors. People are not problems.
Every day acknowledge the beauty, skill, or competence in someone – and include yourself!

Yes, these should feel a bit obvious – but that’s the problem. For all their familiarity, at one time or another, you and I have both ignored the basic truth: everyone we work with is a human being. Over time those simple omissions can grow into a callous disregard for people. Don’t let that happen to you.

It really is all about relationships.

How do you maintain your humanity? How do you consistently invest in relationships with those on your team?

Happy Reading!

David M. Dye

(Photo attribution unknown. If this is your photo, please contact me. )

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7 Treasures You Shouldn’t Miss

David M. Dye — Mon, 23 Apr 2012 09:00:22 +0000

Recently I have seen some excellent writing on fundamental leadership and management truths. There really are some treasures here I would hate for you to miss.

Take a moment and read through one of these each day. Any one of them can be life-changing!

1. 12 Most Inescapable Leadership Teachings by David M. Dye at 12 Most.

This past week I was a guest-writer at 12 Most and so I begin this list of treasures here: if you want to be effective with people, this is a great place to start.

2. A Leader’s Most Dangerous Thought by Michael McKinney on LeadershipNow

Next up is a short and sweet reminder that a sense of entitlement will undermine your leadership faster than almost anything else.

3. The Most Important Decision Leaders Make by Dierdre Maloney

Dierdre discusses the fundamental need for you to build a trusted group of mentors and advisors for yourself. There are many reasons this is a crucial practice, but to fully appreciate this article, I suggest quickly browsing the three that proceed it. They are cautionary and will keep you from inadvertently ruining your credibility.

4. The Most Dangerous Lie Leaders Believe by Dan Rockwell of LeadershipFreak

In keeping with the theme of the first treasures on this list, Dan calls us to humility and curiosity with a vital message.

5. Leading from a Distance by Michael Sliwinsky, guest posting on Michael Hyatt’s blog

Michael leads people located in several different countries. His recommendations on managing your own time and structuring your interactions with people are very practical and helpful whether your team is located in the same room or halfway around the world.

6. 7 Dumb Leadership Mistakes Dumb Managers Avoid by Martin Zwilling on Forbes.com

Martin’s article does two things well: 1) it reminds us that effective managers ARE leaders and 2) presents seven practical mistakes to avoid as well as the positive alternative

7. 10 Surefire Ways to Achieve Unhappiness by Celes at Personal Excellence

I round out this list of treasures with a manifesto post with awesome reminders that call us back to alignment with our own values and what can and cannot control.

Happy Reading!

David M. Dye

(Photo by mx2-foto)

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18 Truths You Can’t Avoid if You Want to Stay Relevant, Effective, and Connected

David M. Dye — Mon, 16 Apr 2012 09:00:34 +0000

Lives are On the Line

People are depending on you. They depend on your organization.

Your mission is important.

With the world relying on you and your team, it is vital that you stay relevant, effective, and connected.

History is strewn with examples of organizations that failed or are struggling to respond to a changing world. Here are just a few:

Borders Books – digital and online changes killed their business
Blockbuster Video – same thing with digital and dvds in the mail
US Education System – poor results for many due to misalignment with current realities including non-agrarian civilization, increased need for knowledge workers, and out-of-school support required for extreme urban / suburban students.
Easter Island civilization – continued using wood past the time the supply could be regrown
Figure skating programs that aren’t including quads for male skaters
Banking organizations that invested in bundled securities whose actual value could not be determined and which could not be sold
The Jedi Council when the Sith take over (just checking if you’re still reading – but for you Star Wars fans, Yoda does ultimately realize he had been training Jedi for the past, not for the future. For everyone else: I promise no more Star Wars references for the rest of this post.)

The Antidote to Decay

Organizations that stay relevant, effective, and connected do one vital thing consistently:

They learn.

The people in them learn, their leadership learns, their teams learn.

Learning (and action with that learning) is the antidote to decay and irrelevancy.

The 18 Truths

1. Learning is not “squishy”

Lives are at stake. Your mission is on the line. Learning is vital – not a ‘soft skill’ to be left to chance or a training department.

If your outcomes are important, so is investing in people.

2. Learning requires action and action requires learning

Take action, learn from it, then act again.

Or…

Learn, take action, then learn more.

Action without learning is busyness. It is ready, fire! (no aim).

Learning without action is disconnected and will not produce change.

So Learn.

Then Act.

Then do it again.

3. Learning starts Day 1

When people join your team or your organization, how are they greeted? What investment do you make in them? How is the commitment to learning demonstrated?

4. Learning belongs in organizational values

One of the values in my current organization is innovation. We explain it like this: “Mission is sacred, change is essential.” The emphasis is on learning and ongoing response to changing environments.

Is learning a part of your organizational or team DNA?

5. Learning is everyone’s responsibility

Effective learning organizations ask everyone to contribute. Everyone can share what they are learning and can teach it to someone else. You can create peer accountability for individual and team learning.

Can your team see you learning? What was the last thing you learned and applied? What was the last lesson a successful project taught you? How have you implemented that learning?

6. Every project requires “make us smarter” time.

Personal and team reflection is essential.

After every project (or during big ones) take time to ask:

What went well?

What worked that we didn’t expect?

What would / will we do next time?

Incorporate the answers into the team’s future operations.

7. Learning reveals itself in language

Strive to infuse learning language in all your interactions. Work to ask the right questions rather than give all the right answers.

What have you learned? What was most surprising? Most challenging? Most rewarding? Most helpful? How will you handle that next time? How can I help? What do you need to know to make that decision?

8. Show me the money!

What is your people development budget? What books are you giving people? What training courses? Are you supplementing coaching?

Effective organizations invest in their most important assets. If you truly don’t have money, invest time.

It doesn’t have to be a ton of money, but is it there? As part of a small nonprofit team, I started with handouts until I had budget to buy books.

9. Performance evaluations are useless if they’re not based on strengths

No one will be perfect at everything. We’re not made that way. Structuring performance evaluations to highlight “weaknesses” is a waste of time.

10. We need to keep outcomes in front of our eyes

We naturally work at what has our attention and what motivates us. Just regularly seeing outcomes is naturally motivating and produces curiosity, investigation, and the learning to accomplish them.

See 5 Ways Angry Birds Will Make You a Better Leader for more…

11. Experiments are Vital

Effective organizations continually try different solutions, explore new ideas, and respond to changes in the world outside the organization.

For experimentation to succeed, you need a few things:

Make it safe – if no one’s experiments are failing, then you’re not pushing the boundaries with creativity. If you punish “misses”, people will shut down and you will not get creative effort and new ideas
Establish criteria to asses the effectiveness of the experiment – what objectives does it need to meet to be considered for more resources or wider use?
When an experiment doesn’t work, either make changes and reinvest according to lessons learned or else shut it down. Don’t leave it hanging out there with everyone wondering what happened.
Celebrate experiments – including the ones that don’t get replicated! This helps build the safety to try new ideas.

12. Pilot for Effective Change

When an experiment works or your team has a sure-fire idea, roll it out in a couple different environments, take notes, do the review in truth #6, and learn from the pilots. Then roll it out across the organization. This will save you and your team countless hours of frustration.

13. You can’t delegate investing in people.

Integrate leadership development and professional growth into the fabric of the organization. Leaders develop leaders. This can’t be outsourced to another department or just one person in an organization.

Some people are gifted teachers, coaches, and mentors – but even for those who are not, they can still help their teams identify areas of growth, match staff with the appropriate resources, celebrate growth, and be growing themselves.

14. Servant leadership doesn’t happen by accident

There are generally four reasons people seek leadership positions. The first group are the three “P”s: power, prestige, and purse (money). While all are understandable, none of these reasons are a strong foundation for effective leadership.

The fourth reason is service. You’re looking for people who genuinely want to help their team perform, who take personal and organizational responsibility, who have high integrity. They live out Hunter’s ultimate test of leadership: their people are better off today than when they met.

As you’re looking to fill leadership roles, seek out people who are already doing these things. It is unlikely someone will magically begin serving others because you change a few words following their name.

15. The Elephant Corollary – Optimize the System

In talking about systems, Peter Senge said that if you split an elephant into two pieces, you don’t end up with two baby elephants.

The idea is that your organization and team are part of a larger whole. Each task or project they do is part of a larger system. Trying to extract one team, one project, or one task out of the larger system and focus on it alone is like trying to split an elephant in two and expecting two small elephants as a result.

I refer to optimization as the elephant corollary: your goal is to optimize the system, not to make one part exceptional. Here’s a quick example:

If you serve people, you can spend all your time meeting their needs and no time on the needed paperwork to ensure your funding continues. Despite being 100% awesome at serving the people, your organization would fail.

Same problem if you maximize your paperwork energy. Being 100% perfect at paperwork would result in less time with your clients.

You want to optimize: find the right amount of time with people and the minimum amount of time on the paperwork needed for funding. The organization as a whole – that’s your focus.

16. Learning takes time

Bulbs planted last fall may bloom this spring or they may bloom next spring. It will be 6 – 18 months before you see the results of your actions.

Organizations can be similar. You want to allow enough time to examine the natural consequences of changes you make.

Every organization has its own change cycle. Organizations in a traditional academic environment might have to wait an entire year to see the results of changes.

You can and should monitor what’s happening along the way, but know your own organization’s lag time between change and results.

“A society grows great when old men plant trees whose shade they know they shall never sit in.” Greek Proverb

17. Learning requires humility

Curiosity, the willingness to admit there might be a better way, and to actually try it – these all spring from humility.

By humility, I mean the awareness that this is a huge world we live in and an incomprehensibly giant universe – and that I’m not the center of it. There is so much we don’t know collectively, much less as individuals.

Humility is vital for individuals and organizations that want to learn. We can’t look for new ideas or incorporate them if we think we already know all there is to know.

Cultivate your own humility and your team’s. Whether through spiritual practices, time spent in nature, or activities for which you have no aptitude – do what it takes to maintain a sense of awe and wonder.

18. There is never an ideal time or circumstance

Some of you will be reading this and wishing your organization was practicing the truths on this list.

My challenge for you is to start where you are. If you have a team, begin implementing these truths with them. If you don’t have a team, begin with yourself. Then develop your influence with others who are willing to join you in learning.

If you’re not part of a learning organization, create pockets of learning – learning teams, learning departments, and learning work groups. The organization may or may not learn, but you will.

You and your team will be better off for it.

Thanks for reading – if this has been helpful, please like, +1, pin, stumble, tweet, or share it with a friend!

When?

David M. Dye — Fri, 13 Apr 2012 09:00:16 +0000

There is never an ideal time.

You will never have everything you need.

If you wait until things are just right, you will never begin.

Start where you are, with what you have.

Take care,

David M. Dye

(Photo by Luis Argerich)

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