A concise approach to Creative Problem Solving

Last November I generated the seventh video in the Fast Frames series on my website.

In just under 11 minutes, it describes an approach to creative problem solving that is – as one person put it – “simple, straight-forward, complete, actionable, and understandable.” It is part of The Energy Exchange concept that colleague Julia Gluck and I put together a few years ago. You can see it on YouTube at the Pentacle Path.

We’re all doing problem solving every day, and in all aspects of our lives, and I find this model works well in that wide range of conditions.

And now for something entirely different: PechaKucha Night

Being a frequent PowerPoint presenter, I found this concept very intriguing.

PechaKucha Night was devised in Tokyo in February 2003 as an event for young designers to meet, network, and show their work in public.

According to the website, it has turned into a massive celebration, with events happening in hundreds of cities around the world, inspiring creatives worldwide. Drawing its name from the Japanese term for the sound of conversation ("chit chat"), it rests on a presentation format that is based on a simple idea: 20 images x 20 seconds.

It's a format that makes presentations concise, and keeps things moving at a rapid pace.

If you have not yet been exposed to it, take a look at: http://www.pecha-kucha.org/what.

It’s IBM’s 100th birthday this month!

I was with IBM in the heydays of the 1970s, and learned an enormous amount about business strategy, focusing on the customer, and working to provide great value – both externally and internally. It was a great culture, at least for me. I left the company just as it was shifting its attention away from paying attention to the customer, so I missed the lead-in to Lou Gerstner’s reign.

Despite the ups and downs of the organization, I still hold it in high esteem, and from a business perspective, have been and continue to be impressed by what it has and does accomplish on behalf of our world. This 13-minute video produced by IBM for its centennial year highlights something the company accomplished in each year since it came together as CTR – the Computing-Tabulating-Recording Company – in 1911. It was the merger of Herman Hollerith’s Tabulating Machine Company (the folks that did the US Census), the Dayton Scale Company, and the International Time Recording Company (those “IBM” wall clocks and worker time clock systems). The International Business Machines Company name was used in Canada prior to its adoption in 1924 in the US and the rest of the world.

While the video “grabs” past and present IBMers more strongly, I suspect it’s still an impressive film for any adult to view. Go to http://bit.ly/i0tgcx.

I even got some face time in the video! I’m the guy in the back row on the right at IBM Sales School in 1971 – it’s at minute 12:15 in the video.

Enjoy the clip, and think about how the messages in the video can apply to your own strategic thinking.

A different look at accountability

This blog is one of those diversions from the strategic thread. Expect more of them.

At the beginning of May, I went back to school. I’m taking a postgrad course in Executive Coaching through Royal Roads University. No doubt some of my blogs over the next six months will reflect my learnings in this course.

One of the items that came up for me during our first residency was taking a different approach to the notion of accountability.

For a long time I’ve had some difficulty with the concept of “holding people accountable.” For many, like me, this phrase holds a lot of negative energy. It smacks of the French word puissance, with the connotation of “power over,” as distinct from pouvoir, or “power through.”

At the residency, I was introduced to the concept of “holding people capable.” And while there still needs to be a contract and performance assessment between the manager and subordinate, the energy around this is much more positive and uplifting.

When I, as your manager, hold you capable, it’s a different conversation. There is a different connection between manager and subordinate. The dialogue is all about competence, confidence, and commitment, and what needs to be bolstered. The relationship is more of a partnership where the manager’s role is one of resource and coach.

Many managers will prefer not to take on this role, since it means having to do some “real work” in developing a mutual understanding of what is required to succeed, and how closely the candidate’s competence, confidence, and commitment match the need, and therefore what kind of support is to be put in place.

I suggest that this goes a long way to support W. Edwards Deming’s focus on “driving fear from the workplace.”

Where are we now? …strategically!

After we’ve painted the picture of how we want it to be, it’s time to take stock of where we are now, relative to that “preferred future.” This part of the dialogue establishes the nature and magnitude of the gaps between “there” and “here.”

Once again, notice that we’re doing this after the discussion of the preferred future, not before. This way, the only things we need talk about are those that relate to something in our future – some of the “issues” we think we have now, may be irrelevant to where we’re going, and therefore may grab no airtime.

It’s also important in this stage to think and speak without judgment. Operate with the understanding and mindset that while we may not be pleased with our performance in certain areas, we made the best decisions we knew how at the time.

We may decide to dig a bit more deeply in certain areas to understand what we need to differently moving forward. And when we do that, we do it without blame. Blame gets us nowhere, and holds us back from working on the things we can actually change.

I find that this part of the discussion typically moves rather quickly, especially if the group has spent sufficient time on the landscape and preferred future discussions. By this point, there is a desire in the group to get on to the exciting stuff: laying out the strategies and business plans. It can therefore be important to hold the group back a bit to ensure all the relevant elements of the current state are put on the table so that all the real gaps are identified and can be addressed.

With the current reality in hand, the group can quantify and qualify the gaps and begin working on the strategies.

There’s one more step before we do that, and I’ll cover that in the next blog entry.

Strategic Thinking on the run

This piece comes from Vital Smarts, the group of “grey hairs” that introduced the powerful Crucial Conversations concept to the world. In their weekly email, they link to the results of a survey they conducted with 2,000 managers regarding “financial agility.” Of course, the spin is focused on crucial conversations, and they do that well. You can get a complimentary copy of this 10-page brief here: http://bit.ly/ffYVYL.

The message is that there are four crucial moments that happen in crises, and how those four moments are dealt with by the leaders is a strong predictor of how well their organizations will fare, in particular with respect to financial agility.

Those four moments are, in summary:

1. when the senior team is first confronted with financial data that may indicate a crisis;
2. when the really good solutions step on some senior toes, and are therefore seen as “undiscussable”;
3. when the members of the leadership team have agreed on action and need to follow through with their stated commitments; and
4. when the decision is made to cut costs across the organization by a specified percentage.

The “better” organizations respond to these four moments by:

1. dealing with the data swiftly and openly with lots of dialogue rather than top down commands;
2. creating an environment in which those ”really good solutions” – that may step on some toes – can be put on the table and considered;
3. clearly and visibly holding each leader accountable for delivering on the stated commitments; and
4. having the team – through open dialogue – make more rational decisions regarding where the cuts should be made, rather than pursuing a “cross the board” cut that could undermine critical strategic initiatives and do more damage in the longer term.

The suggestions at the end of the brief focus on how the techniques of Crucial Conversations can be used to facilitate these moments.

My additional comment is that this has a lot to do with strategic thinking and strategic dialogue, and how senior leaders provide real strategic leadership to their organizations. Each of the four moments is a strategic moment when the senior leaders can sit down and have a focused dialogue, starting with “what does it look like when we’ve been successful in dealing with this crisis?” They then step through the strategy process, ending with a clear action plan, and implement.

The point here is that strategic thinking is not just an occasional or annual exercise: it’s a mindset and a set of behaviours that help to ensure the organization thrives.

Yes, it’s all been written about before – so why do so many leaders just not “get it,” and thereby miss the opportunity to use these moments to liberate, inspire, and embolden the leadership talent in their businesses?

The Present is the Point of Power

Today’s blog will be the topic of a longer article some day. Lots of folks have already written about it, so here’s my 2¢.

The present is the point of power.

So what are the implications of this statement? The first is that we have the power to decide and act only right now. At this point in time, standing here, we cannot act in the future – we can do that only when we get there. Equally, we can’t act in the past – that’s already done. So it’s the decisions we make and the actions we take right now that are the things that shape our future, and position us to make decisions and act when we get there. When we’re painting a picture of our preferred future, we’re sketching out what might be, not necessarily what will be.

Making strategic choices and initiating action

So if we are not “deciding” regarding our future, what are we doing?

Well, the decisions we make and the actions we take get us to point our feet in the desired direction, and take the first step – no more. When we get to the end of that first step, we have to consciously confirm that we want to continue in the same direction – or not – and take the second step – or not.

What this is saying is that we need to continue to refresh and reinforce our direction and next desired end state with each “present” moment.

Being aware of our perspective and feelings

The second implication has to do with how we feel about our past. While we cannot change what happened in the past, we can change our view about it, and our feelings about it. If we think of ourselves as “successful” in the past, the picture we paint of our future will be a very different one from the one reflecting our view of the past as “unsuccessful.” The facts of the past are the same – we just have a different feeling about it, looking at with glass-half-empty eyes rather than glass-half-full eyes.

How I view my possibilities for the future depends on how I view my past and present

This is why it is often important for some groups to go through a “what have we achieved over the past 18 months?” exercise prior to painting the preferred future. With the recognition that we’ve come a long way, or even survived through a rough time, the words expressed around the preferred future are much more positive and powerful and energizing then they would otherwise be.

The “present” is like being partway up the mountain on a climb. We look back down and see how far we’ve come – then look ahead and up and see the summit more clearly. And then we decide and act, making those strategic choices that will help to ensure a successful climb.

The strategic horizon

Today’s blog is just a little point – and it’s also an important one.

When we’re into the strategy development portion, one of the most important first steps is to establish the time horizon. It could be 3-5 years, 20 years, or even six months – any of these time frames can be “strategic.”

Years ago, I facilitated a session for a company that manufactured office equipment. The initial horizon for the strategy was to be 5 years. Within about an hour, the assembled team came to realize that if they didn’t do something drastic in the near term, they wouldn’t have a future beyond a year! The strategic horizon quickly became six months, and the focus for the session became, “what does it look like in six months when we’re ‘stable’?” and “what do we need to do to create that scenario?”

Remember that just because something has a near-term horizon, it doesn’t mean it’s not strategic. In the same breath, something that has a long term horizon isn't necessarily strategic, e.g., buying  rail car is a 50-year decision.

So, make sure you consciously and thoughtfully pick a suitable horizon for your definition of the “preferred future.”

The next stratgic step: defining the “Preferred Future”

As identified in the last blog entry, with views of the “landscape” in hand, we can move next to some form of definition of success at a future point in time.

I attended a course some 20 years ago called Leadership and Mastery, run by Innovation Associates (http://www.innovationassociates.com/). It was closely connected with Peter Senge and his work with Systems Thinking, and those concepts permeated the course material – very positively. One of the key idioms I took away was the concept of the “preferred future.”

And that is the next useful thing we can do in the strategic planning process.

The question at hand is, “what does it look and feel like when we’re ‘successful’?”

The first thing to understand is that this “preferred future” is merely our next view of success. It does not denigrate where we are now – in fact, it builds on our current “success,” however we define it.

To emphasize this, it’s important to understand that to do this “preferred future” step well, we must see – and believe – that “We are successful now – in the present time.” If we are not in a positive and uplifting mood when we paint the picture of our future, that future will always be less than it could be.  

So, my “reflection statement” to clients at this point in the dialogue is along the lines of:

• Project yourself ahead three to five years. Feel yourself there. You are wildly successful. You have achieved everything you wanted to achieve in your wildest imaginings. Tell me how you know you’re “successful.” What are your measures of success?

I often add some references to their specific situation, industry, mission, or whatever’s relevant. Things like, “In this ‘preferred future,’ who are your customers? What’s your geographic reach? What’s the nature, scope and extent of your products and services?”

I give the individuals involved in the dialogue a few minutes to write down their thoughts, then collect them, and have a broader dialogue across the group on what the core elements of the “preferred future” really are.

This part of the exercise is invariably positive, uplifting, and energizing. It sets the emotional stage for the rest of the dialogue, important especially when we get to the tough discussions around “what we need to change around here.”

The next step along the strategic path

When I’m working with people on their strategic direction, the next steps have to do with where we want to be rather than where we are. I learned this lesson over 30 years ago.

There are two reasons for doing this.

[1] Focus the content of the dialogue on the strategic intent.

When we start by defining first where we want to be, the later description of our current condition will be painted in the context of this “future state.” As a result, it will include only those elements that will be most relevant to our getting where we want to be. It will also, by and large, exclude those elements that are irrelevant to our future, and therefore not worth our spending any time on.

Alternatively, if we start by analyzing where we are now as a baseline, that becomes the foundation. In this scenario, any discussion of the future will be built at least partially as an extension of this thinking, rather than envisioning a powerful new future. [If that’s the way you want it to be, then I guess that’s OK – and it’s a conscious choice.]

[2] Set the energy dial to build positive vibrations.

When we’re talking “desired future state,” there is a tendency for the participants to focus on upbeat possibilities – it’s a more “expanding” tone. It’s in this mental state that ideas flow and build on one another, and people get excited about the possibilities and increase their passion to make it a reality.

Instead, if we start at where we are now, while there may be plenty of positive elements, the very nature of who we are as human beings will cause us to identify some things that are “wrong,” “lacking,” or even “just not there yet.” As a result, the energy in the room is mixed, tiring, and focused on “evaluation” rather than “creation.”

So, the next step, then, is most productively to identify where you’d rather be in three years, …or one, or ten.