Say, in the early 2000’s, you wanted to create a summary of all human knowledge in the form of an online encyclopedia. How would you do such a thing, especially when, in the English-speaking world, the most authoritative encyclopedia was the Encyclopedia Britannica?

Perhaps, if you were like many people, you would find another pastime and do something else. If you were Jimmy Swales and Larry Sanger, the founders of Wikipedia, you would take advantage of emerging open-source technology and increasing storage and computing power and marry this with the enthusiasm and insights of amateur contributors around the world, and create an online encyclopedia, Wikipedia.

You would work around obvious constraints you faced (limited budget and access to world class experts, to name just two). In doing so, you would open up the reality of a resource that has “…18 billion page views and nearly 500 million unique visitors a month…” (The New York Times, February 2014).

Do you see opportunity around you? Do you view the world as an endless set of possibilities to be explored, assessed and acted upon? Do you search for how to invert an apparent limitation, stand it on its head and then repurpose it as a positive endeavour?

Or, do you view the world as being limited by an endless set of constraints or ‘issues’? Do you subscribe to the view that by tackling these constraints in an orderly fashion, with the highest impact item dealt with first, that over time your system or process will be significantly improved?

In 1984 Eli Goldratt wrote The Goal, a ‘business novel’ intended to show the principles of the Theory of Constraints (TOC). Set in a production plant, Goldratt laid out a clear set of principles:

1. Identify the system’s constraints.
2. Decide how to exploit the system’s constraints.
3. Subordinate everything else to the decisions in steps 1 and 2.
4. Elevate the system’s constraints.
5. If in the previous steps, a constraint has been broken, go back to step 1, but do not allow inertia to cause a further system constraint.

Goldratt’s book places constraints in the context of the overall goal (in a production environment, ‘make more money’) that is being attempted. Constraints are a natural part of any system and need to be planned for and dealt with.

In A Beautiful Constraint: How to Transform Your Limitations into Advantages and Why It’s Everyone’s Business, Adam Morgan and Mark Borden explore the notion of constraints as a force for positive action. They dare us to use constraints to challenge ourselves and find inspiration.

At the heart of their thinking lies the question: ‘Is this the Age of Scarcity or the Age of Abundance?’ Their answer, it seems, is that it depends on how you view constraints.

Where Goldratt takes a scientific view of constraints in a system, Morgan and Borden see constraints as a springboard for business, cultural and social action. They provide many examples to demonstrate their thinking and the book is constructed both as a philosophy of creativity and change and a roadmap for creating this change.

The central concepts of the A Beautiful Constraint are:

1. The Victim, Neutralizer and Transformer mindsets that determine how we approach a constraint.
2. Path dependence that prevents us from perceiving opportunities in constraints.
3. Propelling questions that reframe constraints and force breakthrough thinking.
4. ‘Can-if’ thinking that opens up the possibility of positive solutions.
5. Creating abundance through accessing resources we don’t currently have.
6. Activating emotions to fuel action.

Among the many steps and tools Morgan and Borden offer is the simple yet profound notion of the propelling question. As they define it, “a propelling question is one that has both a bold ambition and a significant constraint linked together”.

In the case of Wikipedia, the propelling question was probably something like: “How do we make all of human knowledge available to anyone, while we have a limited budget in a not-for-profit charity structure?”

The story of Wikipedia is still being written, a little (or a lot) more every day. However, the cornerstones of its success are very unlike those of Britannica.

• Instead of experts, use enthusiastic amateurs.
• Instead of a small number of staff editors, use motivated and diligent volunteers.
• Instead of limited editions of books or CDs, use the Internet on an open license platform.
• Instead of near perfect accuracy first time, constantly improve entries over time.
• Instead of charging, make it free.

Constraints are a state of mind, it seems. View them as limiting and you will be limited. View them as the starting point for a very different thinking process and the world can open up in unexpected ways.

Read A Beautiful Constraint and see what you can change.

“First, have a definite, clear practical ideal; a goal, an objective. Second, have the necessary means to achieve your ends; wisdom, money, materials, and methods. Third, adjust all your means to that end.” – Aristotle

“I’ve missed more than 9000 shots in my career. I’ve lost almost 300 games. 26 times I’ve been trusted to take the game winning shot and missed. I’ve failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed.” – Michael Jordan

1. Introduction

Remember January 1, 2016? Just like yesterday, right? Well, in December 2015 I wrote a blog post about “Get Ready to Succeed in 2016”. (Here it is – http://bit.ly/1Rblohk). Now it’s April, I thought it might be a good idea to check in and see how the year is unfolding.

I suggested that we try a three-step approach:

1. Know the score by creating and using a dashboard.
2. Take stock with your team.
3. Enroll others in the journey by making the making really clear what success will and why it’s important.

I also suggested the use of 90-day planning as a mechanism to hold the score and the actions that you intended to take between January and April.

In this blog, I suggest some simple questions that help focus on what you’ve accomplished in the last 90 days, some thoughts on your Improvement Journey and a challenge for the next 90 days.

Ready? Let’s go…

2. The Last 90-days

The quotations at the beginning of this post sum up how I feel about my last 90 days. On the one hand, I had all the goals identified and the resources allocated. I felt good about what lay ahead of us:

• Complete an important client assignment.
• Produce a marketing video with the help of the Draw Shop: https://vimeo.com/155042176
• Secure three new pieces of work.
• Commit to improving the efficiency of how we manage our consulting practice.

Aristotle would have been impressed, I’m sure.

Well, like most things in life, I accomplished part of what I set out to do, did some things I didn’t plan, and undershot on some activities. This is where Michael Jordan’s words ring true – it’s only by trying, over and over again that I can make progress against my plans.

Here are some key questions to think about as you look back over the last three months. I suggest you write down the question and your answers:

1. What did I plan to do? What worked well? What wasn’t so great? Why?
2. What did I plan to learn? How did I do? Why?
3. How did my team do in working together? What worked well? What wasn’t so great? Why?
4. How did my team do against their objectives? What could we do better?

3. The Improvement Journey

If you’re like me, you probably have noticed a couple of items that need improvement, which raises the idea of the improvement journey. The field of Continuous Improvement revolves around this notion and it fits well in our 90-day check-in process.

The central question of the Improvement Journey: What do I need to improve and how do I do so?

Your 90-day planning debrief should remind you about what you are working on – as you describe your priorities for the next 90 days, plan to use the Plan, Do, Check, Act (PDAC) cycle. This is also sometimes known as the Plan, Implement, Evaluate, Improve cycle and derives from the work of Dr. Edward Deming (http://bit.ly/UqRCLf).

Plan

Are you and your team ready to move to the next phase of your work? What have you learned so far? What should you do next? What skills and knowledge will you and the team need?

Do

Implement some early next steps and be open to failing before committing to full implementation. Think of this as a pilot, keep it contained and be prepared to learn from what you have tested.

Check

Reflect together on your pilot efforts. Identify where you can improve and what additional resources, skills and support you will need to be successful over the the next 90 days.

Act

Integrate the learning from your pilot into your 90 day plans and get going.

4. The Next 90-days

Build a plan for the next 90 days that includes a period for the PDCA ‘pilot’. Keep it short and to the point and use it as a communication and engagement tool with your team.

Individual plan

• What is the short list (less than five) of items you personally plan to work on in the next three months?
• What measures will you use to determine if you are successful?

Team plan – in dialogue with your team answer these questions:

• What is the short list (less than five) of items should your team work on in the next three months?
• What measures will the team use to determine if it is successful?
• Who will carry out the tasks?
• How will you all track progress?

Using the discipline of 90-day planning and milestone reporting, you can build up momentum both for yourself and for the team. Like any habit, the more you do it, the more it will become reinforced and the more you can be like both Aristotle and Michael Jordan.

Poor communication costs organizations productivity and returns to shareholders. It’s calculated that $26,041 US is the cumulative cost per worker per year due to productivity losses resulting from communication barriers.  Towers Watson calculate that companies with highly effective internal communication have 47% higher total returns to shareholders.

So it’s clear that clean, effective communication is critical. And what specifically are the benefits?

• When leaders communicates well during a process, they have more control over the results of the process – they are able to lay out for staff how things are going to play out and what their role in the process will be
• Employees that feel they are “in-the-know” are more motivated to do good work
• When you share information on the right things at the right time, others make better decisions
• When people feel well-informed, they feel respected and more positive
• When a leader shares ideas and information, it helps to “socialize” the issue or initiative. The more people hear about an issue or a proposed course of action, the more likely they are to give the leader feedback and buy in to the solutions.

William H. Whyte said that the single biggest problem in communication is the illusion that it has taken place. We often think we have communicated but then we discover that others have differing assumptions or have made up a story in their head about what’s really going on.

Leaders need questions in their toolkit to ask themselves when tackling a project or a new initiative. Here are five powerful questions:

1. Who needs to know?
2. How will this change in process (or different solution) impact others? Peers? Team members? Your boss? No surprises!
3. What does my team need to know? Inexperienced leaders often assume that they know what their team would need to know but they are just as often wrong!
4. Which partners or colleagues do I need to collaborate with?
5. Who else should be involved and at what stage?

Asking yourself these questions on an ongoing basis will make a huge difference to your effectiveness and to that of your team. And if this kind of questioning becomes part of your company’s culture, it will make a significant difference to your bottom line.

By Bill Sedgwick

“Let our advance worrying become advance thinking and planning.” Attributed to Winston Churchill

“I’m not good at future planning. I don’t plan at all. I don’t know what I’m doing tomorrow. I don’t have a day planner and I don’t have a diary. I completely live in the now, not in the past, not in the future.” Heath Ledger

“Luck. That’s where preparation and opportunity meet.” Pierre Trudeau

Sometimes, it seems the world is made up of two sets of people, those who plan and those who claim not to. To some degree, we all wander between the two poles – live in the moment and plan for the future, which makes sense. Over-plan, and you drive out spontaneity; live in the moment, and anything might happen and probably will.

So here we are, with a new year in sight. We will see a rash of advice about resolutions, lists of intentions and advice about sticking to those good intentions.

In this blog post, we’re going to join in.

As leaders, we have a responsibility to our teams to make clear where we’re going and how we’re doing on the journey. Try a simple three step approach as you think about your good intentions for 2016:

1. Know the score with a dashboard.
2. Take stock.
3. Enroll others in the journey.

Know the score

Life’s a game, the sunny optimists say. If they’re right, you better know the score to know if you’re making progress.

Dedicate some time in December to put together a dashboard for yourself and your team. Keep it simple and clean.

The purpose of a dashboard, like the instrument array in an aircraft cockpit, is to keep the critical information we need to be effective in our line of sight, without overwhelming ourselves. To be effective, your dashboard must tell a story and provide a tool for keeping focused.

To tell the story of what you plan for 2016, design your dashboard with three elements: short-term objectives to be accomplished in 90 days; medium term goals for 3-6 months; and longer term objectives for the entire year.

Next, spend some quiet time working on the three elements. Develop the most detail in the short term bucket, the first 90 days. While working on the other two buckets, only put in enough detail to indicate direction and measures of success.

A tool that is very useful for creating a dashboard is a mind map. We use Mind Manager from Mindjet.com, but there are many others available. A mind map has flexibility and allows you to move information around easily.

Take stock

You and your team have had a busy year. You’ve probably been very focused on getting the work of the team done – have you spent time thinking about the health of the team?

To prepare your dashboard, sit down with the team and ask them:

• What have we accomplished this year?
• What have we learned?
• How do we feel about what we’ve done?

Use the opportunity to celebrate the successes you’ve had. An interesting article from Psychology Today (http://bit.ly/1lOzngB) highlights the importance of celebration in a team’s life.

If you want to understand how your team is doing, try out our online team assessment tool: http://bit.ly/1XwwIEb

Enroll others

At the beginning of 2016, make sure you have a clear story to tell your team about what success will look like. Seek to do a kick-ass job of painting the emotional destination and the meaning of the work.

Elmer Wheeler (b. 1904) was a pioneer in the psychology of selling and taught that to engage others it is more effective to appeal to the outcome than the process. It was Wheeler who coined the phrase “Sell the sizzle not the steak.”

At the beginning of the year you have an opportunity to re-ignite the excitement your team has for its work. Remind them about the purpose that they are working towards. Focus on the ‘why’ of what you’re doing. There will be more than enough time to work out all the details of the ‘how’, which is where most of spend most of time.

Success goes to the prepared, so prepare by reflecting, planning and enrolling others.