If folks don’t appear to be creative at work, it’s not because they lack imagination, it’s because they lack opportunity.
– Gary Hamel – The Future of Management
Archives for August 2008
Enterprise and Entrepreneurship: The Passion, Beauty and Pain
So the Olympics come around again and our television screens, newspapers and browsers are filled with images of passion, beauty and pain.
Perhaps nowhere more so than in the Gymnastics Hall where hours of painful practice over many years are put to the test in few seconds of immense pressure. Everything is put on the line. For some it ends in the euphoria of success. For others it ends in the heartbreak of failure.
Gymnastics can provide a metaphor for enterprise and entrepreneurship providing lessons for those of us who run businesses and those who try to help us.
Gymnasts and Entrepreneurs:
- go into the process knowing that success is far from guaranteed
- are committed to hours of hard work and sacrifice – to earn the chance of success
- risk injury and loss – physical, mental and emotional as well as financial
- understand that their career could be cut short – it is all about managing risk
- know that the road to success is a long one – full of highs and lows – and that they had better enjoy the journey because the destination is not guaranteed
- anticipate failures and disappointments using them to learn and move on
- develop skills, passions and strengths over many years before they are ready to compete
Coaches and Advisers:
- understand that it is not their life or career that is on the line – it is not their success or failure that matters but that of the gymnast or entrepreneur
- help them to understand the risks and rewards that might lie in any chosen course of action – as well as the price that might have to be paid
- pick them up when they fall helping them to learn and move on
- help them to recognise if a plan is not working out and choose the right time to pursue a different path
- never under-estimate the potential of people to do amazing things
- keep dreams alive even through the darkest times
- know that it is reckless to encourage people to try things before they are equipped for success – they test and develop passion, skill, energy and commitment to make sure that the risks of a new endeavour are acceptable
- help to test things out with a minimum of exposure to risk so that lessons can be learned safely
- help to break down seemingly impossible challenges into a manageable sequence of achievable steps and goals
I know this film inspired me. I hope it does the same for you!
[Youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RLv12ZnRCqY]
Goals, Priorities and Resources; where does it all go wrong?
Spending time developing and clarifying goals is rarely time wasted. Although some of us spend time clarifying our work goals few of us spend time developing goals for other important aspects of our lives – family, community and self. This is one of the reasons why we find work-life balance so hard to achieve. Goals that have been set in our professional lives are not balanced by goals in other areas. The goals that we have set start to demand creativity and resources and before we know it…
Sometimes we set goals that do not provide clear priorities. Or they provide us with so many priorities that we may as well have no priorities at all. Priorities are immediate next steps that will move us closer to our goals. Good priorities are ones that we cannot fail to address. They are so simple and appealing that they cry out for us to get on with them.
But often we forget to allocate time and other resources to our priorities. Without resources to go with them our priorities are worthless. Without doubt time is the most precious resource that we can commit to a priority. I often find myself working with senior managers to clarify goals and priorities (no more than three or four at a time) and then schedule time in busy diaries to spend on them.
By scheduling two 90 minute blocks of time every week to work on priorities many managers ‘magically’ start to make tangible progress towards goals that had previously frustrated them.
Building a High Performing Team – Part 2 – Anticipate Conflicts
Organisation divides people. It sets up conflict:
- Who does what? – task conflicts
- How do we get this done? – process conflicts
- Who gets what? – resource conflicts
Failure to anticipate, recognise and resolve these conflicts leads to the most dangerous conflicts of all – personal conflicts.
Two people in conflict can usually both make a plausible case for their position. You can of course handle these conflicts just by issuing a decree. However the value of a high performing team, and the measure of your ability to manage it is in getting a decision that has allowed everyone to have their say, for pros and cons to be fully explored and for commitment to making the decision work to be built.
Handled like this, conflicts become powerful team building tools as people start to recognise that the group can make better decisions than any one individual and that no one person has all the information required to make the best decision.
Engaging in Enterprise
“If you want to reach people no one is reaching you’ll have to do things that no one else is doing. In order to do things that no one else is doing you can’t do what everyone else is doing.”
Craig Groeschel
Craig is a preacher in the US and this quote was in the context of taking the church into the community. However I think it is relevant to the challenge of engaging individuals in enterprise – especially those from the poorest communities.
What are you doing – that no-one else is – that gives you a chance of connecting with potential clients that no-one else is engaging?