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Moving To A Single Solution – why brainstorming is hard!

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I often get to witness meetings where a group of people are trying to solve a problem.  On a good day perhaps two or three options will be generated before one emerges and starts to be refined as ‘the solution’.  This is the managerial mindset – moving quickly to a preferred solution – and moving on to the next problem.

Which is why so many managers and their teams find brainstorming hard.

Brainstorming is not about finding a preferred solution.  It is about finding as many potential solutions and ideas as possible.

It is about quantity.

Quality and refinement can come later.

It is about generating ideas collectively.

Feeding off each others creativity.

Allowing one persons thinking to fuel another’s.

Having fun.

Perhaps it is what work should be like more of the time?

Are They Coachable?

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“Years ago, at the great Bolshoi Ballet, auditions for the troupe were conducted among 8 year old girls. That’s because it took ten years to become great. How did the auditions work? The teachers weren’t looking for the best dancers. They were looking for the dancers who took coaching the best. The rest would come with time.”

This from marketing guru Seth Godin’s blog is well worth a read.

Not that I agree with all of it. For example, challenging the coach’s credentials makes a lot of sense to me. It is a sure fire sign that the coach is advising (if your gonna tell me what I should be doing you had better be an expert) rather than coaching – which is a process that helps the learner to find their own path to improvement. Of course occasionally a coach might go into ‘prescriptive’ mode – but not often.

The quality we should be looking in people who will operate at the highest level is not ‘coachability’ but ‘learnability’. How good are they at learning? How curious are they? How much new stuff will they try? Will they try it for long enough to see if it really works. Will they learn something even if it is not made conveniently packaged in their ‘preferred learning style’?

It is this hunger for performance improvement that really gives the edge.

How do you recruit for it?

How do your management practices nurture it?

How do you model it?

How do you manage those who have lost it?

Lead me, follow me or get out of my way!

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David Greer is deputy CEO of Royal Dutch Shell’s Sakhalin Energy Investment Company. Now this is a business that is navigating tricky waters – and Mr Greer smartly recognised that staff motivation had taken a dip and needed lifting. A familiar problem to most managers.

So Mr Greer (or one of his staff perhaps) scans a copy of ‘Great Speeches from History’ and finds General Patton’s speech to the troops given the morning before the D-day landings. Here is some prose that will surely put the fire back in their bellies. With some careful updating and other contextual adjustments (including delivery via e-mail rather than face to face), a great, if derivative, motivational e-mail is sent to employees. It is soon recognised for what it is, leaked to the media, and Mr Greer’s problem is 10 times worse. Not only has he now got a de-motivated workforce – he has lost credibility into the bargain.
Most of the criticism that Mr Greer has attracted has been about his failure to find his own words.  His decision not to speak authentically – but to borrow from history.
I think this misses the point.
In modern businesses motivation and inspiration cannot come in the form of the occasional missive from the top.  It has to emerge from the day to day interactions of team members and managers who understand that they are doing something worthwhile. Something that matters.  Who respect and trust each other as members of the team.  Who stay in touch with the purpose and meaning of their endeavour.
In the words of Zig Ziglar:

‘People often say that motivation doesn’t last. Well, neither does bathing – that’s why we recommend it daily’.

If Mr Greer had presided over an organisation where every manager talked regularly with their team members about why the work mattered, about the importance of what they were doing, about what they as team members really wanted to achieve – his desperate clarion call from the Executive Suite may not have been necessary at all.

Three Humps and a Stick – the Third Sector and PMN

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A great post from Seth Godin looking at pricing that I believe has relevance in the third sector and for social enterprises – and has really helped me to think through what we are doing with the Progressive Managers’ Network. The three humps and a stick refers to four price points that you can offer your product or service at. Reading his original post should help you follow this one!

We offer lots of stuff for free. This blog for example, the podcasts and the online forums. We do as much as we can at no-cost. This helps us to achieve one of our aims which is to provide great management development experiences to progressive managers.

Our workshops are at the ‘low cost’ hump. By selling open programme workshops and supporting learners through websites and podcasts instead of manuals we can cut costs and improve service – better management development for less. This is important for many in our target audience.

But we are also asked to do work at the mid to high price point humps too. Clients who do not want to do their learning in public, or who can’t yet access web based support – and so commission workshops and training events in house – for which they pay a premium.

Before reading Seths post we were just doing this because it ‘felt’ right. It is great to have a rationale now to hang it on.

How big is your stick?

How effective are you at developing your service at each of the three price humps available to you?

The Power of We

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Well the 2012 Olympic logo has come in for plenty of flak – but there are other factrors that could become a cause for concern.

Compare:

“London 2012 is inspired by you and it’s for all of you. I’m passionate about making 2012 the success it deserves to be. My pledge is that I will make these everyone’s Games. I urge you to take advantage of all of the opportunities.”

Sebastian Coe

with

“London 2012 is inspired by you and it’s for all of you. We are passionate about making 2012 the success it deserves to be. Our pledge is that we will make these everyone’s Games. We urge you to take advantage of all of the opportunities.”

Sebastian Coe (if I had drafted his speech!)

I think that the simple re-write helps – but it is not enough. The core problem is that he is promising something that cannot be delivered. He cannot make this everyone’s games. He does not have that power. And we know it.

I think that the ‘cult of personality’ could be more of a hindrance to the success of the London 2012 games than a dodgy logo.