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Delegation and Flow – Csikszentmihalyi for Managers

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Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi has spent much of his life researching ‘flow’ –  that state of being when you become fully immersed in a task and time flies by.  This flow state can only occur when  the level of challenge is carefully matched to your level of skills and confidence.  Flow is most likely to occur when you are faced by a demanding but achieveable task.  Flow matters for managers because it a state that is associated with optimal performance.  It is also closely associated with learning and self improvement.

It strikes me that delegation used in conjunction with feedback (another pre-requisite for the flow state) and coaching provides managers with the perfect tools to ensure that team members get a balance of skill and challenge that will enable them to enter the optimum state of flow at work.

Employees who are operating outside of the flow channel – either bored or overly anxious are likely to be performing well below their potential.

The thing about the flow channel is that you cannot remain stationery.  Unless you are confronted with new challenges it is likely that boredom will become an issue and performance will dip.

Building a High Performing Team – Part 1 – The Same Page

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The first stage in building a high performing team is to get everyone on the same page.

Every team member must master the basics of organisational performance:

  • What are we here to achieve and how do we recognise success?
  • What are our markets and how do we segment them?
  • Who are our customers and what are their buying patterns?
  • Who would we like our customers to be – and why aren’t they buying from us now?
  • Who is our competition and what are they doing?
  • What drives or inhibits our ability to deliver on the mission?

In high performing teams each team member is able to answer these questions – not just from their own perspective but from a collective team perspective. There is a shared analysis that provides a platform for coherent action.

In mediocre teams the members can usually answer these questions from their own siloed perspective. However there is little or no shared analysis and the actions that flow from each silo at best lack coherence and at worst compete with each other for resources and prestige.

Getting everyone on the same page is best done through a group session that has sufficient openness, candour and respect to ensure that the all of the ‘elephants in the room’ are recognised and addressed.

Bill Strickland at TED

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‘Make the Impossible Possible’ is a wonderful book by Bill Strickland. You can hear Bill talk about his experience in engaging communities in enterprise and creating transformation results by watching the video here.

NB it is about 30 mins – but well worth a watch!

Enterprise and Entrepreneurship Reading Group

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There is a lot of stuff being written about enterprise and entrepreneurship at the moment. And there is a lot of stuff that was written years ago that still holds valuable lessons.

I am starting an Enterprise Reading Group for people who like to read the enterprise literature and find ways to apply what they learn in their own practice. ERG will help this process by:

  • developing a book list of relevant and powerful texts
  • providing an online forum where readers and practitioners can discuss a book – on a chapter by chapter basis – and share insights, experiences, questions and answers in relation to the books
  • hosting real meetings where the key ideas in each book can be discussed and developed.

I have already set up the online forum featuring the first four books which are:

You can find out more about each text and purchase them online by clicking the titles above. You can join the Enterprise Reading Group through the online forum. It is a completely free service so please do get involved.

If there are other texts that you would like to discuss please do let me know and I will add them to the repertoire.

Please use the comnets box below to ask any questions or give feedback about the idea of the ERG.

I look forward to hearing from you.

Mike Chitty