Thinking through how the team will respond to various possible scenarios allows a team to better prepare for unknowns and situations that are outside the team’s control. There is a nuanced difference between winging it and responding based on the imagination of the planners. A robust imagination can help game-plans better prepare for the unknown.
Defenders of the status quo never quite have the same goals in mind as the leader who wants to improve. Improvement and progress are not the “win” of the DSQ. They aim only for business as usual. Anything that changes that becomes a threat to both their comfort and probably their power and influence. The DSQ can
When I first started driving I spent a lot of mental energy performing all the tasks required to get from point A to point B. I was hyper-aware until all the braking, signals and changing gears became automatic. Everything we do requires a time of hyper-awareness. Another way we describe this stage is to call it a
It is important to make sure that the direction is clearly defined and that everyone has a chance to get behind it. Moving too fast and assuming everyone is excited about the direction is a mistake many leaders make. When the team is not given a chance to talk through the direction, they miss the chance to
I notice that pleasant memories of the past tend to pop up when we are frustrated with the effort required in the present. The thing is that we tend to forget the bad part of our pleasant past. Our past was not likely as pleasant as we remember. This is especially true if we are remembering a
Regret is also a habit of the nostalgic. Remembering watershed moments is important but allowing ourselves to become overly affectionate about the “good ole days” can cause us to miss the good of today or the potential of the future. It can also set us up for regret when things do not turn out like they used
Not every idea is a good idea, but every idea has a potential to inspire the direction the team should choose. We must be careful to explore ideas that cause us a little discomfort because these are the ones that could potentially move us to do something that we never considered possible. Saying no too soon squashes
Not everyone has the best interests of the team in mind when they loudly protest a change. I find that often the loudest protests are an emotional defense of the status quo. The protest is not often against the decision itself, but is against the decision to jeopardize the comfort level the protester is enjoying. When the
Leadership requires a person to have a certain level of awareness of who they are leading. It is unwise to question the validity of good decisions simply because they elicit an unexpected response of intense emotion from teammates that already have a history of strong emotion toward necessary change. This is not to say that leadership should
The next step can be much more uncertain than we are willing to admit. Sometimes we don’t know what to do next and that can be a very scary feeling. Another way to look at it is that there is freedom to try something new. When we know what we should do next, we often feel an