We should be treating people like the unique and talented human beings they are and allow room for them to be creative, innovative, grow, try and explore new ideas.
Yes, even make mistakes. Mistakes are often proof we are trying, growing and learning in a new area or skill. It’s more important to make progress than be perfect.
That is how many inventions, discoveries, organizations and professions are first created.
Yet when many organizations and professions grow or become good at something, they often get away from what allowed them to be great — their creative, innovative, trying, learning and growing mindset and an entrepreneurial spirit. The organization may feel they must regulate more or create standards/policies to keep control or demonstrate they are afraid of failing. And these two approaches will send people, teams or entire professions into an ineffective and unproductive cycle where we ask people to conform inside a box or work within their well-defined job descriptions.
Whatever we expect from people is usually what we get from them. People are not machines or assembly lines, and we cannot treat them like that to truly get their best.
In America, we are observing a lot of organizations that get this, and their people and organizations are truly thriving.
Yet, even today, there are many others that still foster the industrial revolution management style, policies or practices where people are often promoted for technical skills or passing tests or time in a position (seniority) rather than for their leadership skills.
Then, we often get people in positions of authority that control rather than lead people. The definition of the peter principle.
As a result, we then often over-manage and under-lead. And this often results in low-performing and disengaged teams; a vicious, downward cycle that can build momentum fast.
If an organization, public or private, really wants to be innovative, creative and serve its customers, they truly have to value the people that make up the organization.
You might ask, how do you value the people? Great question! One we should all be asking. Asking your people.
It all starts with your PEOPLE.
We must foster an environment and create experiences that allow our people to be innovative, creative and focus on a purpose and connection to the work we do and then watch the performance and profitability soar.
The environment and experiences are critical. And so is the growth mindset approach.
And you may need to ‘change.’ So you will need to make the choice to take the chance to change. As Wayne Dyer said, “If you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change.”
Change is the only constant in the world, yet so many fear change. Why?
They are afraid they won’t be successful as a result of change.
You can either be an agent of change, or claim to be a victim of it. The decision is yours.
You have to help them visualize and experience their success as a result of change. That is what leaders do: help people visualize and build positive momentum in the direction of their potential.
Momentum is movement! So is change. And as Winston Churchill once said, “To improve is to change; to be perfect is to change often.”
So, if we want to focus on making progress towards perfection, we must be constantly changing. Make change the norm and routine, rather than the exception.
Make change incrementally and inclusive, rather than something big and overwhelming.
Change is the only constant. Change is inevitable.
And some might say change is accelerating. This isn’t the time to regulate, stifle or over-manage change.
How can you help facilitate change within yourself and others? How can you help prepare your teams to be adaptable and nimble to change, even anticipate it?
Change requires leadership that champions change and improvement.
Change requires the willingness to put siloes and egos in check.
Change requires investing and developing people.
We have many complex challenges today that involve people, plans, projects, places and prosperity that will require us to change.
If they don’t challenge you, they won’t change you.
The change has to occur first with people, then our performance and last processes. Our people are our ‘why,’ and as Simon Sinek suggests, “Start with why.”
From people as resources to relationship
Rather than treat people as resources (typical human resources), we should have human relations departments focused on fostering environments and experiences where people can build momentum to achieve their greatest potential. And as a result, the collective purpose of the organization and ultimately the customers benefit.
Organizations can change the culture from risk adverse and controlling their people with processes to an innovative and creative culture focused on leading people to their greatest potential. It takes great leadership, valuing and trusting the people within the organization, having and changing the language and conversations and the courage to take strategic risks to align with a vision.
As leaders, we have to focus on creating better leaders and better people because the real victory or success is improving lives. That is the greatest joy and blessing.
Successful companies understand that culture is crucial to their success. Great leadership is essential to any organizational success.
Leaders must demonstrate their unwavering commitment and willingness to set an example of inspirational, genuine, visionary, motivational and positivity for everyone to follow.
As Daniel Burnham, a great American architect and urban designer, once said, “Make no little plans; they have no magic to stir men’s blood and probably themselves will not be realized. Make big plans; aim high in the hope and work, remembering that a noble, logical diagram once recorded, will never die, but long after we are gone will be a living thing, asserting itself with ever-growing insistency.”
Embrace the challenge and experience the growth that is in store for you to add value and make a difference in this world, your life and career. Stir the blood with your ideas and initiatives.
Making progress or movement on complex challenges requires us to change, which requires us to embrace a growth mindset.
Five ways to embrace the growth mindset are:
- Create a Memorable Purpose: People need a purpose that is bigger and better than any one individual that speaks to the collective team’s desires and values.
- Set Short-Term Goals: When achieved and celebrated, these help build momentum in the direction of your potential and belief in the possibility of the collective purpose.
- Set Long-Term Goals: These help stretch you to think, act, learn and develop beyond what you believe to be possible or achievable today, also known as your comfort zone, otherwise they would be short term goals.
- View Obstacles as Opportunities: Some days we WIN, Some days we learn, yet we always show up and give and try our best.
- Ask for Help: No one knows it all or has all the strengths and talents to do it on their own, and we can go so much further together. So create safety, space, vulnerability and opportunities for people to bring their best to help you and the cause.
Sometimes the solution is as easy as changing our reality, like turning a frown into a smile by doing a handstand. For some of us, a handstand requires a buddy to support us or hold our feet.
And if you feel like you are taking one step forward and two steps backwards, just turn around so that you are making two steps forward, in reverse.
Our reality is just our thoughts. Many of us replay past, present or future thoughts over and over again. Many of our thoughts are not supportive of our self and result in depression, anxiety or fear, all often limiting.
So consciously change your perspective and thoughts to be supportive. Be your own cheerleader in your head for positive thoughts and your own bouncer of negative thoughts.
Anything is possible for those that believe it so. So change the words to ‘when we succeed’ rather than ‘if we succeed.’
Visualize making the shot and winning.
Visualize making the hit and winning.
Visualize making the decision and winning.
Visualize making the strategic action and winning.
And when you become good at it, help someone else by being their cheerleader with positive reaffirming thoughts that champion them. That allows them to believe they can achieve it.
The quality of your own life is elevated when you’re in the company of people that uplift and inspire you.
As leaders, we have to be a champion that uplifts and inspires our teams and helps them identify the obstacles and barriers to success, whether real, perceived or learned and repeated (perpetuating status quo).
We have to utilize our experiences to remove those obstacles and barriers. And help break down complex or challenging problems, while also helping simplify solutions or alternative paths that can build momentum.
And when we reduce the risk of failure (or covert it into making mistakes are proof we are trying, learning and growing) and increase the reward and opportunities, it’s amazing how effective, engaged and entrepreneurial people will become.
It’s important to remember people engage when they feel they have value to add or their value is appreciated.
As leaders, one way to uplift and inspire to help with engagement is to be intellectually curious and ask questions. And then be present and listen to them. Listen to what they say. Listen to what they don’t say. Listen to how they say it. Listen to your intuition. Yet be careful not to project yourself or your experiences on them. Come alongside them and meet them where they are on their journey.
They will share what they enjoy most about their work or life. They will often share their interests and strengths (dislikes or weaknesses, yet we need to remember weaknesses are strengths just over done). They will often share process or performance improvement ideas.
The key is to have conversations with your teammates, listen and work together to improve their situation and engagement.
Then celebrate them and their contributions that resulted from change.
When it comes to facilitating change, there are four areas or types of change makers. Depending on the change that is in progress, you might need a different mindset or approach.
- Systems Thinker (The Visionary Thinker): Someone who has the ability to see how everything is interconnected in a bigger picture and zoom between the micro and the macro and across silos.
- Designer and Maker (The Executor/Creator): Someone who understands the power of design and innovation tools, has the technical and creative skills to make things happen and puts these to use early on in the work.
- Leader and Storyteller (The Influencer/Inspirer): Someone who can tell a great story about what might be possible and why this is important, get buy-in from all levels and have the tenacity to see the work through.
- Connector and Convener (The Arranger of People): Someone who has great relationships, can create spaces where people from different backgrounds can come together and joins the dots to create bigger movements.
As Robert Kennedy said, “Progress is a nice word. But change is its motivator. And change has its enemies.”
The key is to build momentum and make progress. It’s progress over perfection.
Perfection is a destination, often rooted in fear of which won’t be achieved. Progress is journey that requires vision, ambition and action.
Yes, the first step is the hardest. Take it anyway.
Most ideas, initiatives, goals and dreams die before the first step.
Doubt kills more dreams than failure ever will because we measure failure based on whether we are perfect rather than making progress and improving. And we often create paralysis through analysis focused on perfection.
Finding and taking the right first step is what great leaders do.
Yet as leaders, we can always change your direction or speed of steps at any time.
Donald Rumsfield once said, “Success tends to go not to the person who is error-free, because he also tends to be risk-averse. Rather it goes to the person who recognizes that life is pretty much a percentage business. It isn’t making mistakes that’s critical; it’s correcting them and getting on with the principal task.”
Unfortunately, we create way too many processes for anomalies because we are risk-adverse or allow our fears to distract us from the principal task.
If it doesn’t challenge you, it won’t change you. And there is not improvement. Allow yourself to be challenged, and watch yourself and your team grow.
Don’t be an organization or culture that punishes real or perceived failure. Celebrate the ‘trying,’ and change your perspective so that mistakes are proof you are trying, learning, growing, doing and adapting.
Risk adverse and punishment for failure organizations are often a result of managing people like they are innate widgets that have strict quality control criteria rather than leading them with trust and inspiration. It is amazing when we focus more on our people, and less on the numbers, the numbers actually go up.
The three worst things
- The worst thing we can do is assume that everything that can be invented has been invented.
- The second worst thing we can do is make the process by which new inventions can grow legs too cumbersome and regulated with process and control, as that stifles creativity and innovation.
- And the third worst thing we cannot do is over-analyze and, as a result, under achieve; perfection is the enemy of progress. After all, we learn more from trying and failing rather than not trying at all, which is my definition of true failure.
And with that I will end with a perspective written by Kurt Vonnegut, for which is often the root of much of our fear of trying something new or different to learn and grow or changing to address a complex challenge.
“When I was 15, I spent a month working on an archeological dig. I was talking to one of the archeologists one day during our lunch break and he asked those kinds of ‘getting to know you’ questions you ask young people: Do you play sports? What’s your favorite subject? And I told him, no I don’t play any sports. I do theater, I’m in choir, I play the violin and piano, I used to take art classes.
And he went wow. That’s amazing! And I said, ‘Oh no, but I’m not any good at any of them.’
And he said something then that I will never forget, and which absolutely blew my mind because no one had ever said anything like it to me before: ‘I don’t think being good at things is the point of doing them. I think you’ve got all these wonderful experiences with different skills, and that all teaches you things and makes you an interesting person, no matter how well you do them.’
And that honestly changed my life. Because I went from a failure, someone who hadn’t been talented enough at anything to excel, to someone who did things because I enjoyed them. I had been raised in such an achievement-oriented environment, so inundated with the myth of talent, that I thought it was only worth doing things if you could ‘win’ at them.”