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Fostering creativity

Do you encourage creativity and initiative within your team, or do you just want them to follow your instructions and get it done?

I once had a boss tell me that he would like to run his company like a sergeant in WW1 so he could order his workers out of the trenches and shoot them if they refused! Now this is an extreme example of a narcissistic boss, and you will not be surprised to here that his staff turnover would average near 100% p/a, but in some ways I think he is verbalizing what a great deal of team leaders really feel; "I know best, do as you're told".

But what happens when the Sergent gets shot? Or takes leave, or decides to work on a new initiative?  Do you really want to develop a team of dependants that rely on you for every decision they make?  That is surely going to limit the effectiveness of both you and your team, and severely reduce the level of commitment and job satisfaction within your team.

The alternative is to develop a team of independent creative thinkers and problem solvers who come to to the office each day to stretch and push themselves and work at their art!

finding your super power

Too often we do too much, spread ourselves too wide and our focus too broad and by doing so we dilute our efforts and results.  

When we start out, whether in our careers or businesses, we spread ourselves around by necessity, we don't yet know what we want to do or what we're good at so we try our hand at a bit of everything......but if you want to achieve something worthwhile sooner or later you'll need to find your superpower; that is the thing that you, or your business, does better then anybody else.

It's not always early to find your superpower but its the first step to achieving real success in your career or business.  For a few clues on where to start your search,  click here.

the value of meetings.........

Meetings are expensive and massive time sinks.  Generally we tend to hold meetings too often, leave them too unstructured and rarely draw discussions to valuable conclusions.  Most often we hold them because we believe we should.

Some suggested changes to make your meetings more effective;

1. Ask if it's necessary?  Would a call conference or group email be more effective?  What value does it bring to the company, what would happen if we didn't hold the meeting?
2. Give it a purpose.  Let everyone know why the meeting is taking place, send out an agenda and give the participants specific guidelines for their involvement, I.e. a breakdown of what they are to report.
3. Limit it's time. Schedule the meeting with a start and finish time, and limit each individuals reporting time. 
4. Don't call it a meeting. Call it a project briefing or team briefing or financial reporting session or something that describes the main purpose of the meeting.   This will allow participants to arrive prepared and focused. 
5. Assign a time keeper. The time keeper's job is to keep the meeting on track in terms of both topic and time.
6. Hold it late in the day.  People are less inclined to drag out a meeting if it starts to cut into their own time.
7. Keep track of the meeting costs and let everyone know.  For a handy meeting calculator click here.  I would also add the opportunity cost for each participant to get a true value of the meeting cost.

In the wisdom of crowds, James Surowiecki concluded that the combined wisdom of a group is of greater value than each of it's individuals (the group is wiser than the individual).  But there was a qualification; greater combined wisdom was only achieved when each individual had a degree of independence and not swayed by the other opinions of the group.  So this means is that if you want the best outcome for a debate or issue, rather than hold a group meeting and/or open forum where the most assertive of the group sway the ideas of the less assertive, you will achieve a better outcome by giving the issue or idea to each member of your team and asking for independent feedback. 

Remember; a camel is a horse designed by a committee!