Navigating Leadership Challenges Across Cultures
Leadership
Logic seems like it would be the great bridge to solving every problem. We often think of logic as a transcendent truth that overcomes all emotions, prejudices, and even experiences. “You can’t argue with logic.” The problem turns out to be that logic is much more personal than objective. In fact, because logic is in the eye of the beholder, it is often the barrier rather than the bridge.
This is certainly true in working across cultures. Culture has been defined as “the way we do things around here.” Generally, the approaches that seemed to yield the best results over…
Read more.Decision Making in Extreme Conditions
Organizational Transformation
Great, almost super human, decision making is the universal desire these days with the world in crisis. Leaders are being asked to make decisions that are outside their experience and beyond their skill level. Although the bar for decision making doesn’t get lowered much when we are just trying to compete and survive in our complex and fast moving lives. So, when you spot a book title, Think Like a Rocket Scientist, it is hard not think “this might help.” Rocket scientists are on that short list of most admired occupations for being really really smart. They combine analytical…
Read more.Solving the Better Problem
Organizational Transformation
To solve most of our big problems before they happen would seem to require some form of time travel. And it would produce a wonderful world. Chip Heath of Heath Brothers fame has challenged us to do more than dream about that world in his latest book, Upstream. Similar to his previous works on communication, change and decision making, this book provides more a pathway to follow than an exact formula. Most of Heath’s examples come from the social sector trying to solve the big problems of our day like healthcare, climate change, poverty and education. These are the…
Read more.Stop Fixing and Start Learning
Leadership
One leadership style that is both praised and criticized is the “fixer.” When the situation looks mostly hopeless, we need someone who can minimize the damage and help restore some level of status quo. Yet no organization desires to be in that situation and certainly not to live in that state of affairs. Fixers excel at identifying root causes and mobilizing resources rapidly to help people and organizations move to a position where they can begin to play an active role in their rescue.
Steve Corbett and Brian Fikkert in When Helping Hurts, illustrate the devastating effects when poverty alleviation…
Read more.Create Tension and Find a Better Solution
Strategy
Several years ago, I read Roger Martin’s, The Opposable Mind, and immediately saw the need and opportunity for integrative thinking. Martin proposes that we don’t have to choose between two unsatisfying paths but if we think deeply enough, we can identify a third path that captures the desired benefits of the other two. After writing the book and promoting the concept, Martin realized telling people they just needed to “think harder” didn’t help very much. His latest book, Creating Great Choices, (co-authored with Jennifer Reil) provides the methodology to move beyond an interesting idea to an approach that helps…
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