By Michael Kline
Published in Conway Daily Sun
4/23/2014

In our last article, we discussed how attitude, responsibility and feedback relate to turning problems into opportunities. As promised, today we will discuss resources, collaboration and problem solving.

You don’t have enough money, people or time – neither does anyone else.  If you think about the great stories of accomplishment, most are about heroes who accomplished something in spite of their tangible resources; they overcame adversity using their resourcefulness. Stop complaining and blaming. Be resourceful. 

Our next two topics, collaboration and problem solving go hand in hand. If you research what are being identified as the biggest problems facing organizations today, you will find all the usual suspects including uncertainty, globalization, government regulations, technology, etc.  Change is constant and coming at us faster every day. Not to be a downer, but for every problem we face, there is a fresh problem right behind it, or a new version of the same problem.  It’s like playing whack-a-mole with our livelihood. How do we turn these problems into opportunities without losing our minds and our retirement plans?

Accept first, that we will never run out of new problems. So, your most valuable asset is your capacity to solve problems. That’s right – your biggest problem is to be able to solve problems – a special competency in its own right. 

Second, accept that no one person can deal with it all. Too many managers are not secure enough to hire people who are smarter than they are – this is a must. Leaders do not need to have the answers as much as they need to
have better questions. Does it make sense that the people we hire should be the experts on their particular work? Does it make sense to include them in the making decisions? Does it also make sense that we should include people working on the sidelines who can share wisdom and insights from a different viewpoint?  In reality, do we pretend to include these people by asking for input at meetings, and then making decisions on our own anyway? Why do we seem to have this need to be the lone genius? When did our egos become so tender that we need to prove how smart we are, how in-charge we are, how valuable we are? Our culture rewards great displays of perceived strength, but not actual strength. Actual strength is revealed when you are strong enough to make yourself vulnerable – to ask for help, to give others the lead, to collect the wisdom and insights of others and trust that the way others do something could work just as well as your way – perhaps better. What are the odds that you are the smartest person in the company, on every topic, every day, with every customer, with every supplier, with every product, with every situation that arises? Right - nil, zip, nada, not even on your best day. Want to argue with this point? Then either you hired people who are not smarter than you (fix that ASAP), or you are a one-person company with no customers or suppliers.  When was the last time you wanted to follow and help a know-it-all boss?  Exactly, people want to follow
someone they respect, who asks for help, shares the credit and works for the betterment of all.   

Our culture also rewards us for not screwing up. There is more incentive to not get in trouble, than there is to take a risk and try to advance or excel. To share an idea that may not be the winning idea is to risk of being eaten by a co-worker or boss. So how then, do we facilitate meetings so they are meaningful for our people to engage in and leave the egos and hidden agendas behind? Typically, meetings have the boss facilitating, maybe getting agreement and buy-in on identifying the problem. The talkers in the group will discuss and brainstorm for a solution, while quiet, but smart people may share nothing, and this goes on until visible progress stops. We call this the groan zone, when participants start groaning.  The boss will often table the discussion or make a decision, thinking it is based on all the collective input. We stop the real progress half-way through the process. We fall apart just when we could have come back together and had consensus on a truly brilliant solution. The best, new solutions tend to reveal themselves at the far end of the arguing and groaning and moaning – things become simple once again on the far side of being complicated. The trouble is we end the group groaning session just when we were about to break through. My partners and I specialize in teaching and leading facilitations to move groups through these hard conversations to get to real change and sustainable solutions.  Our first mission is to create a space where everyone is invited to speak and it is safe to do so. While we have relatively simple processes for this, the execution takes determination and practice.  

Being resourceful and collaborating, we might have a chance at problem solving. Often, organizations have a low capacity to solve complex problem, which limits their ability to deal with the rapidly changing environment. This keeps them in a reactive state putting out fires, with no time to get into a pro-active mode or fire-prevention, let alone growth and progress on their actual mission. 

Now, if you are getting nervous about trusting your people to be able to handle this, our next article will tackle the topic of building the potential of your stakeholders so they can thrive in an environment of participatory leadership and engagement. 

The small business owner faces a flow of constant challenges. In
my experience, these can create the best opportunities and big growth ideas; they feel exhilarating, even fun. Of course, sometimes they make you curl up in a fetal position and sob quietly in a corner. How do you get more of the former and less of the latter? In this article, we will tackle the critical requisite discussion about attitude, responsibility and feedback. In our next article, we will get a little more tangible. 

The 1st key is attitude, or perspective.  Can we see challenges at work, with the same perspective as we see challenges in a game? Is
it just that there is more at stake when the challenge is work related? Perhaps if we could relax with less attachment to the outcomes, we could focus more on the solution and produce better outcomes. When walking high on a narrow ledge, don’t look down!

We are told to simply change our words, to see problems as challenges or opportunities. It is true that words are powerful, and positive  people who spend 10% of their time, energy  and words focused on the negative issues
that arise, and 90% of their time focused on the solutions, will be far more successful than someone who does the reverse. In fact, research shows that even if your language is twice as positive as it is negative, that is still far too
negative. Successful organizations speak positive words at least five times more than negative words. If you’re reacting negatively to this idea, thinking that we need to be realistic, you are right, you can’t burry your head in the sand either – speaking at a ratio of 12 times more positive than negative, is too positive, and real challenges are likely not being recognized. For me, it is easy to remember to spend only 10% of our energy identifying the negative, and
once the problem is clear, spend 90% of our energy on solutions.

The 2nd key is responsibility. To accept changes and challenges as a positive opportunity, we need some sense of control of the situation; we need to assume full responsibility no matter who or what we blame. Blame is a waste of time and energy that weakens us. We give ourselves very little power when we think something or someone made us angry, ruined our product, took away our business, destroyed our market, raised our costs,  etc.  I know what it is like to lose your lease, to have a supplier (or ten suppliers) go out of business, to lose a good employee, (and to keep a bad employee), to have new competitor open nearby, and to face budget cuts. These and many more things befall every business. What changes these events into exhilarating opportunities for growth or improvement is how you choose to respond to them.  No one can make you angry they can only provide you with the inspiration to choose to become angry. Suppliers going out of business are a chance to find better suppliers, a better deal, change your offering or your services. If you are not constantly changing and evolving, you are likely being a victim of others who are changing and evolving. To not be the victim, constantly look for feedback on ways to change and evolve yourself. 
 
The 3rd key is feedback. When things don’t go as expected, is it the market, your customers, or the Universe telling you something?  Perhaps what you were expecting or aiming for was unrealistic, or perhaps you simply identified one
way to not get something to work – so try something else. There is no such thing as success or failure – it is all just feedback.  Negative feedback is often more valuable than positive feedback, but it is all just feedback. Learn to use
feedback to adjust your thoughts and behaviors to stay in alignment with what you want. When you cannot see the opportunity, perhaps the feedback is for you to make a career change, bring on a partner, ask for help, get a fresh
perspective from an outside source, get more training or a mentor. Perhaps the feedback is simply telling you to step back, slow down, go for a walk, meditate, or take a vacation and come back refreshed.  The point is, recognize that it is all just feedback and we love and value all feedback.

Today we have address issues around our perspective. Our positive attitude gets our solution-solving brains working, our assumption of responsibility gives us power and listening to feedback tells us which way to go. Our next article will discuss resources and increasing our capacity to solve complex problems.