Five Leadership Lessons From Halloween

Each day we are presented with experiences that can teach us key aspects of leadership. Halloween is today! Whether you’re going to a party or have kids you have to rope into their costumes, Halloween is a holiday you shouldn’t be sleeping on. Let’s take a moment to think about how this fall holiday can teach us valuable lessons in leadership.

Here are five that definitely come to mind:

1. Identity matters. One of the reasons people like Halloween is that they get to take on different identities. 

Lesson: While that might be fun, as a leader, your identity must be consistent and familiar. Masks might be fun on Halloween, but as a leader, you can’t wear one at work. To be most effective, you must be real, transparent and authentic.

2. Engagement matters. Halloween parties are fun for many people. Why? Because everyone is engaged! Everyone participates! Many people put a great deal of effort into their costumes, and they like to talk about how they come up with and executed their ideas. They enjoy the music, the games, the contests and just being around other people. 

Lesson: When people are engaged in an activity, they’ll put in the time and effort needed to succeed. What can you do to encourage your people to be as engaged in their work as they were when coming up with this year’s costume?

3. Creativity is important. Creativity is everywhere you look on Halloween. From house decorations to costumes and everything in between, people go all out to make the most of the holiday. Even the most straight-laced people will get a little wild on Halloween, and most people are really excited about the whole process. 

Lesson: When you give people an outlet and purpose for their creativity, they will be creative. Make sure you’re finding ways to allow people’s creativity to flourish. Your team and the organization will benefit big time if you do.

4. Treats over Tricks. When I was growing up, the neighborhood kids would egg houses that didn’t decorate for Halloween or give out good candy. Oddly enough, it didn’t make them any more likely to get into the spirit the next year.

Lesson: You’ll get further with treats than you will with tricks. That is really by way of saying that we must make sure we don’t neglect recognition.  We can’t hit our folks over the head with rules, regulations, and processes continuously and expect them to want to improve. We need to provide training and feedback while recognizing achievements along the way.

5. Fun matters. One of the reasons Halloween is one of the most popular adult holidays is that it gives people permission to just have fun. There isn’t any other “reason” for the holiday. It is just about fun. 

Lesson: Remember that people need to have fun sometimes to be productive the rest of the time.

Leaders need remain open to learning from all situations, people, and experiences. The leaders who inspire me understand leadership is not about costumes, tricks, and treats. There is a depth and meaning to leadership we each discover in our own way.

Lean Quote: A Lesson in Faith From Charlie Brown’s Great Pumpkin

On Fridays I will post a Lean related Quote. Throughout our lifetimes many people touch our lives and leave us with words of wisdom. These can both be a source of new learning and also a point to pause and reflect upon lessons we have learned. Within Lean active learning is an important aspect on this journey because without learning we can not improve.

"The oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear, and the oldest and strongest kind of fear is fear of the unknown."   —  H. P. Lovecraft

"On Halloween night, the Great Pumpkin rises out of his pumpkin patch and flies through the air with his bag of toys for all the children!"

Charlie Brown has been an iconic figure for over 60 years. In 1966, viewers across the country tuned in as “It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown” premiered on television.

If you’re not familiar with “It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown” here is a brief summary: Instead of going trick-or-treating, Linus waits in excited anticipation in the "most sincere" pumpkin patch for the Great Pumpkin to arrive, but receives only disappointment. It doesn’t end any better for the other characters either. Sally misses "tricks-or-treats" and Charlie Brown is stuck with a bag full of rocks. So what lesson can we learn from this?

A group of optimistic young people are placing their faith in things that consistently disappoint them. That’s a relatable theme, isn’t it? But what keeps us coming back year after year when the show ends on such a low?

Charles M. Schulz, its creator, said it best: "Linus represents a special quality of hope and belief, against all odds." This, along with Charlie Brown’s unwavering ability to bounce back from failure, seems to resonate with young and old alike.

So in the spirit of Halloween this year, let’s take a self-inventory. Who might you be if you were one of the characters? Do you bounce back easily? Do you have unwavering hope?

Wherever you fit, perhaps a lesson from the Peanuts gang might do us all a bit of good.

Lean Roundup #161 – October 2022

A selection of highlighted blog posts from Lean bloggers from the month of October 2022.  You can also view the previous monthly Lean Roundups here.  

 

What Should Be Your Target OEE? – Christopher Roser explains OEE and what is a good target based on your business.

 

Lean, Chess, and Techno-Solutionism – Kevin Meyer discusses impact of technology on Lean and problem solving with the understanding that it is a tool not a solution itself.

 

Making Big Problems Into Little Problems – John Knotts shares some tools you can use to break down a problem.

 

Yokoten, Meta-cognition and Leadership – Pascal Dennis discusses best practice sharing within organizations.

 

Why FIFO: The Benefits of First In, First Out – Christopher Roser talks about the benefit of implementing FIFO in your production system.

 

Strategies to Improve Employee Engagement in the Workplace - Brittany Currier shares 5 strategies to improve employee engagement in your workplace.

 

Policy Deployment: Examples, Techniques, and Tools - Adam Darnell discusses all things policy deployment including 4 phases of implementation, key to success, and software to use.

 

The Connections Between Joy in Work and Habitual Excellence, via Value Capture – Mark Graban shares notes from a presentation that Rich Sheridan gave at the Michigan Lean Consortium annual conference in August.

 

Ask Art: How Important are Your Suppliers to Implementing Lean Production? – Art Byrne discusses the importance of your supply chain in Lean production.

 

6 Guidelines for Moving Toward a Lean Value Stream - Mike Rother and John Shook share advice on using value-stream mapping to continuously improve your value streams.

 

How Lean Thinking and Practices Helps Manage Rapid Growth - Michael Ballé and Nicolas Chartiers, cofounders of a successful digital startup share their experience navigating uncertainty.

 

Emotions on the Gemba - Michael Ballé and Fabian Sampayo discuss the role emotios play in a lean transformation.

 

Advancing Learning in a Lean Organization - Dan Prock explores our disposition to learning and the role of the sensei in enabling learning.

      

Lean Tips Edition #194 (#3121 - #3135)

For my Facebook fans you already know about this great feature. But for those of you that are not connected to A Lean Journey on Facebook or Twitter I post daily a feature I call Lean Tips.  It is meant to be advice, things I learned from experience, and some knowledge tidbits about Lean to help you along your journey.  Another great reason to like A Lean Journey on Facebook.

Click this link for A Lean Journey's Facebook Page Notes Feed.

Here is the next addition of tips from the Facebook page:

Lean Tip #3121 – Connect With Your Team Members.

Leading a group of people requires a mutual sense of trust and understanding between the leader and their team members. To achieve this, leaders should learn to connect.

To build a connection with each of your team members, focus on getting to know their personality, interests, strengths, weaknesses, hobbies and preferences. This can give you insight into their goals and motivations.

Successful leaders allow their teams to develop autonomy and add value according to their own personal strengths. Being able to recognize the strengths of individuals within their team, and allowing them to be responsible and accountable, not only increases employees’ confidence in themselves and their leader, but also increases their performance.

Lean Tip #3122 – Teach Employees Instead of Giving Orders.

An effective leader knows how to show others what is required, rather than simply telling them. If you are controlling people to do certain things in certain ways, you’re not going to get the level of engagement that you’re looking for. Coaching is about helping the people you lead recognize the choices they have in front of them. People will then take a great deal of ownership over the direction of the project.”

As opposed to simply barking orders at team members, good leaders should encourage growth by teaching. People wouldn’t grow if leaders never taught them anything. Leaders need to be teaching so they can grow new leaders to take their place.

Lean Tip #3123 – Be Open to New ideas.

Good leaders have the emotional intelligence to understand and accept that change is inevitable. Instead of trying to maintain a status quo just for the sake of consistency, embrace change and innovation. Be open to new ideas and alternative ways of thinking. Everyone brings a unique perspective to the table, and that is something to take advantage of, not discourage.

When solving a problem, encourage team members to provide their insights. When employees feel like they can openly bring new ideas to the table, true innovation, engagement and success can prevail.

Lean Tip #3124 – Learn How to Handle Failure

Failure is a part of life. How you handle it as a leader speaks volumes to your employees. Anger and finger pointing id often counterproductive. Instead, if you want to know how to be a great leader, explore with your team what went wrong and how things could have been done differently to ensure success. Take responsibility for any part you played in the missed goal. Together, identify things that can be improved going forward. And hold employees accountable as needed – with grace.

Lean Tip #3125 – Get Your Hands Dirty

Humility is the lubricant oil that minimizes friction within a team. And “getting your hands dirty” is one of the best ways of staying humble.

Lead by example.

Never ask an employee to do something you wouldn’t do yourself.

Serve people before asking for a favor, listen to other people’s ideas, be open-minded, and be willing to admit your mistakes.

People respect leaders who embrace humility.

Lean Tip #3126 – Get Closer to Your Customers

The answer to product market fit and true differentiation is almost always found within your existing or target customer base. Every step you take that gets you and your team closer to your customers is a leap forward in terms of market differentiation and competitive advantage. The best companies know their customers intimately, anticipate their needs and serve them in a personalized and relevant way.

Lean Tip #3127 – Change What You Can Change: Yourself

There is an old saying that too many cooks spoil the soup. Similarly, too many leaders during change can make everything confusing and fragmented. If you are not in a position to formally influence the change, instead of trying to create a leadership role, take the opportunity to change your own attitude, behaviors, and beliefs. You can do this by setting realistic goals for yourself and then eliciting feedback on them from peers, managers, and perhaps even customers. Remember that organizational change and personal change have strong similarities: You must clearly identify what you want to change, what the change looks like, and the specific steps and milestones for meeting them.

Lean Tip #3128 – Celebrate Successes and Failures

The best way of becoming more resilient as a company is getting into a habit of transparency, sharing and learning. Don’t forget to regularly involve the rest of the organization in what you are doing. Share and promote your progress internally regularly, ask for help from different departments and start growing the collaboration spirit.

Lean Tip #3129 – Become an Early Adopter and Ally for Change

Adapting early to change and being an ally for it is one of the simplest and most visible ways of leading change when you are not running the show. This entails wanting change to happen and working toward that goal as soon as you have a logical explanation for a particular alteration or modification.

The nice thing about being an ally and early adopter is that you aren’t seen as someone who is just giving facetime to the change; you are actually doing it and helping to spread enthusiasm among your team members.

Lean Tip #3130 – Help Other Employees Cope with Change

Even if you’re excited about change, not everyone will be. Some team members might find the going to be extremely tough; they might also feel confused, angry, or taken advantage of. You can help make the transition easier for them. First, be on the lookout for signals that someone needs help coping, like absenteeism, depressed or despondent behavior, or attacks on team members. You might want to intervene one-on-one or help steer a bickering session into a change session. You can also help others cope through active listening. Try to act as a sounding board, and make it your goal to help the other person reduce emotionality and increase rational discussion.

Lean Tip #3131 – Encourage Communication Among Your Peers

Remember, the sum of the parts is always greater than individual contribution levels added together. On a regular basis, ask yourself how you can help build a better organization by diffusing confusion, expediting the flow of information, or reaching out to others. Communication between peers and up through management helps make your job easier in a number of ways. It uncovers what is valuable to the business and what is not, it minimizes the amount of time required to achieve goals, and it maximizes productivity.

Lean Tip #3132 – Anticipate Pitfalls of Change.

With any change, there is going to be an adjustment period. There will also likely be negative aspects. It’s important to think through these potential pitfalls ahead of time and come up with ideas to combat them. Skipping this step could leave you unprepared once the initiative is already underway. There is no way to predict everything that could go wrong, but putting real thought into this ahead of time will save a lot of pain later.

Lean Tip #3133 – Choose Change Champions.

It’s important that the change is supported by people throughout all levels of the organization, and not just by those at the top. Even though the directive for any change typically comes from leadership, people are much more likely to buy in to a new initiative if others they work with are, too. For this reason, having champions at all levels who are engaged in the change process is key. Hold focus group meetings to get feedback on what may be difficult about the change and take this feedback seriously.

Lean Tip #3134 – Be Flexible with Change

Change requires high flexibility for it to successful. The sooner you learn how to adapt to any change the greater the chances that you will be successful. If you want to embrace change successfully look at the similarities and leverage the already existing knowledge and make plans to address the shortcoming that come with it. Also think in the same way on how you can appropriate adapt your skills to newly introduced environment.

Lean Tip #3135 – Stay Positive in Your Attitude and Actions

Change can be disruptive and frightening but with the right actions and attitude you will realize that there are far more opportunities that come with change. Learn how to shift your energy from denial and worries, by embracing the change before it kicks you out of the industry. The management also has to be patient when it is driving change in the organization, change should be a continuous process because a wide part of the organization is involved.

Lean Quote: 10 Rules for Life

On Fridays I will post a Lean related Quote. Throughout our lifetimes many people touch our lives and leave us with words of wisdom. These can both be a source of new learning and also a point to pause and reflect upon lessons we have learned. Within Lean active learning is an important aspect on this journey because without learning we can not improve.

"Perfection of character is this: to live each day as if it were your last, without frenzy, without apathy, without pretense."   —  Marcus Aurelius

How does one live well? It’s a question that our fellow human beings have been pondering for centuries. Out of that simple question, many philosophies and religions have been born.

But no philosophy does a better job of explaining the ideas for living well in a practical way than Stoicism.

The Emperor-Philosopher Marcus Aurelius, once the most powerful man on earth, was also a practitioner of Stoicism. Marcus wrote a collection of thoughts, ideas, and rules for life in what was later published as Meditation.

You can study Marcus Aurelius’ Meditations forever and benefit by such an endeavor. Here are ten rules for life that serve as a succinct and beneficial introduction to his teaching.

One — Take A View From Above

You should view yourself occasionally as if you are looking at yourself in the third person. Imagine a camera that is looking at you and then you slowly zoom out and up. So, if you are in a situation where you are feeling uncomfortable or anxious, you zoom out to look at the room and the people in it, then the building, then the street, then the town, then the county, then the province, then the country and so on. Whilst you are doing this, picture all the other buildings and all the rooms that they contain and all the people inside of them. This will have the effect of putting your problems in perspective, that other people are having problems and yours are not all consuming,

Two — Plan for complete failure

Yes, this appears contrary to the usual focus on the power of positive thinking and the law of attraction. The Stoics believed in negative visualization — that you should think about the worst thing that could happen and do so in some detail. So, for example, if you are making a public speech, you should visualize the crowd standing up and booing you before all walking out. This is not going to happen, but if you dwell on it and visualize it, then if some other things do go wrong, it will not concern you as much.

Three — Stare at Death

Spend a month dwelling on death and indeed the worst and most painful death imaginable. If you realize you only have a certain number of days — the average person lives 25,500 days — you will live them better. Also, by ruminating on the terror of death, you lessen the fear of it, as paradoxical as that first appears.

Four — Do Only What is Essential

If you think life is short, it is not, for the Stoic, seventy summers is more than enough. But, you must learn to focus, to cut out what is important, if you concentrate on only the essential, you will have plenty of time to achieve the essential.

Five — All Things Must Pass

When things are going wrong for us, we tend to allow negativity to consume us. Learn to accept that all emotions, both negative and positive are transient and impermanent.

Six — Live like a Minimalist

Sadhu ascetics in India give all their possessions away, Kondo teaches us to declutter. Learn that the things that you buy will not bring you happiness. It will not bring you long term fulfillment. The more stuff you have, the more stressed you are. The things you own, actually own you.

Seven — Live In The Present Moment.

You did not worry about being around in 1841, why worry if you are not around in 2041? Do not dwell on the past nor be concerned with the future. Do not replay your mistakes over and over, learn to walk out of that movie. You cannot change the past but you can change your perception of it. Meditation is the best method for this.

Eight — Contemplate the Sage

Choose a person who you wholly respect. Or outline what traits you ideal character would have. When you encounter a situation that arises emotions in you, try to take a few seconds to consider how your ideal character would react and then strive to do the same.

Nine — Habits are necessary

The Stoics would write down their maxims, such as ‘The best revenge is not to be like your enemy’ or ‘I have no cause to hurt myself. I have never consciously hurt anyone else.’ And repeat them everyday, over and over, until they acted them out subconsciously

Ten — Review The Day

Before you sleep, take time to review your day, think about what you did well and what you can improve upon. Then, the next day try to act out what you thought about. Small improvements compounded each day achieve monumental results.

And that’s why so many people are drawn to the writings of Marcus Aurelius and other Stoics. They wanted to make the world a better place.

I can’t think of a more noble goal than that. It is now up to us to keep this philosophy alive. And you can only do that by putting these 10 rules for life in practice.

5 Ways Employee Engagement Impacts Continuous Improvement Culture

https://pixabay.com/photos/woman-work-office-whiteboard-4702060/

Companies lose up to $550 billion due to disengaged employees.
What does this mean?
Prioritizing employee engagement isn’t optional.
But how do you achieve that?
In this article, you’re going to learn five practical ways to improve employee engagement.

What is Employee Engagement?

What is the meaning of employee engagement?
Employee engagement is the extent to which employees invest their mental and emotional energies to achieve the goals of an organization.

Engaged employees are enthusiastic and committed to their work and workplace.

Employee engagement can help you determine whether your employees are putting in their time and effort to achieve company goals.

In fact, employees who feel valued and connected to their organization perform better, stay longer, can motivate others, and also improve the performance of their teams.

It’s worth noting that employee engagement affects crucial aspects of your company from revenue to customer experience as well as profitability and more.

Statistics suggest that employees who feel engaged are 4.6 times more likely to feel motivated to perform better.

And that’s not all, companies with highly engaged employees generate a profit of 23% more than their competitors and have a less absenteeism rate of 81%.

From these stats, it’s safe to say that improving employee engagement can greatly benefit a company/organization in many ways:

However, the challenge is how to keep employees engaged.

This takes us to the next section:

How To Improve Employee Engagement and Achieve Continuous Improvement Culture

Follow these five useful ways to boost employee engagement.

1. Give Your Employees a Listening Ear

Employees who feel their input to the organization are valued are more likely to work harder and encourage other staff to do the same.
The good thing is that listening to employee input isn’t as hard as you might think. You can do it by having a suggestion box placed at strategic locations within the company precincts. Doing this will show employees that their input is valued. You also need to work on the suggestions given by employees even if not all of them.

2. Encourage Transparency

While it’s advisable to allow teams the freedom to choose, decide, and change how they undertake day-to-day company roles and duties, it’s vital to encourage employees to be transparent in the way they work.

This is especially important when it comes to documenting the decisions that affect the organization. This makes teams in sync with the company’s day-to-day operations and procedures.

3. Enable Collaboration

A company can innovate when its employees are free to share ideas across departments. The risks involved in preventing teams to share ideas outside of their department can be detrimental to your company's growth.

In fact, if teams don’t share ideas, a simple update can make employees clash with other teams outside of their departments or bring a lot of confusion.

That means that if a change was to save your business from making losses, it will even achieve the opposite.

To encourage collaboration and enable employees to share ideas with other teams outside of their departments, you should introduce tools and team collaboration software.

4. Improve The Workplace

Encouraging employee engagement isn’t only limited to how they handle their daily work.
Granted, the best way to boost your employee morale is to allow them the freedom to decide how to set up their workplaces. Allow employees to provide their input on matters of workplace improvements as well as other rules.

You also have to act on the feedback because their suggestions are based on how they think the improvement can help them increase productivity or performance.

Must mention that if employees aren’t happy with the workplace atmosphere, your customers will also be affected.

Engaged employees are more pleasant for customers to engage with and can collaborate and make meaningful decisions that can help to serve the customers better.

5. Acknowledge and Reward Improvements

Develop a culture/habit of acknowledging improvements whether small or big. As long as the suggestion given helped to improve or shape your business, it’s worth celebrating. In fact, the best way to acknowledge improvements is to highlight/mention the employee who provided the suggestion.
This will help to motivate others to also provide positive feedback whenever necessary.

FAQs

Here are a few questions you might come across when it comes to employee engagement and its impact on continuous improvement culture.

How do you engage employees in continuous improvement?

To engage employees through continuous improvement, you need to use the following tips:

●       Seek and give feedback

●       Reward improvements

●       Celebrate innovation

●       Promote a creative workplace.

●       Give employees the freedom to express their potential.

What does a culture of continuous improvement mean?

A culture of continuous improvement involves working with all parties of a company including employees, leadership, and management in determining and minimizing or preventing waste continuously.

What is the role of culture in improving employee engagement?

Company culture can greatly impact the company in many ways. For instance, it can affect profits, recruiting efforts, sales, employee self-esteem, etc. Powerful company culture can attract employees, customers, and business partners. It can improve the productivity of employees at the workplace and reduce turnover.

Author Bio:

Dennis Lodge is a freelance writer who writes about employee culture and workplace productivity. I have used him to write my essays that have enabled me to graduate successfully in my university education. He currently writes content about education, careers, digital marketing, etc.

 

Too Many Initiatives, Too Much Overload

Having too many initiatives is a common problem in our workplaces. Leaders pile “critical” work onto everybody’s to-do list and stress levels increase. Cracks start to appear in the fabric of our teams as the pressure mounts.

When there are too many priorities on which to realistically focus our effort, the feeling of progress we create is an illusion. Almost every organization I have worked for is trying to do too much, with too little.

Perry Keenan of BCG talks about the ‘increasingly artificial split– between running the business and changing the business’. (You can watch the four minute video here)

He talks about the issues with too many initiatives, saying ‘Arguably, it is in fact easier to add an initiative than it is to stop one because there’s a lot of connection – political, emotional, historic– a set of factors which means it’s not easy to stop initiatives. It’s often not easy even to slow them down.’ He goes on to advise, ‘If you’re going to add in new initiatives, then be very thoughtful about what it means for the initiatives that you already have in play and the demands that you’re placing on your people. Once again, we all too often, in theory, assume that there is an infinite pool of highly capable people available to deliver the strategic initiatives. It’s a finite resource. And therefore, it has to be managed in a very definitive way.’

When we have too many priorities, we agree to take on too much work. The obvious consequences at an individual level include stress, feelings of overwhelm, with the potential for burnout. All of these lead to potential issues with health, wellbeing and disengaged teams.

At a cultural level, there are consequences too. Organizations and the teams within them start to build a culture of failure. People joke about failing projects and expect delays. Teams keep working to the deadline they know is impossible, until someone tells them to stop.

One thing to keep in mind when it comes to priorities is that nothing is important, when everything is at the top of the list.

If everything is a top priority, you actually don’t have any priorities and you’ll struggle to focus your effort.

The essence of strategy is choosing what not to do and the essence of execution is truly not doing it. That may sound simple, but most organizations struggle to kill initiatives, even those that no longer support their strategy.

A Harvard Business Review article, Too Many Projects, Hollister and Watkins talk about how to deal with initiative overload. It opens saying ‘it’s surprisingly hard for organizations to kill existing initiatives, even when they don’t align with new strategies. Instead, leaders keep layering on initiatives, which can lead to severe overload at levels below the executive team.’ The article cites six further reasons for why this change overload occurs

1. Impact blindness: executive teams can be oblivious to the number and cumulative impact of the initiatives they have in progress.
2. Multiplier effects: leaders have a line of sight into their own groups’ initiatives but a limited view of other groups’ activities. Because functions and units often set their priorities and launch initiatives in isolation, they may not understand the impact on neighboring functions and units
3. Political logrolling: Executives tend to be strongly invested in some “signature” projects and may garner resources for them through implicit agreements to support their peers with their projects
4. Unfunded mandates. Leaders want a project to happen but don’t have the resources to put to it. Instead just adding it to the ‘business as usual work’.
5. Band-Aid initiatives; this is a proliferation of initiatives designed to solve a problem, but without address the root causes of the problem in the first place
6. Cost myopia; leaders fail to estimate, or underestimate the human cost of multiple initiatives on performance, motivation, morale, stress and so on.

If you want to tackle the problem of project overload, Hollister and Watkins advise taking these six steps:

1) Start counting. Calculate the number of initiatives active across your organization.

2) Assess each initiative. Why is it needed? What is the required budget? How many people are required to ensure its success? What impact does it have on the company as a whole?

3) Encourage communication. Senior leaders must work together to establish priorities in a way that works for every department individually and for the company as a whole. They should also ask for and take on board feedback from below, in order to efficiently assess what projects should stay and what projects should go.

4) Put in place a “sunset clause”. When a new initiative is launched, specify an end date for funding. If the initiative is not having a significant positive impact on the business when that date arrives, it can then be easily killed off.

5) Make regular assessments. Just because an initiative is necessary this year doesn’t mean it will be necessary in 12 months’ time. Make sure each initiative is required to reapply for funding on a regular basis, demonstrating its ongoing value to the business.

6) Spread a positive message. Make it clear that killing off an initiative doesn’t mean it was a failure. Explain there is a limit to the number of initiatives the company can run at any one time.

LEARN TO SAY NO

If your company is suffering from project overload, you have to focus on the benefits of cutting back – and learn to say no.

Leaders must say no to compelling opportunities so that we can say yes to others. Saying yes to everything means we lack strategic focus, just as saying no to everything suggests we lack creativity and a willingness to take a risk. Strategic leaders use no to create the business of the future.

Necessity is the mother of invention. When we must, we will. Through the seemingly limitless potential of human ingenuity, we continue to make “the impossible, possible.” From a man on the moon to the unprecedented speed of discovery and development of a vaccine in response to a worldwide pandemic. 

Strategic leaders create… and find a way.