“Leave me alone! I don’t want to change!”

“Just let me get through this pile in front of me. The future will come – however it does – without my help today.”

You’ve probably felt this way – most of us have – at some point in our work or life about the need to take the time and make the effort to build a better future when faced (overwhelmed?) by the problems of today.

Future-building brings many possibilities, but it also brings with it problems. And a major barrier to progress is always finding the time and energy to even try to think far beyond the pressures of the present day.

Thinking strategically takes a different kind of attention and energy than does getting products out the door and on their way to customers. It also takes very different perspectives and skills than does problem-solving.

Here are just five of possible barriers to building a better future through effective strategic planning, whatever organization you’re working with, or within.

See if any of these issues seem familiar to you.

1. You can’t see the future from here.

If this is a barrier for you, you’re filled to the brim, and beyond, with a sense that you can’t see what’s ahead, much less think about it strategically.

And you certainly don’t have the capacity at the moment to consider criteria for a successful outcome, envision alternate scenarios and chose priorities, or plan an optimal course of action, complete with accountabilities and due dates.

2. There are too many choices.

You may be feeling this if:

a) criteria for creating a desired future circumstance are not clearly defined yet

b) priorities are not apparent, at the moment

c) there’s not yet enough information about what’s going on, and what may happen in the future with the primary forces of change likely to affect your company’s fortunes in the future.

Whatever the case, having many options feels more like a burden than an opportunity in this situation.

And believe it or not, in this circumstance you may need more information, or you need to have the information presented in a way that makes it far more useful for planning and action-taking purposes.

3. Strategy is a dirty word.

Some people love setting strategy.

Others are far less enthralled with the “opportunity” that strategy-setting can present.

If you’re charged with getting things done and out the door, on their way to customers on a daily basis, you may feel that the full-time strategists in your company are never around to see how their plans actually work out, once implemented.

And you may wonder what your role is in this exercise of future-building. More than that, perhaps you’ve never really been involved in it, and you’re not confident of your abilities to do strategic planning effectively…but you don’t want to admit it.

4. Tomorrow has very little to do with today.

If this is the main problem you see with long-term planning, at least right now, this may be how you really feel:

“Help me see how the work of today relates to the work of tomorrow.”

“Make the strategy-setting and action-planning process tangible, achievable (and bonus-able), and help me feel a sense of achievement as we do the actual strategic planning work.”

“Make me feel a sense of accomplishment in the process, and the planning outcomes.”

“Make this part of my job – and teach me how to do it well – far more than you have today.”

5. There’s no guarantee about the future. We’re just guessing, and there’s a pretty good chance we’ll guess wrong.

The frustration here may be that the future doesn’t seem tangible, and the planning scenarios don’t seem realistic.

Perhaps prior strategic planning efforts have not been well-planned, well-managed, or effective.

In that case, the ease and eagerness with which people proceed is surely going to be mixed, at best.

And this, ultimately, is what you’re probably thinking if you’re not enthusiastic about being involved in what can be a significant future-building opportunity:

“Take the barriers out of my way if you want me to help you prepare for the future, today.”

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Is the life you’re living far different from the life you once dreamt you would?

For many people, the answer to that question is, “YES!”

And if so, is it far different from the life you still want to experience?

Do you think you can still achieve your dreams, in some large or small way?

I won’t wait for your answer.

I’m here to tell you that the answer to that last question can still be “Yes,” no matter how long ago you set aside a dream that once drove you, or how recently you created a new dream to take its place.

A manager I once had, and greatly respected, asked me as we traveled to a conference one year what I hoped to do later in my career.

“I want to start a business,” I said. “I found out early in my work life that I have entrepreneurial instincts, and I want to use them again.”

I don’t know if I surprised him with my answer, or reminded him of a dormant dream he’d once had.

He listened quietly, considered the responsibilities of my life at the time: a busy, two-career family with a 7-year-old daughter and a brand new son.

Based on his experience, he gently but firmly advised, “You have a mortgage and children now, and many responsibilities that go with it. You probably won’t start a business if you haven’t done it yet.”

It was my turn to listen quietly. I didn’t say much, but took his advice in, considering his perspective and life experience.

I knew he wasn’t trying to dash my dreams as much as he was trying to keep me practical and realistic.

In his view of the world, sitting in a responsible position high in the corporation, I had already shut off many options.

In my world, I hadn’t really even warmed up to fulfilling my potential yet.

And yes, I did work, bit by bit, toward that dream of starting a business again. I know that I may not fulfill the full dream I once had, or perhaps I will exceed it. My dreaming days are far from done.

Dreams, no matter how large or small, can be invaluable in guiding decisions, actions, and measuring growth and progress.

How about you?

Have you had the experience, too, of people advising you to turn away from a dream that you held, or still may have?

The odds are high they were not trying to discourage you, but to protect you from being hurt in some way.

Here’s the thing:

Your dream is your own. And it’s your talent, your time, your life you’re managing to good, better, best results.

And while you surely have commitments to others that you want and need to meet, there are ways you can still bring a dream to life, even if it’s one that has long been dormant.

Dream-activating and dream-fulfilling takes strong desire, a willingness to believe that it’s possible, the willingness to learn, experiment, and take some risks.

Like the rudder on a ship, making one small change can have a huge impact on the final destination you reach.

If you have dreams you’d like to bring to life, start by choosing and making just one small change.

Then follow it consistently.

And, step by step, make action-taking on behalf of your dream a habit.

Make a choice. Make a change. A small one.

Start with one of these. Make a small change in the way you use:
- Your time
- Your money
- Your attention
- Your energy
- Your knowledge
- Your talents

Once you do, you may be surprised at how little change it actually takes to reach a dream if you make a choice, make a change, and follow it consistently.

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Generosity is good.

Generally.

Sometimes you can be generous in ways that, ultimately, aren’t really helpful or desired.

And you can be generous in ways that, unwittingly, handicap the person you’re trying to help.

Generosity CAN sometimes hurt more than it helps.

“Helicopter” parents do this when they oversee or manage their children’s lives too tightly, leaving them little room to learn how to make good decisions, to be resilient, and learn from mistakes, to test and discover who they really are and who they want to become.

Similarly, micromanagers can have the same long-term effect on employees whom they over-supervise and can, ultimately, stifle.

Such managers may think they’re helping employees when they:
- Oversee employees’ work closely
- “Correct” work that’s not done exactly how the manager would do the work him/herself, even if it is within customers’ guidelines and quality standards
- Guess or assume what customers want, rather than to verify or correct

Real generosity – that with a long-term view – can show up in actions such as:
- Clarifying who your customers are and what they want
- Using customers’ priorities to guide decision-making
- Defining and refining work processes
- Communicating clearly
- Following up to ensure that actions being taken will meet customers objectives and company promises to them…or will manage the gap in performance to goals until it can be closed
- Teaching employees how to do all these things, themselves

Perhaps the reason that “helicopter” parents and microscopically managing managers aren’t generous from the perspective of others’ long-term development is that:
- They fear not being needed
- They miss doing the work themselves
- They feel more comfortable when work is done the way they want it done, despite what customers want
- They want accolades and approval (and their bonuses, yes) gained by producing immediate results more than they want accolades and approval for long-term team development and employee growth…and the increased results that come with it

If you recognize yourself as (like it or not) a micro manager, here are ways you can learn to be more generous in ways that develop employees for long-term improvement and results, along with meeting short-range goals, too.

1. Be clear about your objectives, as a manager and “people developer.”

2. Be clear about your objectives for employees. Talk with employees so standards and goals are clearly known.

3. Teach employees how to monitor and correct their own performance, using measures and performance-to-standard or performance-to-goal feedback mechanisms.

4. Follow good follow-up practices.

5. Notice when you’re most likely to dive into the tight oversight mode, or to start to swoop and redo work that’s perfectly fine from a customers’ perspective. Catch yourself and your behavior before the pattern goes too far.

6. Pre-plan actions you can take to divert yourself from your normal swoop-and-redo mode.

7. Understand when employees are just doing something differently than you might choose to do, but are meeting customers’ requirements.

In these cases, you’re often far better off letting them learn from the experience of making decisions, giving their approach or idea a try, and learning from the results.

8. Recognize your own progress and development as you learn to let go – and often, in the process, get better overall results from the people in your company or group.

Consider, also, the many ways you can be generous.

These are ways you can help the people you’re guiding to learn more and grow in confidence, technical and people skills, and produce increasingly improved results.

Consider this list of possibilities. How can you be more generous with:

- Time?
- Attention?
- Money?
- Teaching or mentoring?
- High quality listening?
- Praise?
- Advice?
- Demonstrating use of your own talents?
- Enthusiasm?
- Honesty?
- Being present, and sometimes silently, as an employee learns to assess his or her own work and customer satisfaction results accurately?

Learn to be generous in all the ways that really count…now, and for the long-range, too.

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Stymied by a problem you’re trying to solve?

Unsure where to turn for solid advice?

Start with your own.

To do so, create the environment, and make the time so you can fully see and understand the insights and ideas you already have – and new ones that will emerge, in the process.

Make the space and time to quietly write your answers to questions raised in ten stages of problem inquiry, below. They’re from the book, Accidental Genius, Revolutionize Your Thinking Through Private Writing, by Mark Levy.

I’ve found this process valuable in many ways each time I’ve used it. I first learned about it from Kate Purmal in a presentation she did for Women in Consulting, a Bay Area professional organization.

Just let your answers flow, catching them in writing as they emerge. That allows you to work with them in the future, too, as needed.

As you move through this process, don’t edit, correct, or second-guess yourself. Just let the answers flow naturally, whatever they are.

Here are the ten stages of the process:

1. Situation dump

Lay the story out on the page.

What do you know about the situation?

What are the facts?

What are your feelings about it?

What are your fears, your hopes?

Write out everything that’s involved in fully understanding the problem you’re trying to address or solve.

2. What’s working here?

Often when we see problems, we don’t see the good things that are already happening, focused as we are on what we’re trying to solve, eliminate, or improve.

If we don’t see the good things, sometimes we can chase them away, unwittingly, and don’t really realize what assets we had until they’re gone.

3. How am I hurting myself?

We don’t want to think about what we’re doing to contribute to our problems, but often we’re doing something that makes the situation worse than it might otherwise be.

It’s easy to want to look outside ourselves to try to figure out where the fault belongs without taking the share of the blame that we own.

Own up to your part in the problem you’re trying to address.

4. What does the situation remind me of?

Now take a few minutes to let overall impressions flow through, or over you.

Notice what analogy, metaphor, phrase, image, or perhaps what song emerges that may give you an idea of what’s really going on for you as you try to break through this problem, rise above it, or carry on in spite of the challenges you face.

5. Circle key words and phrases

Quickly review your writing. Circle key words or phrases.

You may see patterns, trends or ideas that had only been hinted at before, which now have become clear by going through this process.

6. What have I missed?

Now, having looked at many aspects of the problem and your alternatives, are there things that occur to you which you had missed before?

7. Indulge the dark side (what is the worst that can happen?)

This part isn’t much fun, but it can be very useful.

Consider what the worst thing is that could happen, from what you know now. And if you really want to push it, creatively, and in terms of your preparation, imagine something much worse than the worst you’re thinking of now.

It probably won’t happen, but if it did, you’d at least have ideas about what you’d do in that or other very challenging circumstances.

8. How good can it get? (best case scenarios)

We’re often so focused on the things that could go wrong that we don’t really look closely at what could go right – and the challenges that success can bring.

Think through best case scenarios for how this issue could be resolved, and what that might mean for you.

9. Alternatives (ask yourself, “What next?”)

Consider what your next steps should be. You don’t know what will happen next, but you do know some possible paths of action you can take, choices you need to make, and next steps that are important for you now.

10. More decent notions

Are there other considerations that are popping up now which you hadn’t considered before?

If so, make note of them now.

Now that you’ve finished all these ten stages of problem, idea, and action inquiry, return to your “regularly scheduled life.” Take the actions you were well-advised – by yourself – to move closer to your goal.

If you found this post valuable, please share it with friends and colleagues who can use this information, too. You’ll also like the free weekly newsletter I publish every Tuesday. Sign up for the newsletter here.

Sometimes you need…well…a good Plan Z in your back pocket.

That’s the plan you think you’ll never need, for the circumstance you’ll never see.

But then…

…there you are, in the midst of conditions you never dreamt could converge, all at the same time, in the same place, in quite this “perfect storm” way.

And you find yourself trying to glue together solutions you know you have to try, even as you fear they may not work.

And in the background, you’re thinking:

1. It would be so much better if you could have foreseen this…
2. …and then prevented it…
3. …and if not, if you had planned what you’d do if this type of circumstance did occur (and therefore, had that great Plan Z in your back pocket).

And so, you’re doing your absolute best to stop the problem and stem the damage.

An “opportunity” to experience “I Need a Good Plan Z” occurred for me recently, thanks to a computer that decided to go on strike quite suddenly, and a backup system that was not quite as tight as I thought it would be in tight turn circumstances.

Learn from my painful experience to prevent your own.

Let me just provide a bit of context:

My family and I had to take a sudden trip back to the Midwest for a family emergency. There was no time for delay.

In the rush to get on the first “red eye” flight, I reworked schedules, packed bags, deposited pets at kennels, advised neighbors of our plans…and got the computer ready to go.

Everything fell into place.

Almost.

The computer was unnervingly slow, and the backup system threw out a warning that I’d better back IT up or face serious data loss.

Troubling as it was, I had no choice but to set the problem aside because we had to get on our way to our nighttime flight. I’d just have to pick it up when we got back home.

When we returned after the intense, unplanned but necessary whirlwind trip, I knew I needed to trouble-shoot the backup system, but had immediate deadlines to finish meeting first.

I hoped to pick up without missing a beat, right where I’d left off.

And the plan worked, for a day.

Then…suddenly…

Pffft.

The computer ground to a halt.

No screen. No familiar sound of the machine springing to action.

Just a barely audible hum, letting me know there was still a minor sign of life under the proverbial hood.

It was soon apparent the computer had a stay – and perhaps a long one – for repairs at some cost in time, money, and data lost.

It turned out to be more than a week without my computer, hoping for the best when it returned.

Here are a few of the lessons I learned as I tried to make the best of a bad and unexpected situation:

1. First, don’t panic.

Consider if there really IS a problem, or if, instead, someone or something just needs a little time off to rest, recharge, recuperate.

2. What’s the worst that can happen? Be ready for that.

Figure out how you’ll handle the worst circumstance that, on first pass, you think could happen.

3. Now consider what could happen that’s even worse, and figure out how you’d handle that.

Don’t stay in that planning process for long (you may scare yourself if you do).

Spend just enough time that you know how you would respond, if it did.

4. Now, consider what your ideal solution is in the circumstances you anticipate, more than what you fear.

In my situation, I had irreplaceable family photos I’d downloaded to my computer and erased from my camera, but hadn’t had time to back up before the computer crashed.

My ideal solution, in that circumstance, was different from what it would have been if I’d just had a few draft emails I could have let go if all computer contents were lost.

5. Find out how bad the situation really is.

Get the facts.

Until then, you just don’t know what you’re dealing with. The circumstance may be better, or it may be worse than you expect.

6. Find out what your alternatives really are.

Choose the solution that most closely matches your priorities and “ideal” solution for the difficult circumstances you’re in, whatever they are.

7. Get moving and get a solution in place.

Delays, avoidance and head-in-the-sand moves won’t save the day – or your data, or whatever else it is that you’re trying to retrieve, retain or improve.

8. Expectations of a good outcome probably have to change.

An “okay” solution before this happened may look like a GREAT solution now, once your alternatives are reduced, along with the resources that are already reduced by having to fix something you had no idea was broken, at all.

9. In the process of working out a workaround, you may find that some changes or innovations you had to make, in the moment, are solutions you want to keep far beyond this experience.

You never know.

A great invention, innovation, or process improvement could arise because of the difficulty this perfect storm has brought.

Get through this experience as well as you can.

Then take a look at the good things this experience has wrought, if there are some. You’ll find, ultimately, that there surely are, and perhaps more than you thought.

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Fresh from the field, full of customer feedback, your enthusiasm is high for its power and potential as you return with it to the company.

You’re excited about the possibilities of making much-needed improvements in areas your customers care about most.

And while you thought you knew what customers wanted, it wasn’t until you met with them to listen, observe, and talk with them that you understood what was most important when your product and services were really being used.

You lay the fresh data on the table, smile big, and prepare be thanked for the great information you brought back “home.”

But what’s the reaction you get from the people who can use this information the most?

A big, old, very bored yawn.

It’s as if to say, “It’s fine that you took the time to collect all that information. I hope you had fun on your field trip. But it’s not relevant to me and you’re not going to change my work or my world any time soon!”

Instead, how can you take the ideas you worked so hard to collect, get the appropriate attention and respect for them, and incite desired action that leads to the changes your customers now expect?

You have to make the data and the feedback, and the people who provided it to you, something they care about – a lot.

Your colleagues inside the company must be motivated to make the changes that customers want. You can’t want it for them. They have to want it themselves.

You can’t tell them. You have to show them.

Let them see, feel and hear what you learned from the customers, themselves.

Here are three things you can do to get that job done:

1. Bring the customer back with you.

There are several ways you can do this.  The main thing you must do is to let people inside your company experience the customer and his or her frustrations, hopes, and any other emotions they shared with you as they let you into their world for a moment.

For example:

- Bring video.

- Bring customer quotes.

- Bring case studies and the impact to them of not having solved the problems they hope you will now solve.

- Bring survey results.

- Talk to the customers of your customers to learn what impact your work – in whatever quality it is provided – has on them.

- Bring actual customers to tell their stories, themselves.

2. Let the skeptics watch customer feedback unfold on the public stage before their very eyes.

Let them see a Twitter stream of customer feedback emerge, providing real-time responses from real life customers.

Watch how your colleagues react as they see customers share their strongest emotions, frustrations, wishes, and thoughts about your company and its products and services.

And if there is no response at all?

That is feedback, as well. Your customers don’t really notice your company and its products and services much, at all. And is that the reaction you want – no reaction at all – from all your hard work?

3. Quantify the difference in costs and benefits between not changing, and doing the work required to bring customer-desired changes home.

Tally up the cost of doing nothing: rework, lost revenue, lost opportunities to do other future-building work and activities.

Then tally up the costs of making customers’ much-desired changes, along with the increased revenue you’re likely to draw if you listen and respond to customers as they hoped you were, all along.

Share  customer data with others in your company in a way that makes that information their own. Provide it in a way that has strong personal meaning for them.

Bring the data back to your company in a way that lets you can share the experience with the customer as fully as possible. Make the information relevant, make it personal. Make the learning visceral, then step back and let the change go on.

Remember:

Show, don’t tell.

Teach, don’t sell.

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Many people are afraid of gathering customer feedback.

It’s very easy to say, “Just ask.” It’s far harder to do.

Do it anyway.

It can be intimidating to find out what your customers’ experience is with your work, for better or worse.

But the risks are high if you don’t understand what customers think and feel about your products and services, including how they stack up against the competition.

When you’re getting ready to talk with your customers, consider these things:

1. Who are they? What are their priorities, their goals, their preferences?

Your customers may be a far different group of buyers than you expect. You won’t really know until you check.

2. What’s the best way to contact them to get the information you need?

For some people a phone call is best. Others will be most likely to respond to a survey or e-mail.

In other cases, especially when you’d like to gather a lot of information, a visit to their site, a personal interview, or a focus group may be needed.

3. What information do you really need? What will you do with the information you get?

Sometimes all you need is quick verification or refinement of an idea, information or assumptions.

Other times, you’d like more substantial input, such as when you’re getting feedback on design ideas for a new product or service.

Yet as you plan, consider what you and your company are likely to do with the information you get.

If nothing is likely to change, no matter what you learn from customer feedback, don’t waste your time and your customers’ time gathering information that has no real future, no purpose.

4. How can you make it easy for customers to give you great feedback?

Imagine you’re the customer whose input you want. Consider, in that case:

- How would you want to be contacted?

- How much time would you be willing to spend to provide feedback on your company’s products or services?

- How much detail would you expect to provide?

- Is there something about which you’d want or expect to provide feedback, as a customer, yet it’s not something you’re planning to check, as the person asking for feedback?

5. Is there any information you’re afraid to get from customers?

If there’s something you’re afraid of finding out, ease your burdens.

Ask that first.

Dash your fears.

Or find out that your fears are well-founded, and get enough information that you’re be well-prepared to make the problems with your products and services go away.

If you found this post valuable, please share it with friends and colleagues who can use this information, too. You’ll also like the free weekly newsletter I publish every Tuesday. Sign up for the newsletter here.

Do you know the experience of being trapped in a big decision-making impasse?

When a decision-making process that seemed as if it would be so clear, a decision that was going to be so easy, suddenly became gnarled, the team impossibly snarled?

And forever allies suddenly became highly committed adversaries?

You don’t ever have to be in that decision-making position again.

There are ways to make good decisions together that leave team members whole, engaged and committed to creating success together again.

Here are just a few of the things you can do to make decisions well despite strong differences of opinion at some point along the path:

1. Look for common ground.

You and your seeming adversaries probably have more similarities than you realize.

And the differences you hold may be far smaller than you expect.

Sometimes the differences are non-existent, and you’re actually in “violent agreement.”

Perhaps you were just using different terminology to say the same thing, or made assumptions about others’ beliefs that weren’t true at all, or they weren’t relevant to the work you’re doing together.

Stay focused, stay on task, and look for common ground and agreements you already have.

2. Remember your ultimate goal.

There is a common pursuit that you share. Otherwise, what are you all doing there?

State your goal objectively, factually.

What do you each think the work is that you’re there to do?

Your differences may be resolved far more easily than you expect when you review your goal and define or refine your criteria and priorities for a good decision, which leads us to the next point…

3. Know who your customers are and what they really want from this decision.

You have customers for this work, just like you have customers for all the work you do.

Often however, people lock horns and get engaged – and become fully entertained or at least mightily distracted – by the contest they have created, itself.

Ultimately, there are people you’re each serving with the work you do.

Together, as a decision-making team, take a step back and review the goal, who the customers are for this work and what they want.

You may find that you’re working on the basis of dueling opinions, when what you really need to do is go collect some facts.

Often good, current, reliable data from a credible source will help clear out the decision-making morass.

4. Be clear about what you personally want from this experience.

Sometimes it’s hidden, or not so hidden personal agendas that cause all the trouble in the decision process.

If you’re clear with yourself, at least, about what you want from this experience, you’re more likely to be able to manage your own part in the decision-making process well, and better, perhaps than you have in the past.

If everyone does that, and keeps their eyes on the decision prize that you share, that can help to keep the decision process and outcomes moving along well.

5. If you’re still really, REALLY stuck, take a break, and then back up.

Take the time to clarify the decision process you’re using. Clear the problems out of that.

This includes being very clear with each other, and agreeing about these aspects of your decision-making process:

- Goal or desired outcomes

- Team and decision-making roles

- Rules of the process you’re following

- Agenda you’re going to follow as you work to the end of this decision process as easily, effectively, and respectfully as you can

Ultimately, to break out of the decision stranglehold, you and the others you’re working with have to want to do so.

Some people like competition so well that they lose sight of what “winning” really is in a particular circumstance.

If the process is painful, and results are far less than they need to be, the decision process can be redesigned and managed to yield good results and a good experience, all around.

If you found this post valuable, please share it with friends and colleagues who can use this information, too. You’ll also like the free weekly newsletter I publish every Tuesday. Sign up for the newsletter here.