Are you running into a roadblock, facing a problem you can’t seem to solve, no matter what you do?

A good solution exists – you just know it does – but you can’t see or grasp it yet?

If so, take a step back.

Consider the problem from a fresh perspective.

Good ideas often emerge if you change the way you look at, frame, or approach a problem. Often, trying a new creativity tool can help you consider a problem from a new point of view.

Here are three tools you can use to provide a fresh perspective. One of these, or other similar creativity tools, may lead to the breakthrough you seek:

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Fresh Coat of Paint

1. Think of successes and achievements in your work and life.

2. “Relive” each of these successes for a minute or two. What did each experience look, sound, and feel like?

3. Next, when you think of these successes, what color comes to mind, if one does?

4. Now, think of the problem you’re trying to solve.

5. When you do, what color comes to mind?

6. Imagine taking the color you associated with success and painting or pouring that color on the problem.

7. What does that circumstance look and feel like now, in the new “success” color? Are there ideas, impressions, or new solutions that emerge as you imagine experiencing this transformed circumstance?

8. Complete the exercise by writing down impressions, images or other details that may be helpful as you solve the problem.

——————

Fast Forward

1. Imagine “fast forwarding” to a time when the problem has been solved. What do you see, hear and feel in that problem-resolved world?

2. Now, look back from that time, to where you are now. As you imagine the path to success, how was that problem solved?

3. Complete the exercise by writing down any ideas, impressions, images or other details that may be helpful as you solve the problem.

——————

Random Word

1. Think of the problem you’re trying to solve.

2. Describe the situation you expect you’ll experience when the problem has been solved.

3. Now, select a random book that you see nearby.

4. Open to any page.

5. Without looking, point to a word. Now look at it. What’s the word?

6. Answer the question, “What else does this word make me think of? How might these ideas help me see the problem in a new way? How might these ideas help me solve it?”

7. Complete the exercise by writing down any ideas, impressions, images or other details that may be helpful as you solve the problem.

Conversational skills can make a difference in team success, as they can in many other parts of work and life. When team members care about each other, as well as the work they’re doing together, it increases the chances they will succeed.

Good conversation has common characteristics, no matter who’s involved, or what subject is being covered.

Compare two very different conversations you’ve had in the past year. Think of one very satisfying conversation, and one that was unsatisfying or frustrating in some way.

What was the difference between the two experiences?

The following were probably some of the characteristics of good conversations you’ve had (and the opposite was probably true of unsatisfying ones, as well):

– People were fully “there,” and discussion was shared and free-flowing.

People in the good conversation were fully present, and committed to the discussion. They shared the give and take that good conversation involves. No one person or group dominated the floor, or had the burden of carrying the conversation on their own.

– There was a creative flow, and a sense of discovery.

In satisfying conversation, there’s often a sense of a flow, an exploration, in a way, as you share ideas and learn about each other – and often, learn about yourself, as well – in the process.

– You felt you could be honest in the discussion, and were. You felt that others were comfortable being honest, too.

You had no sense of trying to crack through a shell or a mask that you or others in the conversation had created to keep others away, or to block or prevent a high-quality conversation and experience together.

There may have been other reasons why the great conversation you recall was so memorable, but these are some of the most common ones.

If your conversational skills could use a tune-up, don’t be afraid to admit you’d like to learn and practice.

For starters, find and observe a friend who’s a good conversationalist. That’s probably not your friend who talks the most.

It’s the friend who draws others out, and engages them in a satisfying give-and-take…and seems to be able to do that in almost any situation.

A good conversationalist doesn’t try to control the conversation – unless it’s an interview, performance or meeting, but those are other experiences, entirely.

He or she can let go, and trust himself and others in the dialogue, as it happens.

Try to learn from good and great conversationalists. Ask them how they do what they do so well, and ask for their advice on how you can improve.

Practice skills and abilities they show in their easy and free-flowing conversation. Practice their mindset before and as they’re in conversation, if they share that information with you.

Also, increase your curiosity about others with whom you’re trying to have a conversation.

If you’re often nervous when talking to others, talking less, rather than more can help.

Learn to be comfortable with silence.

Ask more questions. Listen.

Let someone else share the floor, and the responsibility for good conversation.

Also – and this seems deceptively simple, but it’s an important thing – make sure you’re taking deep breaths so you’re as relaxed as you can be.

Taking deep breaths forces you to slow down, calm down, and relax a bit, and helps you to stay present. And that’s all part of being a good conversationalist.

The ease, confidence, and flexibility being a good conversationalist offers you can take you far.

As a final review for now, keep in mind these simple guidelines:

Care

Share.

Be there.

Be curious about other people.

Be open, be honest.

Breathe.

Relax, and let go.

Being a good conversationalist is an increasingly rare skill. It can lead to many great opportunities and wonderful experiences, if you learn to trust and let go a bit.

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Have you had the experience of feeling unseen, even though someone was talking directly to you?

Perhaps they said something to you like, “I know what you’re thinking!”

And then, as they announced what they were sure was true for you, it turns out they couldn’t have been more wrong?

Or maybe you’ve been guilty of that, yourself.

Projection is often at least part of what’s going on.

Projection is when someone “assigns” feelings they are having to someone else, often because they either do not see, or are unable to accept those thoughts or feelings in themselves.

When you are the one who has been “assigned” an erroneous feeling or thought by others, it can take a bit of time to realize what’s going on, and to try to untangle the stories people have created, or the misinterpretations that have been “cooked up,” somehow.

Projection is fairly common, and causes other problems.

It can lead to miscommunication, at a minimum, and various issues that arise when people are wasting time, effort, and precious resources, trying to solve the wrong problem – or busying themselves with a story but not trying to improve the situation, at all.

Projection can start from some simple observation, followed by assumptions and misinterpretations.

When we may draw these erroneous conclusions, they’re often based on our own past experiences, the way we believe we would have felt in such a circumstance, or any of many reasons why we assign a particular meaning to what we observed.

How can you reduce your own tendency to project, even if you can’t guarantee that it will never happen?

First, simply observe.

- What do you see?
- Would you hear?
- What do you feel?

Next, be aware of what you’re interpreting from what you observe.

- What do you interpret?
- Why are you interpreting it that way?
- Do you need to interpret what you observe?
- How could these assumptions or interpretations be helpful to you in some way?
- Could your observations or interpretation help other people involved, if they are correct? If so, how?
- Instead of interpreting, how can you check with the person, or people, involved to see if your assumptions are correct?
- If need be, how can you help the people involved? How can you check to see if that’s what will be most helpful to them?

Ask, don’t assume.

Be curious about the other person’s experience.

Care about what’s happening to that person, and in their world.

If you don’t care about what’s happening to the other person, what’s the point of taking the time and energy to form an opinion about this particular situation or how they’re handling it?

Free yourself and others of opinions you’ve formed if there’s no role you can play in improving the situation, or supporting those involved.

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.

Having a great decision-making process increases your odds for success in many aspects of your work and life.

Because it’s so important, stop periodically to review and improve the way you make decisions.

Grow (and grow your appreciation for) your strengths, and eliminate or reduce your decision-making weaknesses.

Start by making review and improvement of your process an annual event, even if you dedicate only an hour to decision-making process improvement.

How can you begin?

Start by reviewing significant decisions you made during the past year.

Divide these decisions into three categories:

- The ones that worked really well
- The ones that worked out okay
- The ones that didn’t work…at all (and hopefully there aren’t many in this category)

Look at the patterns in each group to see what you can learn and improve – and also what you need to stop and appreciate about the things you’re doing very well.

Consider, specifically, your skills in:

- Framing the decision
- Information gathering
- Decision-making
- Implementing decisions

Consider some of these things as you review these recent decisions and how they worked for you:

1. Did you define the problems correctly?

2. Did you have the right decision customers in mind?

3. Were you clear about what these customers needed?

4. Did you gather the right information? Was it timely? Did you use that information well for the decision-making process?

5. Did you evaluate the decision risks correctly?

6. Did you assess and envision implementation circumstances and challenges correctly?

7. Were there any significant issues you didn’t consider as you prepared to make that decision? These may have been favorable or unfavorable issues, ultimately, but they were things you overlooked or didn’t see initially.

8. Are there other things you notice about the way you prepared for, made, and implemented decisions that can help you to improve your decision-making process in the future?

9. If you have decision diaries that you kept as you worked through stressful or high-risk decisions, review those to see what they can tell you about your decision-making preparation, thought process, the way the decision was actually made, and the implementation quality.

10. What pleased you most about your decision process and experience this year?

11. What surprised you most?

12. What was the most difficult lesson?

13. What was the best lesson?

14. If you were teaching someone else how to make great decisions, what would you advise them, based on your recent experience with decision-making?

15. Were there any serendipitous, unplanned but fortuitous experiences in your decision-making and results this year? Are there any lessons you can learn from that to improve your decision-making process and results in the future?

If you found this post valuable, 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.

A colleague stopped me the other day after a meeting. She was worried about her son, still in elementary school. He’s competitive, and that has many benefits in the world in which he’s being raised.

Still, she thinks he may be becoming too competitive for his own good.

“He’s starting to be afraid to try new things,” she explained.

“He can’t stand to lose. He thinks that if he doesn’t try something new, but stays with what he knows, he’s far less likely to lose,”  she added.

Are you afraid to try new things because you can’t stand to lose?

Are you afraid of being a learner again? On the way to mastery of any skill, there’s always some uncertainty, experimentation, and failure that goes along with eventual success.

Is it possible that you’re too competitive for your own good?

You may actually be handicapping yourself, if you restrict yourself only to activities you can win.

If so, may be missing a lot of good experiences and great people.

And you may never uncover some of your greatest strengths, talents you never found you had because you chose the safe, known road rather than venturing beyond it.

Is it possible that you create unnecessary stress and competition in situations where it has no real value…to you or anyone else?

If you’re too afraid to try something new, you could soon be frozen in place (or frozen out of it), unable to adapt and change at the same pace as the rest of the workplace and world.

Don’t lose the race you’re trying to win by being afraid to try.

The skill it would be useful to master is learning how to learn well…and then knowing how to turn learning into valued results.

Here are some of the other things I advised my friend, the mother of the little boy who knows how to win, but is quickly becoming afraid to try:

- Applaud initiative, including good attempts and steady progress.

- Reward learning experiments.

- Encourage activities and learning where there is no clear winner.

- Look for ways to take competitiveness out of circumstances where it has no value, or may be a detriment to the desired experience or skill development.

Let the learner plan and dictate his or her learning path.

Reward the learning process.

Skills of the future include having the ability and initiative to direct one’s own learning  effectively, the ability to discern and gather high-quality information, the ability to synthesize much information, high quality decision-making and action taking.

Don’t handicap yourself by putting competition in places where competition doesn’t belong.

Ask yourself the next time you think your competitiveness maybe making things worse:

- What’s the point of competition here?

- Is competitiveness adding to the overall experience or taking away from it? How is it affecting the other people who are involved in the experience, in addition to me?

If you think you may be too competitive for your own good, try this test:

Let someone else be first in line once in a while.

You’ll survive the experience. And believe it or not, you may even find you enjoy it even more from that spot.

If you found this post valuable, 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.

Could your company use a glossary?

“That’s ridiculous!” you reply?

You might be surprised.

As a consultant, I must go into a company and quickly learn as much as I can in order to come up to speed rapidly on foundation knowledge.

More often than you might guess, as I’m going through the rapid-cycle learning process as I begin a project with a new company, I’ve found that employees don’t know, or don’t agree on the meaning of some of the company’s most-used terms and acronyms.

Consider these examples:

For one project I had one day to “crash learn” as much as I could about the basic technology and terms involved in a major process. I was leaving the next day for a three-day offsite where I was helping the client company finalize a cross-company product delivery process.

To learn as much as possible, and as rapidly as I could, I dove right into all available information about key terms, processes, roles, responsibilities and other knowledge that was important to have for the process design and improvement work to be successful.

Eventually, I’d gone as far as I could in the process of learning on my own. I needed to clarify some things and met with a few people to close the gaps in my understanding.

I asked one manager fairly high up in the organization what one key acronym meant.

She admitted, somewhat sheepishly, that she didn’t know.

And the tough thing was, she was outside of what might be considered, unofficially, as the “statute of limitations” on when she could safely admit she needed to learn some of basic information at the company, too. I could ask the question she needed to because I was clearly in learning mode. She was supposed to have “graduated” it already.

At some point, it’s somehow assumed that people know what they need to know to do their jobs.

But if they don’t, and they’re afraid to ask, where do they go?

And who asks the question of the employees who work for them (and makes it safe for them to answer it honestly), “What do you need to learn, or know, that you don’t, to be successful in this job?”

In a second example, I was helping to create onboarding tools for a rapidly growing company.

The learning processes and tools I was helping the client company create were designed to help the cross-functional teams get established quickly and consistently, and start performing well together as quickly as possible.

We were editing a final draft of one product in the set of team tools.

In a meeting with two fairly senior people in the group, we discovered that each thought a key acronym meant something different.

They realized that many people in the organization were using the same acronym to mean different ways, and that it may have been just one of many miscues in a job and role that required excellent communication.

Is it possible this is happening at your company?

Eliminate the primary causes for miscommunication wherever you can.

One easy place to start is to make sure is to make sure that commonly used acronyms and terms are consistently defined.

In addition, make sure that other foundation knowledge that it’s important for employees to have is readily available. At a minimum, this is important to have when new employees join the company, or move to new jobs inside the company and need to get up to speed quickly and consistently.

Here’s how you can make your own glossary:

1. Make a list of key terms and acronyms.
2. Assign a person to complete the glossary by gathering and writing the definitions for the terms.
3. Ask a few people to review the glossary, noting additions or changes that they think need to be made to it.
4. Refine the glossary, reconciling any differences of opinion about what terms or acronyms mean.
5. Post the glossary on your website in a place where it will be easy to access and use.
6. Include contact information for anyone who needs to get more information about any of the terms, or to contribute new terms to the glossary.

In the process of creating and publishing the glossary, you may find other information you need to share, or to train people on.

Do everything you can to ensure that communication is clear and effective for the people working in your company. It can make a far bigger difference in effectiveness and business results than you expect.

If you found this post valuable, 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.

What can consume hours of time, oceans of creative and productive energy, and still produce nothing useful?

Worrying.

Maybe you don’t waste your time in worry, but many people do.

Some are pretty experienced, and dedicated worriers – professionals, almost.

It’s easy, mid-worry-stream, to think that you’re doing something useful for someone, or some situation, somewhere.

My younger sister once said to me when I was in college and getting little sleep, “If you don’t quit staying up so late, Mom and I will quit worrying about you!”

She’d seen her worrying as a sisterly service she was doing for me.

It wasn’t making any difference, of course.

Worry isn’t work.

Here’s how work is defined in physics: work = force x distance.

Worrying doesn’t change things unless it is a force that moves people across some distance, to change, to become different in a positive way.

Here are a few things you can do to turn worry into productive results:

1. Understand your own motivation for worrying.

What are you trying to accomplish through your worrying?

Is it to entertain yourself, perhaps through the steady updates in a local drama that keeps everyone wrapped up in details of a story you share?

Is it to distract yourself from something you should be doing, instead, but are afraid of?

Consider what else you might be doing with the time you are wrapped up in the lives of those around you. Consider, also, what part of your own life isn’t not getting full attention because you are distracted in this pursuit.

Are you afraid to say what you really think?

If so, muster up your courage and figure out what your truth is. Then figure out how to tell it to the people who you think need the information in a way so that they can hear you, and feel your concern.

And then it is up to them to use the information, save it for a later time, or reject it as not being right for their lives. And you might not like it, but they do have that right – to make their own choice about how they will live their own lives.

Then, let your advice and worry go. Know that the people you are trying to help via your advice and concern will choose and take their own actions. That’s how they’ll become strong. That’s how they’ll learn and grow.

And you want that for them, don’t you?

2. Know what the real problem is, and what evidence you have to know that it is real.

State what you think the real problem is.

Now, consider what evidence you have to know that the problem you describe, of the magnitude you describe it, is actually happening?

If you don’t know, or can’t find evidence of a problem, there may not be one at all.

Then, go back to considering what this worry might be distracting you from…or trying to.

That’s where your problem-solving attention might best be invested…in the problem you don’t want to think about, at all.

3. Know why you believe the bad news scenario is most likely.

If you have a real problem, and have evidence of it, why do you think that dire circumstances will be the result of the issue?

Good outcomes could also occur.

Think through what the chances are that your worries will come true, and why you believe it.

4. Think back to your most productive worrying time, and what the outcome was.

Sometimes worry is productive in that it gets us to consider alternatives we hadn’t thought of before. Or it may make us aware of a risk we had, blithely, brushed off as not likely at all.

Worry gets us to focus and consider possibilities we might not want to think about, at all.

5. Take the persistence and creativity you’re investing in worry, and turn it into something productive.

Direct that effort to doing something tangible about the problem.

Take your concerns, if they prove to be valid, and turn them into a plan of action to take the cause of the problem away.

Then, take the actions you planned, using your resolve to make the problem go away.

Your worry may, in fact, lead to a change that might not have happened any other way.

6. Get more exercise.

Treat yourself to some endorphins.

These are the hormones your body releases when you’ve had a vigorous run, walk, swim, bike ride, or other physical release.

7. Get more sleep.

Good sleep refreshes and rests your mind and body.

And it gives you the reserves to provide a good, calm, long-term assessment of the situation, providing a perspective on problems that might loom when you’re tired, and tempers are likely to be shorter.

8. Find a diversion that’ll keep you from going into worry so deep.

Make yourself so busy you aren’t available for worry duty.

Well, not so much, anyway.

Take your own big goals and break them down into very tangible small-term milestones.

Work on those.

9. Make something.

When you produce something tangible, it can go a long way to make you feel good about yourself, your abilities, and what you can do.

Besides, it gives you something you control. And that helps siphon off worry energy, too.

You may not be able to control the big thing you’re worrying about, but when you make something, you often get an increased sense of control about your portion of the world.

10. Find someone else who has been through this thing you’re worrying about. Talk to them.

They’ll give you some perspective.

They’ll probably tell you that if the problem actually happens, you, or the people you’re worrying about, will live through the experience, and you’ll be stronger in the end.

And that it may not happen…so the worrying didn’t help.

11. Set a daily worry budget, and when the time is up for the day, change the subject.

You think I’m kidding.

If your daily budget covers one hour of worrying, set your timer when worry time arrives.

Worry big for that hour.

And when that hour is up, change the subject. Don’t talk about the thing you’re worried about. Don’t text about it, think about it, imagine it.

Move on.

You can pick up it up again during worry time tomorrow.

If you found this post valuable, 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.

Assumptions.

We believe we shouldn’t make them, but we do.

Our assumptions go with us into almost any new situation, relationship, or interaction.

They’re part of any decision we make, and any planning we undertake.

Knowing what your assumptions are is important.

They can work in your favor, if you know how to set and use assumptions well.

Consider a decision you made that turned out not to be a good one.

Now consider when you made the first wrong turn in making that decision.

Often, that first off-track turn occurs when you don’t question and eliminate or correct the initial assumptions on which the decision is based.

Here are ways to work with your assumptions so that they work for you:

1. Record them.

First, acknowledge that you have them.

Then, record them, and note why you believe them to be true.

What facts do you have that back up your belief that these assumptions are true?

Keep a summary of your assumptions in a place where it will be easy to find and use them again. You may need to return to them later, as the decision plays out, for better or worse.

2. Test them.

If there’s a lot riding on whether your assumptions are right or wrong, find a way to test them early in the process of using them.

What research can you do?

Is there something you can observe?

Are there people who will be affected by decisions you make, using these assumptions?

If a relationship or interaction will be affected by the assumptions you make, ask the people involved if what you believe about them or the situation is true.

3. Revisit them.

When you’re using assumptions as the basis for decision-making, return to them periodically to check and see if they’re still valid.

Governments for example, can make decisions about services they’ll be able to provide citizens, based on how much tax revenue they think they’ll collect in the future.

Building and service commitments can be made, and taxpayers’ expectations can be set about the services they will get for the taxes they paid. Then the economy can change, sometimes radically and rapidly.

At that point, changes must be made to adapt to the situation as well as possible. With a solid way to monitor and adapt assumptions based on current facts, the need for change can be eased or prevented.

4. Refine your assumptions if they’re no longer true.

If your assumptions turn out to be false or circumstances change so that your assumptions need to change, too, then change them.

A lot may be riding on your courage in facing facts, rather than plowing ahead with a plan of action that’s going nowhere fast, just because you don’t want to admit that, somehow, you’re wrong.

5. Improve your process of setting assumptions.

Revisit your process of making assumptions.

Check to see if you’re using good data to create and test the assumptions you use. Make sure you’re not basing big decisions on wild guesses or random conjecture.

Ensure that you have and are using a good process to synthesize the information you have to make decisions and take action, using your assumptions.

Communicate the assumptions well to those who may need to use them, such as in making forecasts.

If you found this post valuable, 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.

Are you feeling overwhelmed by the need to make improvements in your business, yet you can’t seem to find the time to do so?

Have you lost the fun you once felt from doing work you loved?

Do you sometimes feel the need to have a team of peers to bounce ideas off?

If so, mentoring may be perfect to help you grow your focus, business skills and results.

Mentoring programs can bring you a level of performance and achievement. They provide a form of accountability and focused attention that can be hard to get in other ways, when the winds of change and daily demands swirl around you, and threaten never to give you a moment’s peace.

Mentoring can help you overcome challenges that have seemed insolvable, and time pressures that somehow result in the urgent overwhelming the important.

Get back to the work you love. Let a mentor help you.

Here are a few things to consider when you choose the mentoring that will help you most:

1. What are your goals?

The better you know what you hope to achieve out of mentoring, the more likely you are to find a program that’s just right for you.

You may be looking for accountability, group support, a wise advisor, and feeling like you have someone at your back, in case the challenges you face sometimes make you feel very alone. Or you may be looking for just a few of these common benefits of mentoring.

2. How would you like to meet? How often?

Some groups and individual mentoring relationships work by meeting in person.

Increasingly, mentoring occurs by webinar or phone so that participants can meet from the convenience of their own offices, rather than building in the stress and time that commuting requires.

Many programs meet once a week. This enables you to learn, get feedback, and yet not spend great amounts of time doing so.

This is an important consideration when you’re adding mentoring to what is often an already full schedule.

At the same time, you’re very likely to find that mentoring which takes time, initially, helps you to sift, prioritize and focus, reducing feelings of overwhelm and an overly full schedule.

You are likely to find when you find the mentoring program that’s right for you, you create a worklife that’s far more enjoyable, and results that are far more satisfying, while being manageable to achieve.

3. How long do you want your mentoring to last?

You may be looking for a few sessions to help you correct course, refocus and learn quickly. Or you may want a long-term mentoring relationship.

Consider the work and learning support relationships that have enabled you to make the greatest progress in the past.

Talk to friends who have been in mentoring programs and get their advice, as you decide what you’re looking for.

4. Do you prefer one-on-one or a group mentoring experience?

Some people prefer one-on-one attention and support.

Others like the energy and motivation to make steady progress that they feel when they’re held accountable for progress in a group setting, and the inspiration they feel when they hear what their peers in the group have achieved week by week.

5. How do you feel about homework as part of your mentoring program?

If you want to apply the skills you learn and the advice you receive, look for a program that includes homework and clear accountability.

In a program a colleague and I recently developed and have co-led twice for small business owners in the San Francisco, CA, area, we found that homework was an essential important part of our mentees’ learning experience.

It helped them to try out what they were learning, and to get feedback on what they had tried.

Homework also helped mentees’ make steady progress through specific changes and improvements they had hoped to make in their businesses, but hadn’t been able to achieve, without it.

Another important part of the success of the mentoring program was a one-one-one mentoring call that each mentor held with each mentee during the last three weeks of the six-week program. This reinforced learning and helped to tailor it to each mentee’s specific needs.

6. What’s the value to you of mentoring?

Only you can answer this one. This also gives you a range of what you can afford to pay – and what you can’t afford not to pay – to get the support and make the progress you need to make, as a result of the mentoring experience you seek.

For example, do you believe mentoring will help you solve a problem that’s now costing you $200 a month? Or is the problem causing you something closer to $1000 a month or more? Whatever the facts show you about the cost of the problem to you and your company, and the faster and better you can solve the problem with mentoring, the more you’re likely to be ready to get it.

In addition, this problem impact fact-gathering gives you more information about what you’re prepared to pay – and expect to save -  once you have the support you need to make the problem go away, and stay away.

7. What is your role in the experience? What role does the mentor play?

8. How do you think you’ll feel, when the mentoring is done?

One member of a mentoring group I co-led described the feelings that others shared with us at the end of this webinar-based mentoring program.

“This was a WONDERFUL program! I’m so glad I did it!” she said.

Asked if she would recommend mentoring, she replied, “Absolutely! It helps you view your business from a fresh point of view and allows you to find where you are stuck.”

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Like a slow driver holding up many cars behind it in the fast lane, a “road boulder” may be clogging up the workflow and stopping progress for many other people at your company, or on your team.

It happens in many organizations.

“Road boulder” is a term I coined a few years ago in frustration about the people who drive more slowly than the flow of traffic in the fast lane on the freeway.

Often, there’s a mile or more of clear space – and pure potential – in front of them, but they stop the flow, even so.

The term also cropped up for me because I see road boulders of various kinds in companies’ workflows.

Road boulders not only frustrate the people behind them, but they can also create a very dangerous situation.

On the road, emergency response teams get caught in the no-exit-path logjam they create. In companies, people can be so distracted by problems caused inside the company that they miss significant signs of emerging problems outside the company.

The problem of road boulders can be corrected. And it can be prevented.

If you’re the road boulder at your company, you may be blocking others’ otherwise efficient, effective workflows by actions such as these:

- Providing too little direction, training and feedback to help employees stay on track
- Trying to control things you don’t need to control
- Not controlling things you should be managing closely, especially in high risk areas
- Poorly monitoring how well you’re meeting customers’ needs
- Poorly communicating with suppliers about what you need from them, and how well they’re meeting your needs

How can you find out – and correct the problem – if you or your department is a road boulder at your company?

Check in regularly with the people whose needs you’re supposed to be meeting. These are your customers.

They may be paying customers outside the company, or they could be customers inside the company who need your work in order to do their own.

Check, also, with your manager, if you’re an employee.

Check with your employees, if you’re a manager.

These are all potential customers of your work. You can accelerate their workflows through the work you do, or you can inhibit it. And you may not know what effect you’re having until you ask.

Ask the people who are dependent on the quality of work you provide them:

1. How well are we meeting their needs now?
2. Where could we improve?
3. What are we doing well?

Open the dialogue now, and continue it a few times a year.

You’ll find that the flow will grow as you radically reduce the chances that you and your department are company road boulders.

And in the process of gathering the feedback to make the overall system work better, you’re likely to collect a few accolades for your current work, too.

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