Starting at the End

Posted on January 31, 2016 by Bob Adams

inspired by and adapted from The Imagineering Workout, by the Disney Imagineers

– Peter Steinman, General Counsel, Disney Imagineering

Working from the back-end is finding the lessons that you don’t want to learn in the midst of your project.

This practice of back-end visualization is essential to almost everything we do and can be adapted to any project.

Next, consider how you could minimize these challenges so they do not negatively impact the project, and take necessary preventive action. This might be done through a contract, through people you might hire, materials you might use, or by adjusting a schedule.

Imagine all the reasonably possible outcomes of the project, select one that best meets your needs, think through all things that could delay, detour, or diminish your outcome and write them down.

Anticipating the possible outcomes of everyday decisions before you make them helps you avoid calamities, not to mention inconveniences.

It takes a special kind of vision to see the end before the beginning.

“Of course he did,” recounted his wife Lillian. “If he had not seen it then, we would not be seeing it now.”

After being around Disney cast members for several days this week, the story of people lamenting the fact that Walt died before Walt Disney World was built was recounted several times.

Being onsite at a Disney theme park always heightens my awareness of Walt Disney and the vision he had to bring so much to our world – groundbreaking animation, the concept of the storyboard creative process, live action/animation movies, and especially the concept of theme parks.

January 31, 2016

A celebration of National Backwards Day

It’s Time to Go Out and Play

Posted on January 13, 2016 by Bob Adams

**The Recess Test – How Playful is Your Organization?**

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Is it common to hear laughter coming from your employees?
Does the laughter stop or diminish when management is around?
Is the workplace humor good-natured constructive ribbing rather than destructive sarcastic criticism?
Does your boss usually have an optimistic and happy attitude?
When something gets screwed up, can team members step back and laugh at their own mistake?
Do you have fun celebrations on a regular basis?
Is the physical workplace conducive to fun?
Do you engage your customers (internal or external) in your fun environment?

If you answered “no” to two or more of these questions, your organization may be suffering from terminal “sobriety flippancy” (abstinence from humor).

At least that’s the point authors Bill Capodagli and Lynn Jackson make in their book Innovate the Pixar Way. In the book, Capodagli and Jackson reveal how Pixar has reawakened the innovative spirit at Walt Disney. In stark contrast to the crippling short-term mentality that eats away at many organizations today, the Pixar organization honors the legacy of Walt Disney by refusing to take shortcuts, by fulfilling the promise of bringing the story to life in each and every movie they make, and by championing a simple formula espoused by the chief creative officer of Pixar and Disney Animation Studios, John Lasseter: “Quality is the best business plan of all.”

Throughout the book, the authors encourage you to think like a child. They have shown Pixar to be a “playground” that will inspire you to:

Dream like a child.
Believe in your playmates
Dare to jump in the water and make waves
Do unleash your childhood potential

Do you have the capacity to do that? If not, here are seven actions the authors recommend you take to fire up your workplace:

Create a unique playground – Pixar’s main building is designed for natural interaction of all team members and includes the freedom to decorate your own space; if you want to be innovative, make your workspace a home-away-from-home.
Think play – each month, assign a “recess team” to dream up a fun experience.
Allow personalized work space – encourage employees to demonstrate their creativity by decorating their individual offices, cubicles, desks, or work areas.
Celebrate – make time for celebrations to note life’s milestones: a birthday, an anniversary, a graduation.
Grant employees permission to be recognized for their work by “outsiders” – encourage employees to join professional associations in which they have an opportunity to display their work, gain peer and industry recognition for their accomplishments, and most of all, have fun.
Be a role model for mutual respect and trust – the level of mutual respect and trust in your workplace is directly proportional to worker’s attitudes regarding play and fun.
Laugh at yourself – leaders who demonstrate self-deprecating humor set the tone for workplace play and fun.

Fun and play are imperative to strengthening one’s imagination, creative abilities, and most of all, innovative thinking.

Isn’t it time to ring the bell for recess at your place?

Inspired by Innovate the Pixar Way, by Bill Capodagli and Lynn Jackson

Focus on the Ultimate to Make Your Vision Sharp

Posted on October 8, 2015 by Bob Adams

What does it take to gain the focus required to become a truly effective leader?

The Apostle Paul had absolute focus on his mission – a focus that enabled him to let go of everything that was not critical to his mission. In Philippians 3:5-9, Paul willingly discarded his heritage, his lineage, his former legalism, and his past zeal in order to advance his mission.

Paul’s focus was so sharp that he discarded everything he once counted gain. But he goes beyond that: he counted everything as garbage for the sake of obtaining Christ.

Leaders who want to change the world need to have this same kind of sharp focus. The keys are priorities and concentration. A leader who knows his priorities but lacks concentration knows what to do, but never gets it done. A leader with concentration but no priorities has excellence without progress. But when leaders harness both, they gain the potential to achieve great things.

John Maxwell, writing in The 21 Indispensable Qualities of a Leader says that leaders base their decisions on a variety of things:

The Ultimate – First things first
The Urgent – Loud things first
The Unpleasant – Hard things first
The Unfinished – Last things first
The Unfulfilling – Dull things first

Paul exemplifies a leader who focused on the ultimate every day. How about you? To get back on track with your focus, work on these items:

Work on yourself: you are your greatest asset or worst liability
Work on your priorities: fight for the important ones
Work in your strengths: you can reach your potential if you do
Work with your colleagues: you can’t be effective alone

Focus on the ultimate, and your vision will become sharper.

inspired by and adapted from The 21 Indispensable Qualities of a Leader by John Maxwell

Will You Just Answer the Question Already?

Posted on September 16, 2015 by Bob Adams

The same question, coming from 3 different conversations with 3 different pastors over the course of 3 different days prompted this series of posts.

Q: How do you put together a team of leaders to guide a church through a new ministry initiative or project?

My reply is that you don’t just want a team, you need a high-performing team. The foundational work that I have used for several years is based on what Pat MacMillan, author of The Performance Factor, has described as the six characteristics of a high-performing team.

The first characteristic was a common purpose. The second was crystal clear roles.

Here are the remaining four characteristics:

High performance teams need – no, demand – accepted leadership capable of calling out the levels of initiative and creativity that motivate exceptional levels of both individual and collective performance.
High performance teams have effective processes. They identify, map, and then master their key team processes. They constantly evaluate the effectiveness of key processes, asking: How are we doing? What are we learning? How can we do it better?
High performance teams must work out of a foundation of solid relationships. The relational qualities of trust, acceptance, respect, courtesy, and a liberal dose of understanding are needed for high levels of team effectiveness.
High performance teams have excellent communication. No team can move faster than it communicates; fast, clear, and accurate communication is the key to thinking and acting collectively.

courtesy triaxiapartners.com

It’s a short list – only six characteristics. But each characteristic plays a specific and vital role in making the team effective. Notice the arrangement of the characteristics – a wheel shape. In a sense, each one is equal and necessary. If one of these six characteristics is missing or inadequate, the team is limping at best. Think of the wheel on your car: if it is out of balance or alignment, the performance is affected. What starts out as a distraction can turn into a disaster.

By the way, if you click on the image above, the link will take you to the website of author Pat MacMillan’s company for detailed explanations of each of the 6 characteristics, along with a wealth of other resources.

Back to your car’s alignment – the same is true for your team: if two or three of these characteristics are missing, your group is probably not a team at all.

Here’s my quick answer for the question above.

A: You start by bringing together a group of people who effectively demonstrate the six characteristics of a high-performing team. Once the team is together, the work begins.

TEAM + WORK = TEAMWORK

Now the fun begins…

inspired by and adapted from The Performance Factor by Pat MacMillan

Still Answering the Question of the Week…

Posted on September 14, 2015 by Bob Adams

A continuing discussion coming from 3 different conversations with 3 different pastors over the course of 3 different days, but all having the same question:

Q: How do you put together a team of leaders to guide a church through a new ministry initiative or project?

Pat MacMillan, author of The Performance Factor, and Seth Godin, author of Tribes, have been a great resource for me in working with church teams. Here is the second of several posts on the topic.

The first characteristic was a common purpose.

High performance teams are also characterized by crystal clear roles.

Every team member is clear about his or her particular role, as well as those of other team members. Roles are about how we design, divide, and deploy the work of the team. While the concept is compellingly logical, many teams find it very challenging to implement in practice. When they get it right, though, team members discover that making their combination more effective and leveraging their collective efforts is an important part to synergistic results.

Broadly speaking, there are three types of team roles:

Functional (technical) expertise team roles – qualities and knowledge each member brings to the team
Formal team roles – skills needed for a specific role like team leader or facilitator
General team roles – the expectations placed on any member of the team so that objectives are met

Role Design Criteria

Clear – everyone must have role clarity or you will have role confusion
Complete – cover the whole task – no gaps
Compatible – match tasks to individual strengths and skills
Complementary – configure roles so that one person’s accomplishment doesn’t hinder or block someone else from their task
Consensual – agree on who is to do what and how

This is my part of our job and no one is done until everyone is done

A: Defining the common purpose of the team is the first step of creating a team; that common purpose is the reason for cooperation. Following that, the church must develop an appropriate division of labor and create clear roles for team members. This is the strategy for cooperation.

inspired by and adapted from The Performance Factor by Pat MacMillan and Tribes by Seth Godin

The Question of the Week is…

Posted on September 11, 2015 by Bob Adams

How do you put together a team of leaders to guide a church through a new ministry initiative or project?

3 different conversations with 3 different pastors over the course of 3 different days, but all having the same question!

As with all great questions, the answer begins with another question. One of the first I would ask is Why does this group exist? How that question is answered will determine, to a great measure, the success of the team. Pat MacMillan, author of The Performance Factor, and Seth Godin, author of Tribes, have been a great resource for me in working with church leadership teams.

The single most important ingredient in a team’s success is a clear, common, compelling task.

The power of a team flows out of each team member’s alignment to its purpose. The task of any team is to accomplish an objective and to do so at exceptional levels of performance. Teams are not ends in themselves, but rather a means to an end.

The power of teamwork flows out of alignment between the interests of individual team members and the mission of the team. MacMillan found that to achieve such alignment, team members must see the task as:

Clear – I see it.
Relevant – I want it.
Significant – It’s worth it.
Urgent – I want it…now!
Achievable – I believe it.

So you want to put together a leadership team for a specific project?

NEWS FLASH: There really is an “I” in team – if the individual members aren’t committed to a clear, common, and compelling task as individuals first, then you really won’t have much of a team.

So, the first answer to the question above?

A: First, the church needs to have a clear understanding of what the team is expected to accomplish. That clear purpose will serve as a guide to seeking individuals who will bring their collective wisdom together to form, over time, a team to accomplish the task.

inspired by and adapted from The Performance Factor by Pat MacMillan and Tribes by Seth Godin

Seeing With Your Brain

Posted on July 31, 2015 by Bob Adams

We live in a culture rich with images. My generation (Boomers) grew up with television – maybe only 3 channels, but what a difference from our parents’ primary information – the radio and the spoken word only.

My kids (2 Gen X, 5 Gen Y) expanded on the basic television, first with cable, then videotapes, then the Internet, and then DVDs.

My 4 grandchildren? They are digital natives, taking visual communication to new – and participatory – levels with social media, smart phones, tablets, apps, streaming video of all types on many different devices, and who knows what’s around the corner.

We can’t escape the power of the visual image – and most of us don’t want to.

Most of us are visual learners. We like to see a picture, not just hear a word. Len Sweet has said that images are the language of the 21^st Century, not words. Why?

Pictures stick. We remember pictures long after words have left us. Pictures communicate far more than mere words. There’s a simple reason:

We see with our brain.

Vision trumps all the senses. Half of the brain’s resources are dedicated to seeing and interpreting what we see. What our eyes physically perceive is only one part of the story. The images coming into our brain are changed and interpreted. So it’s really our brains that are “seeing.”

If we are on an increasing visual trend in our culture and we understand the importance of vision in our lives, then it follows that leaders should be leading the visual revolution, not just observing (pun intended) it.

With that in mind, I wanted to introduce you to a trio of resources that will help you know how to use visual tools, manage visual practitioners and their work, and understand how to help your entire organization be visually literate – especially if you don’t think of yourself as being skillful visually.

Visual Leaders will help you and your organization take advantage of the visualization revolution. Visualization is transforming the world of work and the role of leaders in an age of global communication and complexity. The book is a guide to increasing your own visual literacy and your ability to help others with theirs. (Download a free summary of this book here.)

Visual Meetings supports a group’s cycle of learning. Visual Meetings explains how you can use graphic recording, sticky notes, and idea mapping when imagining, engaging, thinking, or enacting in meetings. It is loaded with very practical and detailed descriptions of how to conduct different visualization activities. It also reviews the Group Graphics Keyboard and the seven archetypal choices for organizing displays.

Visual Teams explains how to create and sustain team performance with visuals. Visual Teams builds on Visual Meetings and shows how to use these methods across the whole arc of a team process, including the parts in between meetings. It also provides a graphical user interface to thinking about team dynamics with the Team Performance Model. The seven challenges of high-performing teams are explained in detail and linked to tools that help meet them.

Got a pen?

Too Much Brainstorming Will Only Leave You All Wet

Posted on July 20, 2015 by Bob Adams

The conventional wisdom that innovation can be institutionalized or done in a formal group is simply wrong. – Debra Kaye, Red Thread Thinking

According to author Debra Kaye in Red Thread Thinking, recent studies of the brain make it clear why the best new ideas don’t emerge from formal brainstorming.

The brain doesn’t make connections in a rigid atmosphere – there’s too much pressure and too much influence from others in the group. The “free association” most often given as a benefit of brainstorming is often shackled by peer pressure, delivering obvious, predictable responses.

What’s the answer? Try getting away from it all.

Fresh ideas come when your brain is relaxed and engaged in something other than the particular problem you are embroiled in. To harness strategic intuition, you have to leave the subject and the facts and stop thinking so hard about them.

Maybe you should waste a little time…

Here are 7 ways to use the power of wasting time to jump-start your thinking:

Meditation – meditation increases your power of concentration and allows your mind to become free enough to let ideas flow
Sleep on it – sometimes, you just need to put your project aside overnight. When the pressure is off, it’s amazing what possibilities develop
Sleep tight – research has shown that when you learn something and then sleep on it, your knowledge of what you’ve learned becomes deeper
Exercise – getting on a bike, taking a walk, lifting weights – some form of exercise – is good not only for your gut, but for your gut instinct, too
Act metaphorically – researchers wondered if acting out the ideas in common metaphors like “thinking outside the box” and “putting two and two together” would make people more creative. They were right – so consider getting out of your box (office) to free up your mind?
Read about how smart you are – nerve cells in our brains make stronger connections after we learn something new. Think and learn about your capacity to be smarter – and you just may be
“Me” time – spending time engaged in activities you really like enhances innovative thinking

The literal presence of mind that comes when you clear your brain of all expectations is what usually precedes a flash of insight. That flash gives you the power to come up with and act on an idea.

Go ahead – take a walk…

courtesy manhattanportage.com

…your boss can thank you later!

inspired by Red Thread Thinking, by Debra Kaye

I’ve Got the Power

Posted on July 13, 2015 by Bob Adams

The range of ways people exercise and respond to power can be complicated.

Think of power in this case as the ability to exercise influence.

Power is not intrinsically good or bad. We ascribe meaning to power and make choices about how we will use it or react to its use by others. Ultimately, power is a responsibility, and it exists as a function of the individual, one’s followers, and the situation at hand.

Nicole Lipkin is a corporate psychologist who has spent her career diagnosing and resolving typical and troublesome leadership dilemmas. Her book, What Keeps Leaders Up at Night? examines the underlying psychology that plays a big role behind those dilemmas.

One of those dilemmas, for instance, is understanding why people don’t buy-in to your thoughts, ideas, or proposals.

It’s all about power.

7 Distinct Types of Power

Legitimate Power – arising from one’s title or position in the pecking order and how other perceive that title or position. Those with legitimate power can easily influence other because they already possess a position of power.
Coercive Power – using threat and force to influence others. This power comes from fear, and failure to comply will lead to punishment.
Expert Power – derived directly from a person’s skills or expertise or from perceived skills or expertise. Expert power is knowledge-based.
Informational Power – possessing needed or wanted information. People with high informational power wield influence because they control access.
Reward Power – motivating people to respond in order to win raises, promotions, and awards.
Referent Power – dependent on personal traits and values such as honesty, integrity, and trustworthiness. People with high referent power can highly influence anyone who admires and respects them.
Connection Power – creating influence by proxy. People employing this power build important coalitions with others.

These seven types of power generally fall into one of two categories: Formal Power (legitimate, coercive, and reward) and Informal Power (referent, expert, informational, and connection). As a leader, you may be use most, if not all, of these types of power during a typical day.

But when it comes to influencing people without creating potentially negative side effects, referent, expert, informational, and legitimate power seem to work best.

Coercive, connection, and reward power require more careful application because they rely on a higher degree of trust and risk and therefore can become easily manipulative.

You’ve got the power…

…don’t blow it.

inspired by What Keeps Leaders Up at Night, by Nicole Lipkin

Making Dough: Secret Ingredients to Krispy Kreme’s Success

Posted on June 5, 2015 by Bob Adams

It’s National Doughnut Day – I’ve got to write about Krispy Kreme, the most wonderful doughnut in the world, especially when it comes right off the line when the Hot Light is on and they hand you one on a wooden stick and it just melts in your mouth, and oh by the way Krispy Kreme started in Winston-Salem North Carolina so I have to support local business and…

I digress.

In 2004 authors Kirk Kazanjian and Amy Joyner went behind the scenes to look at the six decade history of one of the world’s premier brands and most admired companies. Making Dough tells the compelling true story of a company that has managed to maintain a wholesome, small-town image, while achieving phenomenal success through a mixture of customer loyalty, high product standards, technological advancements, and community involvement.

The book is full of great ideas, insider interviews, and colorful stories that show how this phenomenal organization has successfully evolved and grown through the years. Each chapter thoroughly examines one key technique the company uses to stay successful.

Here’s a dozen to go, right off the line!

Mix good taste with show business
Be picky about your partners
Make good use of your time and resources
Expand and protect your brand
Think big, but grow carefully
Be a guerrilla marketer with a soft touch
Maintain high standards
Harness the power of technology
Give back to the community
Select, train, and treat your employees well
Build on your success
Keep them coming back

Making Dough shows you how Krispy Kreme’s delectable delights rose to the top and continue to tempt the world.

Pick up a copy of Making Dough, grab a dozen or two glazed, and you’ll soon find yourself with some “sweet” ideas to help your organization stay fresh – and in demand!

If you liked this post, here’s a throwback you’ll probably like too: Celebrating National Doughnut Day.

energized by the steady, deliberate journey in generational learning

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