As you contemplate a productive 2015...

Consider the following questions:

• For the upcoming year how would you define success?
• What gaps exist between where your business is now and that success?
• What personal changes do people (does each person) need to make to span those gaps?
• What personal changes do you need to make to influence people as they span those gaps?
• What help do you need to make your personal changes?

When I use the words "personal changes", I am thinking...

People Do Only 3 Things: Good Habits, Bad Habits, & New Things:

Good Habits take people toward their long-term goals and vision of success.

Bad Habits do not.

New Things are, by definition, "personal changes". 

The Thinking Behind The Tweet

The question was asked at the HBR LinkedIn group..."How can we change society? Just give one step which you feel will change society." 

Change requires Courage.

Change requires knowledge of self and knowledge of others.

Change cascades like dominos:

Courage

Self-Knowledge

Self-Education

Self-Discipline

Self-Change

Self-Confidence

Confidence in Others

Teaching Others: Courage, Self-Knowledge, Self-Education, Self-Discipline, Self-Confidence

Working With Others: Creating Change For The Better 

This is the stuff of leadership

When leaders and managers spend time thinking about work-tasks before they delegate them to people they gain advantage over those who choose not to invest the time.

They gain advantage for 3 main reasons:

1. They improve their ability to match people's talents to work-tasks,
2. They improve their ability to communicate about work-tasks, and 
3. They make fewer delegation errors.

• Is it a routine task or a not-routine task?
• Is there a system/process for doing the task?
• Is that system/process in writing?
• Has that system been well communicated to all involved and affected?

If the leader or manager does not understand both those things then the leader is taking a chance – taking a risk – when people are assigned to perform tasks.

To make this point more graphically - It is risky to assume bright people can perform simple tasks.

Another graphic point – When a task is not performed well there are only a few reasons why it is not performed well.

Seeking Simple, let’s create a short list of the reasons why a task is not performed well:

1.    The task is impossible, so nobody could do it

2.    The task is possible but not clearly defined/described, so people may do the wrong thing

3.    The task is possible but the person doesn’t understand it: the person isn’t capable of understanding the way the task was defined/described; the person, for one reason or another, didn’t listen…the communication failed

4.    The task is possible & the person understands it  but lacks the talent to perform it

5.    The task is possible & the person understands it  but lacks the knowledge to perform it

6.    The task is possible & the person understands it  but lacks the skill [practice/experience] to perform it

7.    The task is possible & the person is capable of doing it but chooses not to do it: the person chooses to spend the time doing something else; multi-tasking - the person does something deemed more important and runs out of time; the person doesn't like the task; the person is prone to procrastinate; the person doesn’t like the boss or the company - sabotage

Yes – even the short list contains many possibilities. That’s the challenge of managing and leading people. Many things can go wrong according to Murphy they do go wrong.

So - leaders and managers need systems/processes for sorting through the possibilities to determine why things went wrong.