I have been fortunate in the amount of success I have had in making organizations work. While some of that was due to being in the right place at the right time, here are three gifts of 20/20 hindsight.
1. Be intentional
Don’t let the urgent overcome the important. Often we get caught up in the hottest fire at the moment. Instead of planning our work and working the plan, we get distracted by whatever crisis or opportunity clamors loudest. Since most leaders are good at getting things done, they apply their problem-solving assets to taking care of whatever the issue is at hand. Instead, intentionally choose a target, something you and your organization will be proud of accomplishing and intentionally focus on making that one thing happen. You still likely will have to put out little distracting fires along the way, but you soon will discover that as you go forward focusing on one strategic target there will be fewer distractions to derail success.
2. No one makes a bad decision on purpose
I have made financial decisions that significantly hurt me and the organizations I led. I also have made personal decisions that, sadly, damaged relationships. But I am convinced that nobody—including you and me—makes a bad decision on purpose. The decisions we make are generally the best ones we can make with the information we have at the time. They become bad decisions only in hindsight. This mindset can help us as we make decisions to work hard to gather as many critical facts as possible before we make the decision. We learn to plan for the worst and expect the best. We make decision-making a continuous and positive learning process. Some ancients have called this process wisdom.
3. Culture trumps strategy
People make or break relationships, team success, and organizational health. An effective leader knows that leadership is relationship. And the better the relationship, the more effective the leadership. This means defining what makes effective and positive relationships and then modeling those traits and making sure they get reproduced across the organizational chart. This builds a culture that can and will get whatever is most important done, and done well.
Michael Smith is co-founder of DecisionGrid.
