workplace Archives - Page 2 of 14

26
Feb 21
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Process Matters, You Can’t Afford To Skip It

Tags : client requirements innovation process system workplace

In a rush, I pulled my thumb drive from my tablet device and the data got scrambled. It doesn’t even look like the same device in file manager when I plug it now. This is evidence that sometimes, process matters.

Innovation matters too. New ways of doing things, exploring for the best results. Taking some risk, trying something new. All are important yet you can’t really escape process.

You can’t wear a jacket before it is sewn together. You can’t really eat a slice of cherry pie before it is baked.

Some things just don’t work or are otherwise not possible until the process is complete.

The challenge for many innovators and product creators is to understand what happens when it’s mandatory that step A, happens before step B.

In haste to transform from an idea to a product, people sometimes try to skip a step.

Often, you can’t.

Process Matters

It is a challenge for everyone in the workplace. Following the guidelines of the build, the assembly, or navigating the structure for packaging a service requirement.

It is hard to forecast the schedule beyond the scope of the current funnel.

Client requirements flex, shift, and are impacted by their own unforeseen events. Supply chain interruptions, severe weather, and a missed deadline all impact stops and starts.

Waiting always feels like a big time-waster. Fear of waiting may cause the overly anxious to attempt to skip a step. Patience is a competency that cannot be overlooked or underestimated.

Process matters for everything you do. It can change, but it usually doesn’t mean it can be skipped.

-DEG

Dennis E. Gilbert is a business consultant, speaker (CSP^TM), and culture expert. He is a five-time author and the founder of Appreciative Strategies, LLC. His business focuses on positive human performance improvement solutions through Appreciative Strategies®. Reach him through his website at Dennis-Gilbert.com or by calling +1 646.546.5553.

28
Jan 21
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Popular Isn’t Always Immediate In The Workplace

Tags : culture innovation popular systems workplace

Much of the work people do is an attempt to make it popular. It is desirable for ideas to become popular. The same is true about workflow, energy, and the secret formula that every business believes they have.

When it comes to workplace culture, it is unique. To the same extent so are the individuals who make up the culture. Each person is bringing a slightly different perspective of their own values and beliefs.

Culture isn’t immediate. It takes shape across time.

Slow Starts

Many great ideas aren’t popular at first. They take time, some proof, a story, and examples.

Umbrella’s, coffee, and even personal computers had many moments of not being popular. While it sometimes seems hard to believe, often great things require time to become great things.

Businesses, organizations, and groups of all sizes and styles experience new ideas. Some of those aren’t original, and most haven’t been tested or stood the test of time.

It doesn’t mean that those ideas, systems, or strategies are without value.

Becoming Popular

What may be required is consistent effort, devotion, and an undying level of persistence to bring them to life.

If the people involved care enough and demonstrate their commitment others will often jump on board. For every idea, there is an associated journey. Some are longer than others. Some flash in the pan and are then dismissed just as quickly.

The biggest ideas, those of great value, often aren’t catchy at first.

Being popular, or not, often has little to do with long-term success.

Not immediate almost never means, not worthwhile.

It may some day mean popular.

-DEG

Dennis E. Gilbert is a business consultant, speaker (CSP^TM), and culture expert. He is a five-time author and the founder of Appreciative Strategies, LLC. His business focuses on positive human performance improvement solutions through Appreciative Strategies®. Reach him through his website at Dennis-Gilbert.com or by calling +1 646.546.5553.

19
Jan 21
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Improving Attitude, Is It Possible Or Unlikely?

Tags : attitude leadership perception skills workplace

Do you believe that improving attitude is possible? What is a bad attitude and how does it develop?

Perhaps arguable, but the perception of someone having a bad attitude is just that, a perception. It is probably a perception within the bounds of consideration for what a normal or good attitude should look like.

Attitude may be connected to values and beliefs. It might have something to do with your interpersonal network, your family, your inputs, and what is happening in the environment around you.

Emotional tensions are often like seasons. They come and go. It is the inputs and narrative that surrounds each individual that will influence behavior. Often it is a perception of right versus wrong.

For example, in a team meeting if there are differing opinions and the opinions are brought to a debate, one side wins, the other loses. That can be enough to shape an attitude.

We see it everywhere. At work, at home, with adults, and with children. It happens in government and politics and it happens anywhere there are groups of people.

Improving Attitude

There are two tricks to help shape a better attitude.

The first is, setting the expectations for how work teams will navigate disappointment. If you don’t get your way, will you compromise to give a different direction a try? Or is the perception that you fight back, you fight back with workplace politics, bullying, or bad behavior?

The second is that you have to set the expectation for attitudes and behaviors. This is best accomplished by a strong focus on the organizational purpose and by connecting each and every job task and duty to the organizational mission.

When leadership has a strong focus of commitment to the mission and purpose and emulates that throughout all levels of the organization there is much less room for a bad attitude.

Improving attitude is a skill. It’s a skill because everyone has a choice for how they will navigate. Perhaps, not everyone has the discipline, but that is self-fulfilling if there is only enough time and energy to focus on the mission.

Attitude can be improved.

-DEG

Dennis E. Gilbert is a business consultant, speaker (CSP^TM), and culture expert. He is a five-time author and the founder of Appreciative Strategies, LLC. His business focuses on positive human performance improvement solutions through Appreciative Strategies®. Reach him through his website at Dennis-Gilbert.com or by calling +1 646.546.5553.

14
Dec 20
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Workplace Hide and Seek, Is It Derailing Performance?

Tags : culture hide and seek leadership performance workplace

In the game of hide and seek, hiding is the fun part. Nearly everyone wants to be the hider. Is workplace hide and seek derailing performance in your organization?

What causes the game to go on?

Hiders and Seekers

As a hider, often you can watch the seeker, you know if they are hot or cold. If they are way off track perhaps you extend some additional risk, it is almost wanting to be found, but not quite.

A seeker on the other hand is determined to locate the hider quickly. Looking towards previously known hiding spots, searching fast and almost frantic. The anticipation of flushing out a hider can be exhilarating. It is destined to happen. It is only a matter of time.

Eventually the hider and the seeker collide.

For the moment, the game is over.

Workplace Hide and Seek

In the workplace it seems the game sometimes continues.

It continues with those who perform just enough to not be noticed. Quietly, they await discovery. In some instances, they’ll risk a little more, almost taunting the seeker and if not found, the boundary just expanded.

The seeker often announces that they are coming. This gives the hider a chance to tidy up, secure their spot, and watch as the seeker inspects.

When the seeker passes by without noticing, the hider feels relief. They are better than the others who are about to get caught.

It is a game of moments. Moments of hiding and moments of seeking.

No one ever really wins at hide and seek.

Games are often played to fight off boredom.

People with a well-defined purpose and goals seldom get bored.

-DEG

Dennis E. Gilbert is a business consultant, speaker (CSP^TM), and culture expert. He is a five-time author and the founder of Appreciative Strategies, LLC. His business focuses on positive human performance improvement solutions through Appreciative Strategies®. Reach him through his website at Dennis-Gilbert.com or by calling +1 646.546.5553.

09
Dec 20
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Burned Trust and What It Might Be Costing You

Tags : advantage employees psychology of work trust workplace

Have you burned trust through your workplace actions? Trust may even be burned by inaction. What does this cost the organization?

Trust is a tricky part of any business endeavor. Everything from negotiations to getting work done. Unfortunately, many workplace leaders and frontline employees fail to recognize or have poor awareness about the implications of trust.

Imagine the busy manager. Struggling to prioritize and get things done that result in positive momentum for the team. What should she do?

Delegate, right?

Burned Trust

What if she doesn’t trust anyone on the team to handle the project?

What if she only trusts one key team member?

This form of limited trust that has long-term consequences.

In the short-run things get accomplished. In the long-run, the key team member begins to feel used and wants to back off of the high-output he normally delivers.

Why? Because he has arrived at the conclusion that he only needs to work as hard as the lowest-performing employee.

Why do more while others goof off?

5 Tips to Restore Team Trust

The manager, with an unwillingness to work towards building more trust, simply moves around the issue. Blame for this inaction is often placed on a very precious resource, time.

It seems easy to place the blame on time. In addition, many busy executives easily buy-in to this story. Shipping the order now is better than a delay. It’s a (long-term undesirable) short-run game.

Trust can be burned in many ways from many different angles.

Have you unknowingly burned trust?

More Than Just Team Members

Shortcomings on trust with customers and vendors are costly too.

Advertise a product or service but deliver something less and it burns trust.

Negotiate so hard with vendors that it threatens their view of your value as a customer and they’ll fail to be there, perhaps exactly when you need them the most.

Burning trust is often easy to do and hard to recognize.

The most successful organizations, the ones that stay on top, value trust as a part of their competitive advantage.

It doesn’t mean they get everything right, all of the time. It means that they work hard to keep the scale on the heavy side of trust.

-DEG

Dennis E. Gilbert is a business consultant, speaker (CSP^TM), and culture expert. He is a five-time author and the founder of Appreciative Strategies, LLC. His business focuses on positive human performance improvement solutions through Appreciative Strategies®. Reach him through his website at Dennis-Gilbert.com or by calling +1 646.546.5553.

25
Nov 20
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Idea Celebration Is Better Than Squashing

Tags : brainstorming celebrate ideas team meeting workplace

Idea celebration is one way to elevate the good stuff to the priority list. What are you or your team doing with new ideas?

At the start of the brainstorming meeting, someone suggests that no idea is a bad idea. When the chips are down and the next path is hard to locate, you search. If the competition rises up and puts a stake in some new ground you wonder why you didn’t think of it first.

What happens in your team with new ideas?

Idea Celebration

It seems like finding the reasons why it won’t work is the mission objective for some. Every idea is quickly met with the discussion of catastrophes from the past and a clever pitch about the connections to this new suggestion.

Problems are often managed in a similar fashion. For some, it feels more exciting to drown over the impacts of failure rather than spend energy on the possibility of a viable solution.

Solutions are not always perfect. New ideas are not without risk.

What if at the start of the brainstorming meeting there is a focus on celebrating every new idea?

The idea doesn’t always be put to the test at the first whimper of its mention. Perhaps let it simmer for a while, allow it to occupy some space, and consider why it will work instead of why it won’t.

New ideas often gain traction, or they don’t, based on belief.

The group dynamics of belief are powerful. They often grow over time. Some will grow in the spirit of support. Some will grow in the spirit of being against.

Fence-sitters often wait to jump in. They often weigh the risk as being greater for likability than the merit of the idea itself.

Maybe it is time to stop looking for why not and start supporting something different.

It may be an idea worth celebrating.

-DEG

Dennis E. Gilbert is a business consultant, speaker (CSP^TM), and corporate trainer. He is a five-time author and the founder of Appreciative Strategies, LLC. His business focuses on positive human performance improvement solutions through Appreciative Strategies®. Reach him through his website at Dennis-Gilbert.com or by calling +1 646.546.5553.

23
Nov 20
-

Workplace Stall Is Often Where It Begins

Tags : delays outcomes roadblocks stall workplace

What does it take to keep moving? Does forward motion carry too much risk or is it really just a workplace stall?

There are always risks associated with action. There are also risks associated with inaction. Which one creates change?

The easy answer is, both.

A better question is, which one costs more?

Delay or Stall?

Waiting on the proper weather pattern before launching the SpaceX rocket isn’t really a stall. It is a necessary action in order to create success.

The same is true for a cake baking in the oven, a watermelon growing in the field, or the traffic light that is glowing red. Likely, none of these represent a stall.

Stalling is more of a form of procrastination.

Maybe it would be better to wait until tomorrow.

Next week I start my diet.

There is still a lot of time to finish the project.

Are you guilty of the workplace stall?

Workplace Stall

Workplace stalling is more than a waste of precious time. It often allows other inferior work to continue to occur in the meantime. In many cases, the opportunity window may close.

Managers often stall when faced with employees needing performance improvement guidance. They stall because of the fear of conflict or because they are unsure of future outcomes.

Advertising teams often stall because they claim that they want to get the creative right. Someone needs to write copy, direct the photo shoot, or double check with the client.

People stall with continuing education, they stall with committing to a new car purchase, or they just can’t seem to find the time to schedule the dentist appointment.

Sometimes the invented roadblocks that create the stall are really about to cause something to begin.

It may be the beginning of the end.

There is a cost of both action and inaction.

Stalling often costs more.

-DEG

Dennis E. Gilbert is a business consultant, speaker (CSP^TM), and corporate trainer. He is a five-time author and the founder of Appreciative Strategies, LLC. His business focuses on positive human performance improvement solutions through Appreciative Strategies®. Reach him through his website at Dennis-Gilbert.com or by calling +1 646.546.5553.

16
Nov 20
-

Workplace Wait and the Consequences that Follow

Tags : consequences stall trust wait workplace

Have you experienced workplace wait? It’s when someone or everyone wants to follow a plan but they are waiting for something else to happen first.

We’re going to improve sales, as soon as we get a new sales manager.

Our quality is off, but next year we’re getting some new equipment.

We need to fix this, but let’s wait until the meeting next week to discuss how.

It happens all the time. You often forget that the period of wait has a price. And like it or not, the organization, the employees, and the customers are paying.

When the organization pays, everyone loses.

Perhaps in some cases, the cost is pushed to the customer. When the customer pays and the value is not recognized, eventually, the organization loses.

Enough pressure on the organization and the employees lose.

What are you waiting for?

Workplace Wait

Opportunity cost matters, everyone gets it. There are also costs associated with trust and value for the customer.

Are there team trust issues?

Join our team, next year you’ll get a promotion.

As soon as we close two more deals, we’re going to buy everyone a new laptop to improve productivity.

We know the shipping department is in shambles but there is nothing we can do until sales improve.

The wait is sometimes really just a stall. It puts a blanket over the problem, covers things up, and creates a future based largely on hope.

Hope often has a timeline. Left unchecked and the people begin to lose trust.

What are your plans?

Future Plans

Planning for the future matters. Forecasting future revenue, customers, and growth help build energy and excitement.

The future comes fast. There are expectations. Missed goals or shifting timelines can delay the forecast.

Sometimes people begin to feel like they’re waiting for nothing. It is a balancing act. A tight rope. Navigation is tricky. Trust and belief wane.

What is the cost of now?

The cost of now is sometimes less expensive than the cost waiting.

-DEG

Dennis E. Gilbert is a business consultant, speaker (CSP^TM), and corporate trainer. He is a five-time author and the founder of Appreciative Strategies, LLC. His business focuses on positive human performance improvement solutions through Appreciative Strategies®. Reach him through his website at Dennis-Gilbert.com or by calling +1 646.546.5553.

13
Nov 20
-

Unrealized Change is Always Connected to Opportunity

Tags : change innovation pivot technology workplace

“What’s new?” is a common way to strike up a conversation. A common answer, “Not much.” Yet unrealized change is happening all around you.

Thirty years ago, on or around this same calendar date, I got up, went through a brief morning routine of hygiene and breakfast, drove to my office, grabbed some coffee, and started writing code.

At that time, there wasn’t the internet as we know it today. We didn’t have cellular phones, at least not enough to speak about. And if I wanted to read something it probably started with a newspaper, magazine, or book. A real-to-life book, not a digital version.

This morning I got up, walked and fed the dog, popped a K-Cup in the Keurig, grabbed a cookie, and reported to my home office.

My home office is much more like a studio than an office of thirty years ago. Three high-definition cameras surround my workspace, complete with professional-grade shotgun microphones, three lights on tripods, and two-monitors plus one flat-screen TV all surrounding my workspace as I type.

Today I’ll visit one of my university partners while wearing a protective mask, sign some certificates of completion for the participants of an online leadership development training program, and return to my office by Noon.

My afternoon will be spent developing more programs, catching up on some accounting work, and preparing for the delivery of five programs across four days next week.

What’s new?

Not much.

Unrealized Change

I can’t imagine life without change.

People feel strained by what they refer to as information overload.

Many people who are under thirty years of age, the place where this story started, don’t plan to read anything other than the gibberish coming across their 3-inch by 4-inch cellular phone screen.

Much of the workforce won’t go to what might be referred to as a traditional workplace. A human virus plus technology collided and changed things nearly overnight.

More and more people are paid to interpret and dissect information and make decisions or take action based on what they’ve discovered from a digital device than ever before.

Cable television and digital streaming services pour content into homes and workplaces at speeds barely imagined just a few short years ago.

What is known is online shopping is a booming business while traditional retail largely struggles in decline. Thirty years ago, it was called a mail-order company, today its a staple of the economy.

Things are still changing.

Opportunity in Change

What is most useful may not be realizing the number of people you can touch in a single day. The distance that your message, your voice, or image can travel as you work with people in real-time across town, or across the country.

What may be most useful is to recognize the value of change and to determine how you will use it to improve the scope of your life and your work.

Arguably, the pace may have been slower thirty years ago.

So was the opportunity to make a difference.

-DEG

Dennis E. Gilbert is a business consultant, speaker (CSP^TM), and corporate trainer. He is a five-time author and the founder of Appreciative Strategies, LLC. His business focuses on positive human performance improvement solutions through Appreciative Strategies®. Reach him through his website at Dennis-Gilbert.com or by calling +1 646.546.5553.

12
Nov 20
-

Do Workplace Beliefs Outweigh Documented Results?

Tags : belief data evidence power workplace

What are your workplace beliefs? Do you believe you and your team are doing your best work? Do believe in the quality, customer satisfaction, and the efficiencies of your goods or services?

Have you ever believed in something so strongly that you tend to ignore the facts?

People believe in many things.

Religion

Global Warming

Bigfoot

Aliens

Moon Landing

It only takes one of these to get people engaged in a discussion, and I haven’t even mentioned conspiracy theories, government transparency, and the age of the Great Sphinx of Giza.

Most beliefs are personal, that is why they are often said to be off-limits in the workplace or in mixed social settings. Religion and politics are two of the most commonly suggested to avoid.

Imagine a belief in any one thing. Imagine the belief to be so strong that you can’t see the facts, you deny the existence of evidence, and you push forward with your belief.

What effort or extremes might you go to in order to keep your belief alive?

Workplace Beliefs

Sometimes the missing element in the workplace is belief. Dreams are shattered, expectations squandered, and the future outlook appears to be more of the same.

Forcing people into a belief is unlikely at best.

It is compelling messages, forward motion, and the perception of evidence that help shape direction. Even when the data may illustrate something contrary to the belief.

You can present the facts, show the data, and tell the story. Personal commitment will always be based on belief.

People spend a lifetime trying to prove someone or something wrong. People spend a lifetime trying to prove something as correct.

Bring the documentation but it is not nearly as powerful as what each individual chooses to believe.

-DEG

Dennis E. Gilbert is a business consultant, speaker (CSP^TM), and corporate trainer. He is a five-time author and the founder of Appreciative Strategies, LLC. His business focuses on positive human performance improvement solutions through Appreciative Strategies®. Reach him through his website at Dennis-Gilbert.com or by calling +1 646.546.5553.

Tag Archives: workplace

Feb 21

-

Process Matters

Jan 21

-

Slow Starts

Becoming Popular

Jan 21

-

Improving Attitude

Dec 20

-

Hiders and Seekers

Workplace Hide and Seek

Dec 20

-

Burned Trust

More Than Just Team Members

Nov 20

-

Idea Celebration

Nov 20

-

Delay or Stall?

Workplace Stall

Nov 20

-

Workplace Wait

Future Plans

Nov 20

-

Unrealized Change

Opportunity in Change

Nov 20

-

Workplace Beliefs

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