Just do it!. Is timing important?
“Time is what we want most,but what we use worst.” ~William Penn
A friend of mine used to say that all is about timing. But what it means? Where from entrepreneur or manager will now that timing is right?
Every business decision is complicated process which involves cold analysis and intuition. Mix and weight between analysis and intuition depends on organization culture, manager personality and circumstances We are just starting to understand mechanisms of taking decisions by individuals. Corporations for many years has built systems to eliminate possibility to take bad decisions, but recent years are showing that still there is a lot of to do on this field.
The common truth in management is that it is better to take any decision than not take one. On the other hand in modern, information oriented business environment, complexity is making a decision process more and more unpredictable. Classic business models techniques need to adapt to dynamics of the markets and easy access to informations by customers. There we have some kind of paradox. Although markets due to cheap and easy access to information are more and more effective, the decision taking process is more and more difficult and complex.
The right timing of taking decision is even more difficult to estimate. Sometimes market and customers are simply not ready for new product or service. Sometimes innovative initial idea cause lack of innovation and development in upcoming years. If we assume that there is almost impossible to tell what is “right timing” is it worth to worry about this?
My answer is yes and no. Yes, as managers we must analyse all available data, consider all for and against. On the other hand, if we have internal feeling that we are doing right thing, do not wait – simply take decision and stick with it. Taking and accepting risk is integral part of decision taking process. Point is that risk must be quantified, agreed and accepted. When this exercise is done properly, then answer is no. Timing is no important as potential risk of not taking decision is much bigger than taking right decision in a wrong time. Taking a decision, even if timing is not perfect (because there is no such a thing like perfect timing) keep momentum in organization, keep buzz and excitement.
So what is my advice if we are unsure if timing is right? Do not bother about this. Just do it!
Related articles:
Timing is Everything by Nicholle L. Torres Timing in Business: Get your timing right and choose the correct cut-off and cut-in points by Edward de BonoManaging Others Starts with Managing Yourself
Anticipate the difficult by managing the easy. ~Lao Tzu
Fundamental question, which every leader must ask is: “Do I manage myself properly?”. This is necessary condition to have ability to manage the others. Self-management defined as “methods, skills, and strategies by which individuals can effectively direct their own activities toward the achievement of objectives” should be key responsibility for every leader.
The best way to make this is life fully and be consistent with your own values and believes. This internal integrity is a good prognosis for getting people trust, for achieving goals and to have a feeling of fulfillment. It helps to develop a respect and stimulating working enviroment. If in addition you can listen, you are on the right way to build solid base to your personal growth, growth of the members of your team and growth of your business.
It is trivia, but you have to find happiness in the job you have. Find it now. Or change the job. It is not utopia. It is a must. Life is too short to do things which you do not like or want to do. Life is too precious to manage it wrong. And as leaders we are responsible for creating the environment which get the best from team members. The good thing is, that to get the best from your people is easy. You have to give them the best from you. To be able to do it, you have to manage your life the best way possible.
The beauty of this idea is, that every of us will find own way to do it. But every of us must find courage to follow this path.
Related articles:
What’s Your Story? How Personal Narratives Impact Leadership by Robert S. Kaplan 12 Rules for Self-Management by Rosa SayBe Idealist. It Makes Life Easier.
What a man can be, he must be. ~Abraham Maslov
Douglas R. Conant in his article “The Power of Idealistic-Realism: How Great Leaders Inspire and Transform” is proclaiming, that that idealism and realism are the two leadership attributes that truly inspire and mobilize people. I want to focus on the first part of this duo – Idealism.
The roots of the word idealism comes via idea from the Greek idein (ἰδεῖν), meaning “to see”. What leaders must “to see”? The core purpose of leadership is to see and explore potential in every member of the team. So this is the first thing to see. Potential of your people.
Idealism is giving people deeper motivation to work. I think that the source of this deeper motivation is self-actualization achieved by finding a higher idea. “What a man can be, he must be”. Work with a greater idea makes leader life easier. First, it help to communicate the vision of the company. Secondly great ideas appeal great people. That is why John Sculley become Apple’s CEO. Because he has a chance to change the world, not only to sell sugared water.
Idealism can also help to see new opportunities. If you know what is your vision, your senses and business instinct are naturally focused on all new potential of growing business. It helps also to take strategic decisions what company do (or what not to do).
Idealism keep higher ethic standards in every organisation. Idealist does not cheat. He is focused on fulfilling his own mission. By this action he is creating value for organisation. This is next meaning of leadership – creating values by self-actualization organisation members. Above all, every good creation – artistic, business – is about creating something that you are proud of.
Idealism helps to keep open and honest communication. Internal and external ones. It is like a needle of the compass pointing the right direction.
But idealism can be (in some cases) also danger to organisation. If it change to so call idealism trap. When idea itself is consuming more efforts than bringing results it is possible, that idea instead of being “Great Idea” is only a way to cover incompetence, laziness and other common company disease. A true values must stand behind every vision. It must not be only a PR slogan. To fulfill the idea with values, among other factors, company need people who want, not must. Which a realistic optimists. Which “can see” and act. Which love what they are doing. I believe, that idealists will change the our world for better place.
Creativity – Key Factor for Successful Business
Business has to exercise your creative instincts. ~Richard Branson
For centuries creativity was attribute of artists. In last 30 years importance of creativity in a context of business activities increased dramatically. Today creativity is highly required skill not only in marketing department but also in engineering or finance professions. Mentioning creativity in finances I do not mean a Tyco or Enron way of “being creative in finance”.
Today we are knowing, that creativity is rather skill not a gift. Modern theories of creativity are trying to find and answer to question “Why some people are more creative than others?”. These theories are describing creativity as process. Well, and who better than managers know how to manage, improve and re-engineer processes?
To understand how to support creativity, still rare asset in many companies, let’s have a look what conditions are favourable to allow creativity grow.
One of the myths is telling that people are creative working under stress. The truth is that there is direct relation between emotions and creativity. Positive emotions increasing creativity while negative ones decreasing. What it means for us? Well, we can create an organisation culture which is based on positives, not negatives. Promoting working environment full of positive emotions we get creativity as a bonus. More over, such organisations naturally attracting better workers. It is proven, that people who are realistic optimists are performing much better than pessimists.
Second thing which we as managers can do to support creativity in our organisation is to support cultural variety. This is natural catalyst for creativity. Different people are looking at the same problem from different perspective. It starts creative thinking process in other member of the team.
The next step after employing creative people, support creative environment is to make sure that organisation is able to manage creative teams. To be successful in this tasks organisations must understand benefits from being creative. Among many others I will mention two biggest benefits for every organisation. First of all creative approach (in every aspects of business activities) helps differentiate. Next benefit for promoting creative behavior can be treated like insurance against unexpected. When the crisis situation come (which is only question of time) creative teams will find better ways how to manage crisis. This will make every organisation stronger – people will believe that what ever future will bring, they have a creative skill to manage this.
Recipe for success will be to integrate creativity in your business models. Create conditions conducive for creativity. Once it is done, you will never regret. Because creativity is a key factor for successful business; and we are all creative.
Related articles:
Getting Down to the Business of Creativity by Julia Hanna The 6 Myths Of Creativity by Bill Breen The Role Of Creativity In Business by Nick Rice 6 Steps to Achieving Creativity in Business, Personal Life by Deborah Kotz7 Managerial Sins
Below you will find my variation for a subject of managerial sins.
1. Lack of courage.
Courage is the first of the human qualities because it is the quality which guarantees all the others.
~Winston Churchill
Courage attract and inspire other people. It is building respect, trust and spirit in organisation. It affect all aspects in organisation. Great ideas, could be killed by lack of courage. Courage is a factor which helps to avoid rest of the sins mentioned below. Where is no courage, there is no leadership. Where is no leadership, there is no success.
Tip: If you see lack of courage in top management – look for another job.
2. Wishful thinking.
Great minds have purposes; others have wishes. ~Washington Irving
Ignoring facts, expecting impossible, waiting for miracles. These are typical symptoms of disease which I call “Wishful thinking”. Creative accountancy is a typical example of this sin (from controlling it become PR tool). Ignoring facts, focusing on everything but not on a root of a problems, in a worse case creating virtual problems – all of this is lead sooner or later to a crisis.
Tip: Promote diversification open discussion and courage. It will not allow to spread this disease in your company.
3. Lack of honesty.
Honesty is the cornerstone of all success, without which confidence and ability to perform shall cease to exist. ~Mary Kay Ash
Honesty needs courage, maturity and integrity. These values are important in managing life and managing business. No meter if you are preparing new marketing campaign, have yearly evaluation meeting or have difficult discussion with your boss – be honest.
Tip: Focus on honesty during recruitment process. You will avoid many problems in the future.
4. Indecisiveness.
Indecision and delays are the parents of failure. ~George Canning
One of the key attributes of manager. In fact, this is core of the manager’s job – to take decisions. It is paradox, that indecisiveness is very often hidden behind…. “extreme decisiveness” . We are all knowing this case. Decisions are taken on every subject (new font in corporate email, new menu in canteen, new wall colors in the office – name it by yourself) but not on solving the truth business problems. True decisions are postponed. One of the typical symptoms is micromanaging, expanded reporting, plenty of meetings – naming only few. All of this allowing indecisive decision makers to hide their indecisiveness.
Tip: Do not rush. Think about every aspect of decision which you are taking. Consult with others. But focus on taking real decisions, which are moving business forward. Make a deadline for taking decision and stick with this.
5. Lack of communication.
Bad human communication leaves us less room to grow. ~Rowan D. Williams
Very often, people who are talking about open and honest communication are the worse communicators. It is easy to be open with others when you are communicating good things. It is much more difficult when you have to announce bad or not popular it is much more difficult to stand the ground. True leader builds trust by communicating not by avoiding communication. Not telling anything or worse, not telling truth – demolish morale, impair trust in leadership and allow people to fulfill this communication gap with their own “truths”. Instead of focusing on hard work to go through crisis, people are focusing on guessing what boss is not telling.
Tip: If you do not know – simply ask. Challenge with a questions. There is nothing to lose. There are no stupid questions. Only stupid answers. Or worse – lack of answers.
6. Not performing.
An ounce of performance is worth pounds of promises. ~Mae West
You know this type of people. Hours are telling you what they will do, what should be done. They developed an incredible skill sets – to hide lack of performance behind circumstances and others faults. Very often these kind of people have very high EQ which allow them to be covered by other team members.
Tip: Set up very strict controlling mechanisms and regularly review performance members of your team. And if somebody is permanently under-performing have no scruples to get rid such individual.
7. Short term thinking.
Leadership is, among other things, the ability to inflict pain and get away with it – short-term pain for long-term gain. ~George Will
It is easy to find a thousands reasons for short-term benefit against long-term value creation. Especially that one of the common techniques used by non-performances is to tell on how bright and successful future their are working on. If mission and vision of the company are not clearly defined and communicated (internally and externally) then it is very easy to be trapped in short-term thinking. Mission and vision of the company are the compass, which hold the company on proper course during difficult times.
Tip: Define and communicate mission and vision of the company. Then there will be no doubt to every member of the team what is right thing to do.
Conclusion
We are all sinners. We are only human beings. However good manager, should have a distance to his actions, behaviors and to his or her managerial sins. That is why to have a coach can help. Somebody can ring alarm bell very early to avoid deadly sinning.
What to do if you already have sinned? Accept your fault, apologise and ask for forgiveness. But more important – do not sin again.
Construction Industry Needs Steve Jobs.
Construction is not sexy. Construction is hard, dirty job full of traps in current financial climate. This is how it is today. And this is how it was a century ago. Construction industry as a whole has not changed significantly in past decades. Sites are much more safer places to work, better organised but at the end of the day, construction process has not changed.
Any progress can be achieved by evolutionary or by revolutionary changes. But why construction industry is not changing? There is simply answer to this question. There is (or rather there was) not a good reason. Through the decades costs of low efficiency, lack of innovations were transferred to the end client. And client was paying for this knowing, that in long perspective value of investment will increase. With a financial crisis this times are over.
Construction business model – cash rich, low margin – is not motivating main players on the market to make radical changes. But things must change. Cash reach low profit business model is sustainable only if turnover can be increase year by year (or worse case keep at the same level). Increasing margins is very difficult in current climate. Of course weakest player disappear from the market giving a breath space for remaining ones. This natural market mechanisms keep industry going. Going on lower gear.
To make a big step forward, the whole industry needs to change. Businesses must evolve from simple brick contractor to customer demand driven manufacturer. To achieve this we need visionary which will do for construction industry this, what Steve Jobs did for IT industry. We need a person, which will have a courage to cross current limitation, re-think the business from beginning, find new values. I think that new potential values are laying in following areas.
- Values can be created on the border of two categories. Using analogy from Apple – introducing new hardware products (ipod) was driving and was driven by introducing new content provider (iTunes store). The same can be done in construction industry. Revenue streams are not generating only from contract job itself (core business) but also by adding maintenance service to the developer (added value to the core business). There is much more possible sources of new business ideas on the border of two categories.
- Much wider and deeper implementation of new technologies into industry. BIM is a great example how relatively simply idea can make a huge improvements in organisation.
- Re-engineering and optimization of current processes in organisation using tools common for manufacturing industry but still exotic to construction.
- Better understanding end user needs. I am using the word end user (not client) intentionally. In most cases client knows exactly what wants to have for money paid. A lot of architects, interior designers etc. representing investors instructing contractors what, how from what material should be done. And this is fine. But without understanding needs not only client, but also end user the industry will not move forward.
So, what must happen to change construction industry? Everybody of us have to focus on evolving business, step by step increase efficiency, lose less material. Let’s implement kaizen philosophy in construction industry. And then we need revolutionist. Who it will be? Have no idea, but can not wait to find out.
First time. Ever.
Well, this is my first blog ever. Do not know (excuse me lack of experience but it is really, really my first time 
) if I should tell Hello World. Anyway coming to the point. This will be a place where I want to put on the paper (well old phrase, not exactly reflecting the writing in 21st century) some of my thoughts about leadership, business strategy, project management and how technology changing the business.
Robert Kowalski 