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Logical Business Decisions
Written by Ron Potter   
Monday, 05 July 2010 11:10 am PDT

Over the last twenty years of business consulting I’ve collected a nice little Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) data base of a couple of thousand business leaders.  I’ve also been fortunate to compare my data base with a huge data base of business leaders collected by the Center for Creative Leadership and our percentages were nearly an identical match.  Although there are a couple of outstanding features in the data, one feature in particular stands out above all others.

Over the last twenty years of business consulting I’ve collected a nice little Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) data base of a couple of thousand business leaders.  I’ve also been fortunate to compare my data base with a huge data base of business leaders collected by the Center for Creative Leadership and our percentages were nearly an identical match.  Although there are a couple of outstanding features in the data, one feature in particular stands out above all others.

 

But, let’s examine the science.  One new book about recent brain mapping and neuroscience, Management Rewired says:

 

“But perhaps the most surprising discovery has come from mapping the path information travels from our sense organs to our awareness of the world we live in. Not only are the perceptual areas of the brain involved, so are the areas responsible for our memories, our feelings, our beliefs, and our aspirations. Our minds aren’t objectively recording our experience of the world; they’re creating it, and that creation is influenced by everything else going on in the brain. Each of us lives in a mental world of our own making.

The world we know is only what we think it to be, and we can’t assume other people will think the same way we do.

 

Reasoning has nothing to do with the way we solve problems, make decisions, and plan for the future. At best, logic is just a way to justify conclusions we have already reached unconsciously.”

Wow!  None of us actually has a grasp on reality.  We’re each making up our own picture and story as we go along.  We may be making logical decisions but they’re based on our personally developed and perceived logic.  We know from our marketing guru’s that people make purchases based on emotions and then justify the purchase with logic (Once, while admiring a Chevy Corvette my wife said “I see no logical reason to buy a Corvette.”  So, what does logic have to do with it Wink.  I’m afraid we make decisions the same way.  We make them based on emotions (memories, feelings, beliefs, aspirations, etc) and then seem to justify the decision based on some sort of logic.  This finding has a great deal of impact on teamwork, leadership and corporate cultures (TLC) that we’ll explore in the future.

 

 

 

 
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Humility (AGAIN!)
Written by Ron Potter   
Thursday, 27 May 2010 02:49 pm PDT
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Patience
Written by Ron Potter   
Sunday, 16 May 2010 06:50 pm PDT

Wayne Hastings and I have been working on the outline for our next book about team building.  Our first book Trust Me was about building individual leaders (self included) and it really needs to be the foundational approach to any great team.  But, we all know that you can have a group of great individuals who never seem to gel as a team and that’s not productive either.  It takes as much work to build great teams as it does to build or become a great leader.

Leaders who don’t think they need to do team building because they have great team members

 

The first topic we’re going to discuss for building great teams is patience.  I believe that if you were to ask my family (wife and two daughters) they would tell you that I’m the most patient man in the world….  until I’m not!  I seem to have a great deal of patience for most situations but when I run out of patience I don’t come down gradually.  Nor do I stair step down one level at a time.  My patience ends like a rock being kicked off a 1,000 foot cliff that plummets with the acceleration of gravity until it smashes on the floor of the canyon.  My girls actually developed into an early warning system for me.  When I would see them quickly jump up and bolt from the room in unison, I began to understand that my patience was approaching the cliff and they had picked up the warning signs.

 

One of my clients currently has a similar trait.  He has a great deal of desire and compassion to grow and develop his team and constantly pushes them to become better then they were the year before.  He will start a project that is going to challenge and grow them over time and then gives them enough time to accomplish the task.  But, if he is not seeing sufficient progress as critical deadlines approach, his rock will eventually get kicked over the cliff and then he jumps in with great fury and gets the task completed.

 

Why do we reach this cliff where things go bad in a hurry?  A couple of reasons are very obvious to me.

  1. Leaders mistakenly assume that members of their team will “see it” (understand all that needs to be figured out in order for the growth spurt to take place) or will figure it out along the way in their effort to complete the task or project
  2. A basic misunderstanding of good project management

 

By definition, a growth experience can’t necessarily be figured out ahead of time.  It’s a new experience.  You’re figuring out something that you’ve never seen or experienced before.  You’ll either not see it at all or if you do you may not execute in a very efficient or effective manner.  Leaders often forget their own learning curve experiences.  They made these same mistakes years ago or even if it was only recently that they figured it out, they now only remember the end state of the new knowledge, not what they went through to learn the new behavior or understanding.  Leaders must work harder then they expect to help people understand the new expectations, learn the processes it will take to get there, and have a vision of the new normal.

 
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Bloging is Easy
Written by Ron Potter   
Sunday, 16 May 2010 06:10 pm PDT

Blogging is easy. Writing is difficult.

I started blogging for two reasons. The main was that many of my clients were asking for some regular input and reminders of the many things we talk about during our consulting and coaching engagements. The second reason was that I wanted to experience the technology of this relative new media form and for the discipline of writing. Well, I’ve experienced it and found myself to be lacking in the skill and discipline of writing.

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Time Management
Written by Ron Potter   
Sunday, 16 May 2010 05:38 pm PDT

I know, I know, I haven’t posted a blog in forever. While that issue has been nagging at me for weeks it took the gentle reminder of a close friend that I had neglected this duty (thanks Armin). Several things strike me about this situation:

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More Articles...
  • Work Life Balance (Transition)
  • Work Life Balance (Transition)
  • Work-Life Balance (Quadrant II)
  • Work-Life Balance (Connectedness II)
  • Work-Life Balance (Connectedness)
  • It's Not Rocket Science
  • Story Tellling & Trust
  • What’s love got to do with it?
  • Knowing the Answer Can Be Very Costly (Part 2)
  • Knowing the Answer Can Be Very Costly (Part 1)
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Recent Blog Posts

  • Logical Business Decisions
  • Humility (AGAIN!)
  • Patience
  • Bloging is Easy
  • Time Management

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