Big goals, big problems

The bigger the goal, the bigger the problems you will have to solve.

If it were easy, everyone would do it.

But often, a “hard” problem means that others were not willing to think in a certain way or take a certain position.

Being a great problem solver is part of achieving big goals.

Don’t have an answer? Not sure?

Remember, just because you are the leader, it doesn’t mean you have to have all the answers.  

If you are not sure, bring the question or problem to your team. Talk it through.

Crowd-source the best answer.

The advantage of disadvantages

How are your advantages disadvantages?

How can your disadvantages be advantages?

Overwhelmed?

When I felt overwhelmed in my work, it was because I had too much to do at once.  

I had too many windows open on my mental desktop.  I had expectations to get x, y, and z done, which was already a lot, and then something else unexpected came up that I had to deal with.  I was working hard, but could not get it all done.  

Sometimes it was my high expectations and manufactured deadlines that were stressing me out.  

What I learned is that I need to lower my expectations.  Get real.  Then look at all the things I had to do.  Decide which one was most important.

Delegate any of them to someone else if I could.  Decide if any of them just did not have to be done right now.  Then pick ONE thing.  

I could work on ONE thing at a time and not lose my mind.  Put all the rest off and decide to be ok with it if they do not get done.

Do one thing at a time.  When it’s time to go home, go.

What gets you overwhelmed is not how much stuff you have to do, it’s how you process it.  And that you can change.

If you want to fly with the Eagles….

We’ve heard “if you want to fly with the eagles, you can’t be scratching in the dirt with the turkeys.”

As leaders, we will only be as good as the people around us – the people on our team, especially the key people.

A leader or manager’s job is to develop people – to bring out the best in them.  

But after so long, if the person around you is not responding, not getting better, and making the same mistakes over and over again, it’s time to admit you have the wrong person.  By cutting them from your team you have the opportunity to get a fresh new person with better skills or character.  

If you select the right person to replace them, this decision alone can save countless hours of training and frustration in the future.

I have stuck with people longer than I should have.  When you remove someone from your team and others breathe a sigh of relief and say “what were you waiting for?”, you know you were too slow.

Improving the quality of the people on a team is the fastest way to improve the team.

It’s a problem to solve that will solve 1000 other problems.