Do you recognize where we are? We’ve been here before. This is the place where I tell you that ideas are already in your head, that it’s a matter of letting yourself have them — not shutting them out. It’s when I remind you that you can be an idea magnet again. I tell you that ideas are waiting for you. I ask you if you’ve started seeing and hearing them.
Whew! Now that the déjà vu is over. We can get on with sparking spectacular ideas.
When I compiled this list of ten critical skills, it was an original list — the list came from my head not from the Internet, not from some book. I’ve done continuous work on thinking skills for years so it wasn’t a huge hardship to think some more on the skills I consider critical. Is any one idea original? No. Not one on that list is unique or spectacular. The value-added is that I put them together and pointed the need to have them for success.
Originality is often how we look at things. The most original thought I’ve encountered — that hasn’t been around for years — was my six-year-old son’s drawing of the solar system as if he were standing on Pluto, looking in toward the sun. Even that was just a new take on a picture that’s been around for a long, long time.
True originality –a brand new idea — is hard to come by, but that’s okay. It rarely works in business. True originality is expensive and rarely sells. As good as I am with ideas I’ve learned if I find one that has been done before, tha it’s because of one of three reasons. [Read more…]
Use this worksheet to gather information when you’re designing a complex process as described in Critical Skill 4: Part 2-Designing a Complex Process and Critical Skill 4: Part 3-A Virtual Process.
Fill in as much information as you can before you begin the process design. Then use the worksheet throughout the process to guide you. You can use this form even when you delegate process design to a team that reports to you.
1. The Leader of the Process Design Team will be ____________________________
2. Assign the Visionaries and Explorers. Who are the big picture, global thinkers who will help decide on the work flow? Which stages of the process will each of these team members represent?
Name: ______________________ Stage(s): __________________________________
Name: ______________________ Stage(s): __________________________________
Name: ______________________ Stage(s): __________________________________
Name: ______________________ Stage(s): __________________________________
Name: ______________________ Stage(s): __________________________________
3. What steps will the work follow? Note: This discussion should include the big picture thinkers listed above only at this point. The detail people should not be present. (Take notes on the big picture process discussion using separate pages. Summarize or draw a flow chart to summarize the process the above team designs in the space below.)
The Proposed Process
4. Assign the King’s Guards and Risk Managers. Who are the detail thinkers who will challenge the proposed process design? Which stages of the process will each of these team members represent?
Name: ______________________ Stage(s): __________________________________
Name: ______________________ Stage(s): __________________________________
Name: ______________________ Stage(s): __________________________________
Name: ______________________ Stage(s): __________________________________
Name: ______________________ Stage(s): __________________________________
5. When the process is defined, the big picture people share the summary/flow chart with the detail folks before a meeting occurs with all team members. Any member of the team can list questions and concerns here.
____________________________________________________________________
____________________________________________________________________
____________________________________________________________________
____________________________________________________________________
____________________________________________________________________
6. The Explorers and Visionaries present the process design in detail to the King’s Guards and Risk Managers under the moderation of the leader. Now is the time to find the holes in the thinking — to validate the process and the plan.
When that discussion is complete, the process will stand as a working plan. The entire group should agree that this is the process, until the process doesn’t work, at which time, any member of the group can ask the team leader to call a meeting to adjust the plan.
Process isn’t hard if you take charge of it, instead of letting it drag you along.
–ME “Liz” Strauss
Related articles:
Critical Skill 4: Part 1-Process Models
Critical Skill 4: Part 2-Designing a Complex Process
Critical Skill 4: Part 3-A Virtual Process
10 Skills Most Critical Skills Series on the SUCCESSFUL SERIES Page
If you’re following the soap opera that is Successful Blog, I’m halfway through writing Critical Skill 5 on Originality, as you might know, but along the way I was interrupted with a challenge. Ariane Benefit from NeatLiving.Net wrote an in-depth comment about process and how it works for her, which ended with these statements.
So basically I see the rules you presented that work so well in a corporate setting actually have their counterpart in the virtual, ultimately highly democratic world of blogging.
. . . if my post inspires you to write the virtual version . . . it was worth it. — from a comment exchange on Critical Skill 4: Part2-Designing a Complex Process
I really wanted to leave them on the page and continue on with the piece on originality. It was hard enough writing about process in the brick and mortar world. Still the comment stayed with me. It followed me around the house . . . and popped into my mind every time I went to write about anything else. After all, it had two things going for it. Ariane Benefit is a reader and I have a really hard time walking away from a delicious challenge like that — even when I know it will involve close contact between my head and a few brick walls I don’t need. [Read more…]
I can almost count on it happening. When I’m stuck on how to write something, when I really need some direction on how to frame a concept, I just start listening for one. Sure enough in a day or two, someone will say something.
I was working on the post for Critical Skill 5: Originality — no small task I might add. How do you talk about being original? I did my usual walking and thinking, but most of my way to original thinking is intuitive, hard to explain in words.
I like challenges, but sometimes they make my head hurt. So I put my question to the universe and left myself open to any answer it might bring me. Sure enough, it did within a couple of hours.
[Read more…]
It was an interview with the Chairman of the Board of a publishing company. We had just taken a break. I came back from stretching my legs to find six 4ft. x 8ft. foam core boards that made one GIANT flow chart, supposedly outlining the publishing process in complete and total detail.
I thought, “Ohmygod. They’re one of those kinds of companies.”
He said, “So, what do you think of that?”
I said, “I believe it was very useful for the folks who put it together.”
I usually think of work situations like I would a dating relationship You don’t date a guy thinking you’ll change him. That I took this job thinking I could change this company was just wrong. [Read more…]