Is My Idea Brilliant or Dull?

“Is my idea brilliant or dull” isn’t a useful question most of the time.

A more useful question is:

“What problem am I trying to solve?”

When you have a clear answer to that question, you can then start the process of testing your idea to see how good it is. All you need to do is:

  • Join or create a team who are passionate about solving the problem.
  • Create minimal liberating rituals and systems to test multiple solutions quickly.
  • Convince someone to finance the idea.
  • Find evangelists to sell the idea.

The next time you have a potentially brilliant idea, a useful question could be, “How much effort and time am I willing to spend to solve this problem?”

Our Stories Build Connections

Diverse group of people grasping each other's wrists to form a circle

Last week, I spent two days with my peers from the provost cabinet doing strategic planning. The sessions were facilitated by Dawan Stanford whose superpower is asking great questions.  

To prepare for our team building conversations, we were each asked to consider how we might answer the following questions:  

  1. What is an experience that shaped how you think about leadership?
  2. What kind of teamwork is required to exceed our academic plan goals?
  3. What is one quick story about a time you experienced our shared values in action?
  4. What is a quick story about a time you struggled, adapted and coped with a challenge?

The team has a lot of new members and so we are all still getting to know each other. The questions were interspersed through the sessions and allowed us to get to know each other better and practice vulnerability, generous listening and storytelling. 

Telling my core stories to others reminded me of my resilience and purpose and gave me confidence. Hearing other’s stories exposed the incredible talent and focus of my peers and made me excited to work with them.  

I came away from the retreat in awe of the talent and passion at the table, energized about the incredible opportunity in front of us, and extraordinarily grateful to be part of the team. 

How do you promote connections on your teams?

What’s Your Why?

This weekend, I participated in my first Pelotonia ride which was such an amazing example of how to create a community around a shared purpose. Pelotonia is a fundraiser to raise money for cancer research and this was the fourteenth year of the event.

The event was so fun and energizing! Throughout the weekend, I was consistently struck by how much effort it took to orchestrate the event and how important each person was in making the event so meaningful. I was also impressed by the constant reminders of why Pelotonia mattered and its immense effect on the community.

There were hundreds of volunteers that did everything from checking people in to supplying food. In each packet, there was a wristband that was meant for each rider to give to a volunteer to thank them for their service.

Pelotonia riders committed not only to training to ride but also to raising money for cancer research. We formed a team called the IT Pedal Pushers, led by Jay Young, who stepped up to organize the team and coordinate training rides. The team aspect of the ride was really important to me and made the event much more enjoyable.

The event also featured donors who support their family and friends through monetary donations. Many of the riders had the names of people they were riding for, which was another reminder of why this event mattered.

Hundreds of police officers lined the bike route, and we made a point of saying thank you to every one of them because it made the ride so much safer and enjoyable to not have to contend with car traffic.

The most unexpected boost for me came from the people who took the time to cheer along the race route. Dave Renner kept telling me about Granville, Ohio and how it was going to be the highlight of the ride and he was right. The streets were lined with people cheering for the riders. I have done a lot of cycling events and never been cheered before. It was great!

The day after Pelotonia, I got to take part in Ohio State’s summer semester graduation, which absolutely reminded me why our work matters. We transform lives through education. It is so energizing to connect ourselves and our teams back to the purpose of our work. How do you do this for yourself and your team?

Creating a Culture of Caring

Last week I heard from several friends who were experiencing major losses in their lives. I was grateful that they felt comfortable sharing their struggles with me so that I could support them. At work, we may not even know what individuals are going through in their personal lives, so we need to be deliberate in crafting a supportive culture.

Two ways to create a culture of caring in the workplace include making it okay to talk about personal things and giving grace to our colleagues when they are under stress.

We have implemented a few rituals on our team to create a safe space to share stories from our personal lives. The first and foundational session of our C3 (Confidence, Competence and Credibility) Leadership training starts with each participant sharing their core stories from their life. Every Friday in our stand-up meeting, we share what we are grateful for. This allows us to talk about our families and routines outside of work.

Another practice that we recently implemented at the beginning of our weekly meeting is a “what’s on your mind?” ice breaker. During the round robin, everyone gets one minute to talk about anything they’d like while everyone else listens without questioning or commenting.

Giving grace to each other is something we openly talk about on our team. “Assume positive intent” is a mantra that we use to inspire curiosity and discourage judgement when someone doesn’t meet an expectation. Giving grace to ourselves and our peers allows us to better communicate our needs to one another. When a colleague needs space to deal with personal stressors, we spread their work among other team members to lighten the individual’s load. We even have a tradition of donating vacation to colleagues who need it to take time off to care for a sick family member or themselves.

Creating a culture of care in the workplace is extremely valuable for the well-being of your team. I encourage you to try some of the practices you read in this blog with your team, or simply remember this advice from the late Robin Williams: “Everyone you meet is fighting a battle you know nothing about. Be kind. Always.”

Prioritizing Important Work

My days can be highjacked by urgent requests, especially as an IT professional. Important work that is less time-sensitive gets pushed aside for more pressing needs. I have adopted the following routine to prevent important projects from falling to the wayside.

  1. Most Important Work First – Each Monday morning, I create a list of the most important things that I need to accomplish for the week. I usually have several categories that I have adjusted over time. Right now, the categories that I use are Personal, Management, Relationships and Culture.
  2. Keep it Organized – As I make commitments during the week, I add them to the appropriate list.
  3. Focus Time is Key – I schedule focus work time in my calendar to first prioritize the tasks on my lists and then work on the most important items first.
  4. Check In Often – The lists I make each week are the anchor to my often-hectic schedule. I make sure to check in each day to see how I am progressing, and to reprioritize tasks if necessary.

I don’t always get everything done on each list by Friday, so the unfinished items can get transferred to the next week. While I may not have gotten to everything on my lists, this habit ensures that nothing gets lost in the chaos of more urgent requests.

What do you do to help you focus on the most important things?

Supporting Others as They Step Away

Woman Stretching

Last week, I took a day off from work. There were many things that happened including rolling power outages and cancelled meetings that left my calendar uncharacteristically open. I realized as I put my out of office message up that it was the first day in months that I had stepped away from the “office.”

I put “office” in quotes because the shift to remote work has erased the boundaries between our personal and work lives. Unless we choose to go to the secluded backwoods where there is no cellular service, we literally can be connected from anywhere in the world and keep working.

More than ever, we must make a conscious choice to take a break and step away from our work and to support our teams and colleagues as they do the same.

There were two examples from last week that allowed me to step away:

I was asked to provide some key information for leadership that required someone who was on vacation. After talking with my boss, we chose to delay a meeting rather than disturbing that person on their vacation.

On my day off, I got some news that I needed to deal with. After calling one of my team members to share the news, he told me that he was going to send me some information but extracted a promise from me to not look at it until I got back to work and to enjoy my day off.

These are small examples but made a huge difference in allowing me to unplug and reminded me of how important it is to support each other in stepping away from work.

How do you support your colleagues when they take a break?

I Get To

Last week, my leadership team joined the IT leadership team from the Wexner Medical Center to participate in the “Health Athlete” training program from the Ohio State School of Nursing. This is a program that was co-developed by Jim Loehr, whose work I have loved for many years and so I was very excited to attend the training.

The training was very focused on self-work and understanding our own values, habits and stories that drive energy. The goal at the end of the training was to find one small change that we could commit to in the next 90 days that would help us live more fully into our own values and priorities.

One of the sessions was very emotional for me as I uncovered a ton of negative stories that had been draining my energy and optimism. Making that visible to myself in a supportive and safe setting was both informative and empowering.

My “ah-ha” moment during the training was when the instructor talked about reframing the boatload of work that she had from “I have to…” to “I get to…” I realized that over the last several months, my perspective had changed from one of excitement and opportunity to one based on obligation and overwhelm.

My small change that I have committed to for the next 90 days is to use that reframe from “I have to” to “I get to.” My commitment to make that small change is helping me recognize how often I had been mentally shifting to “I have to” in all aspects of my life.

Just one example is that I have a goal to ride as many miles as I am years old on my birthday each year. Even though I love to cycle, I realized that I was NOT very excited when I thought about doing that this year because I was thinking of it as an obligation.

I did that ride last Saturday with so much joy! I got to ride 56 miles this year because I had the health, equipment, time and friends to do that ride with me.

What mental reframes have you found to be empowering and energizing in your life?

Finding The Right Tool

Image of tools hanging on a wall

I love tools and am constantly looking for resources that help me do things more efficiently in every part of my life. My husband teases me that I have used the chop saw I bought him as a gift more than he has. At work, my quest has been for tools to help me manage change. This ultimately led me to tools that helped me grow as a leader because I learned that WHO I AM is my most powerful organizational change tool.

I believe that all of us are leaders if we choose to be. At a minimum, we are the leaders of our own lives. You choose to be a leader when you step up to improve the world around you.

I am just starting to dig into a tool that I am really excited about because I have found that in my new role, I don’t have the right tool right now for the level of complexity and ambiguity. The tool is a book called Immunity to Change: How to Overcome It and Unlock the Potential in Yourself and Your Organization by Kegan  and Lahey. The adult development model described in the book has already helped me. I am planning on doing all the exercises in the book for my own development and growth.

 

Here is the short list of other tools and why they have been so instrumental in my own leadership journey.

What tools have you found to be helpful in your leadership journey?

Ground Yourself in Purpose, Not Fear

I have been feeling ungrounded lately. By that, I mean that I have been exhausted and grumpy, which is not normal for me. I went into scientist-mode and started experimenting to see what would help me feel better.

I started with physical things. I adjusted my CPAP settings, increased my exercise and focused on eating more healthy foods. Those things helped me feel less tired, but the grumpiness remained.

This meant that I needed to address my intentions and core motivations. I explored what might be happening with two trusted advisors—my executive coach and my husband. Both were helpful.

My executive coach gave me a summary of the Mastering Leadership model developed by Bob Anderson that has helped me immensely. You can learn more about this model at www.leadershipcircle.com.  The main point in the leadership model is that transformational leaders experience a profound shift of mind and character as they focus on outcomes rather than problems.

When we are problem-focused, our main goal is to reduce our anxiety when a problem occurs. This is fear-based and moves us away from our desired outcome. Being outcome-based involves being driven by a purpose, translating that purpose into a vision, and fully committing to that future. This means that because there is a gap between our current reality and our desired outcome, we need to EXPECT creative tension in ourselves and our teams.

The conversation with my husband was also illuminating.  He observed that I had stopped talking about my purpose to unleash the potential of every person and wondered why I had shifted my focus.

I am still working through this and am trying to figure out how to fully commit to my purpose but already feel more grounded and know that this is a lifelong journey, not a destination.

What helps you feel grounded?

Wonderful Whenever

Uninterrupted time to reflect and focus is hard to come by and absolutely necessary if we want to be innovative. I think of innovation as systematic improvements to any part of our processes, services or systems and want every person on our team to feel empowered to innovate.

Knowing we need uninterrupted time to do this, our leadership team has committed to each other to block meeting-free zones on our calendars that we will all respect so we can reflect and focus.

The times we have committed to are Meaningful Mondays from 8 to 11 a.m. and Fabulous Fridays from noon to 5 p.m. 

This is how I am planning on using the time.

On Meaningful Mondays, I will use the time to write this blog, which is a reflective exercise that helps me reground and reset for the week.  Then I will give myself space to think about the most strategic and important initiatives that I need to move forward. After doing that, I will usually, but not always, identify concrete work I need to do during the coming week.

On Fabulous Friday, I will use the time to complete commitments I have made during the week. Part of this will be evaluating whether I made progress on the most important items. I will also read articles that I have collected during the week that I want to explore. This time will set me up to be able to let ideas percolate over the weekend when I can start the process over again.

We will be checking in to see whether this practice is helpful through short surveys with our team. This is an experiment that we invite others to join if possible. If it is not possible, we invite you to block Wonderful Whenever on your calendar to make sure you have uninterrupted time for reflection and focused work so that you can innovate.