The Personal Places Where the Business Answers Hide

Being in control of your business sounds good, right? In some respects, that may be the very thing holding you back from the successes you are working so hard to attain.

It all depends on what kind of control you are committed to. If you are committed to the "lone cowboy" approach, you are courting the kind of disaster that ego is expert at creating.

If, instead, you are committed to being in service to a mission and vision that may require your humility instead of your Rambo-like decision-making powers, you may just see the holy grails of business: where the core troubles lie, and where the most unexpected and regenerative answers are hiding.

You already know about the Iceberg of Ignorance. We all do. But we have made an enormous error in leaving the people solutions to Human Resources, surveys, surface reward structures and comments about "open doors".

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Do you want to know what your unseen problems are?

Trust me, your employees know the problems. They not only know what the problems are, but all of the areas of your business that are negatively impacted as a result. That is invaluable information! What they need in order to share that information is, first, some honest-to-God assurance that they will not suffer for sharing those problems, because they know if you have a delicate ego, and they know what bosses with delicate egos can do to their livelihood. Second, they need a stake in what you will do with that shared information; will you keep them in the loop or, so much better, give them a part in the procedural fix you have in mind.

Do you want solutions?

Try these two words on for size if you want new ideas and directions you have never thought of:  Group Mind. 

I'm not talking about calling another ubiquitous company meeting and inviting people to speak up. That is a famously unsuccessful method as people get stage fright when speaking up in front of one person, not to mention an entire company.

But bring a topic to a room of people and invite them to let their hair down, and you're 50% to your next idea. first invite them to discuss something completely unrelated to business; something that will create laughter and the heightening of humanness in the room. Next, invite each person to write a shorthand version of their idea on a sticky note and put it up on the wall with everyone else's.

When you finish all of the steps of that "project" and then move your people on to brainstorming about your business need, you are going to be tapping a group mind that is relaxed, more connected, and buying in to what is now a group idea, and potentially a dynamic group goal.

Soylent Green

Remember the revelatory line at the end of the movie, Soylent Green? "Soylent Green is people!"

Well, we're not cooking up people here, but your answers are definitely hiding in these amazing humans you work with day in and day out. 

The key to that lock, as a leader, is you.