Issue #145: Why Your Organization Is So Slow, Stepping Away from a Problem, and More

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INSIGHTS (on leadership/self-leadership)

Would you say your organization moves too slowly? If so, you’re in good company, as new research shows 82% of fellow employees would say the same about where they work. A Gallup study pinpoints what’s happening here. First, the study defines agility as “a desire to move faster, change faster, and deliver faster in response to a marketplace that is moving, changing, and demanding more than ever before.” The research also indicates the three primary reasons agility is so challenging:

1. The Matrix. I don’t mean the red-pill/blue-pill one. I’m talking about the fact that over 80% of us work in a matrixed organization to some extent. This means that priorities often don’t align, negatively impacting productivity in a big way.

Solution: It’s absolutely essential that leaders do the hard work of aligning priorities across matrixed teams, while eliminating low-priority work. No matter how daunting that task might seem.? ?

2. Decision-Making is too far removed from the end-customer. I like how the Gallup researcher puts it:

“If the answer is, ‘I’ll have to get approval from my supervisor,’ an organization isn’t agile. If the answer is, ‘Let me fix that for you now,' it’s agile.”

Solution: Push decision-making further down the food-chain (requiring less layers to make a decision). Couple that with creating a culture where it’s ok to act and take risks on behalf of the customer, and even fail at it (as long as something is learned from it).

3. Waiting for perfect. Endless iteration and validation stifles productivity. Period.

Solution: When you achieve the “minimum loveable product,” go baby go. Then you can iterate, based on the most valuable kind of input of all - real world, real conditions, input. In this way, you keep things moving forward, while leveraging the customer to help you get to “perfect.”

IMPERFECTIONS (a mistake many make)

When you have a problem to solve (and who doesn’t), it’s best to keep pressing until you solve that problem, right? For the sake of efficiency and urgency, of course.

Actually, no.

It’s an easy mistake to make, as I explain in my new LinkedIn Learning course, Ten Habits of Great Problem-Solvers. In fact, researched published in the journal Psychological Science shows that stepping away from a problem and letting your mind wander on unrelated topics ultimately yields more creative problem solving when you return to the problem. So, while it may not feel efficient in the moment to walk away from the issue, it’s one of the best things you can do.

For example, I used to work a lot with creatives at advertising agencies. They consistently told me when they were under pressure to hit a deadline, they’d take a break from the project. The best ideas came to them not when they were working in their offices, straining to ideate, but when they were taking in a Broadway show or standup comedy act - not even thinking about the problem to be solved. They’d get a spark of an idea, and when they returned to thinking about the problem, creativity blossomed. As further confirmation of this phenomenon, Hollywood director and producer John Montgomery told me in an interview, “It only takes one minute to come up with a brilliant solution. I just don’t know when in the next month I’ll have it.”

IMPLEMENTATION (one research-backed strategy, tip, or tool)

Here’s a simple trick to determine if you’ve found a real insight on your business. When considering the insight, would you say, “Yes, that’s true,” or would you find yourself saying, “Yes! That’s soooo true.”

The latter means you’ve struck a deep chord of truth and have unearthed something not typically articulated. It’s a good sign you’ve found something worth doing something about.

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