Phil Phillips, Contributing Editor12.04.17
Last month we discussed the four prominent traps leaders many time fall into based on Robert H. Schaffer (Harvard Review) behavior traps and those damaging mistakes.
• Trap One: Failing to set proper expectations.
• Trap Two: Letting subordinates off-the-hook (excusing them) in the pursuit of overall corporate goals.
• Trap Three: Waiting while associates prepare, prepare, prepare.
• Trap Four: Colluding with staff experts & consultants.
To become a highly successful leader one must effectively conquer these traps. These behavior traps will disrupt the most prolific of organizations. Reason being, these traps tend to support one another in behavior that executives many times do not perceive.
Schaffer observed, “These traps account for such significant productivity losses that if you’re willing to confront them, you can find major gains.” 1
Of course, the very first step in surmounting these traps deals with becoming aware of them. Go back and pinpoint current proceedings where behaviors described in the four traps apply. Then conduct experiments with more effective methods. Start small personal experiments and enjoy the results. These experiments can be very useful and meets three criteria:
1. Quickly produces concrete & reinforcing results: This is not a preparatory exercise ... it works.
2. There is little threat of failure.
3. It is restricted enough to reveal a clear connection between the experimental behavior and the outcome.
Grow Accomplishments
To break out of the Traps, managers have to clash with their own resistance to change, as they would in trying to change any well-entrenched routine. Each individual manager needs to experience instinctively the dramatic improvements that are possible. This is why individual managers should always start with their own modest, low-risk experiments.
Once you do gamble with small experiments and succeed, you can rapidly expand your goals. Consider a large multi-divisional industrial tape producer which conducted 13 small experiments with the objective to accelerate sales revenue in a number of its divisions. In each case, an informal, cross-functional team took on the job of getting an order within 100 days for a new product that was moving slowly through the drawn out development sequence.
One team designed a consumer version of an industrial adhesive tape resulting in market introductions within the condensed time frame. Over the course of two years of such experiments globally, this company incrementally added $150 million per year in sales.
Breakthrough experiments create dynamism through vigilant focus and increasingly larger successes. Carefully selected and designed, breakthrough experiments can deliver large dividends.
References
1 Robert H. Schaffer, HBR, September, 2010
• Trap One: Failing to set proper expectations.
• Trap Two: Letting subordinates off-the-hook (excusing them) in the pursuit of overall corporate goals.
• Trap Three: Waiting while associates prepare, prepare, prepare.
• Trap Four: Colluding with staff experts & consultants.
To become a highly successful leader one must effectively conquer these traps. These behavior traps will disrupt the most prolific of organizations. Reason being, these traps tend to support one another in behavior that executives many times do not perceive.
Schaffer observed, “These traps account for such significant productivity losses that if you’re willing to confront them, you can find major gains.” 1
Of course, the very first step in surmounting these traps deals with becoming aware of them. Go back and pinpoint current proceedings where behaviors described in the four traps apply. Then conduct experiments with more effective methods. Start small personal experiments and enjoy the results. These experiments can be very useful and meets three criteria:
1. Quickly produces concrete & reinforcing results: This is not a preparatory exercise ... it works.
2. There is little threat of failure.
3. It is restricted enough to reveal a clear connection between the experimental behavior and the outcome.
Grow Accomplishments
To break out of the Traps, managers have to clash with their own resistance to change, as they would in trying to change any well-entrenched routine. Each individual manager needs to experience instinctively the dramatic improvements that are possible. This is why individual managers should always start with their own modest, low-risk experiments.
Once you do gamble with small experiments and succeed, you can rapidly expand your goals. Consider a large multi-divisional industrial tape producer which conducted 13 small experiments with the objective to accelerate sales revenue in a number of its divisions. In each case, an informal, cross-functional team took on the job of getting an order within 100 days for a new product that was moving slowly through the drawn out development sequence.
One team designed a consumer version of an industrial adhesive tape resulting in market introductions within the condensed time frame. Over the course of two years of such experiments globally, this company incrementally added $150 million per year in sales.
Breakthrough experiments create dynamism through vigilant focus and increasingly larger successes. Carefully selected and designed, breakthrough experiments can deliver large dividends.
References
1 Robert H. Schaffer, HBR, September, 2010
