To watch the Monday Morning Minute for 03-26-2012 click here

Today’s post is a continuation from yesterday’s about why people get stuck.

3. Inertia:
The third reason why people get stuck is because of inertia. Inertia from a management consulting perspective is best characterized as blindly continuing to repeat a task, process, or behavior because you’ve been successful in the past doing so. Inertia at its core is about maintaining the status quo and remaining comfortable. While there are good reasons to repeat certain aspects of our work, preserving the past can become more valued than creating a new more desirable future whether for ourselves, our employees, and most importantly for our customers.

When it comes to remaining comfortable the vast majority of people have a peculiar ability to maintain the status quo even when the consequences for doing so can be deadly. For example, eighty-five percent of the people who have heart bypass surgery have returned to the exact same lifestyle and diet within two years of their surgery. That’s the same lifestyle that required them to have heart bypass surgery mind you. So, no matter how uncomfortable their surgery was; no matter how concerned they are for their future health and well being, the inertia of eating and exercising the way they did before surgery pulls them by the scruff of the neck back into their old habits.

Aside to reader: In order to counteract the negative aspects of inertia you’ll want to ask whether your perspective of the future is rooted in fear or faith. If you fear the future you will remain in the present even if your present results are not what you want. If you look into the future and have faith that your future will be more appealing, rewarding and even enjoyable, then you will jettison yourself from the present and embrace the future.

4. Incompetence:
The fourth reason people get or remain stuck is incompetence, which is an inability or skill to do a particular task. While most people are highly competent in either the task/technical side of their work or they are highly competent on the people side, the incompetence that is especially damaging to the customer experience is the incompetence surrounding working with people.

Your customers are screening you for both technical and people based competence. Let’s go back to the heart bypass surgery example. Imagine for a minute that you are a fifty year old man or woman who needs heart bypass surgery. The surgeon you meet with is not indifferent to your situation, seems to be well informed, has a good bedside manner and has a sense of urgency regarding helping you get on the right path to better health and wellness. Everything the surgeon says sounds good and is credible. But the one question that remains to be asked is “how good is the surgeon at what they do? What do their patients and or peers say about their level of competence and expertise?” Until you know the competence of your surgeon both technically and interpersonally you’ll remain stuck and be seen as indecisive.

Aside to reader: It’s completely normal to feel incompetent when you’re learning something new, especially if you care about the subject and or the stakes are high. Just remember that every great endeavor or achievement started with someone lacking the skills necessary to achieve greatness, but who was so engrossed in their idea that they acquired the skills necessary.

I believe the opposite of these four characteristics are required in order to get unstuck and to achieve something extraordinary. You have to care deeply about an idea, concept or ideal; you must immerse yourself in learning everything you can about your idea; you must slay the dragon called complacency and remain focused on progress – not perfection, and last but not least, you must remain on the path of greater mastery of both the technical and people oriented skills necessary to achieve your goal.

In summary, I have three questions for you:

1. When you look into the future, is your vision characterized by fear or faith?
2. If you were to strive for the extraordinary, which of the four characteristics would you need to address first?
3. Which of the four characteristics would your customers say you exhibit most frequently?

I’ll look forward to hearing your thoughts on my blog.

In my most recent Monday Morning Minute, I expressed my deep frustration with having to spend four months replacing the front door of my house. This makes no sense to me since it only took two months to remodel my kitchen!

In addition to hearing horror stories about home improvement projects gone amok, I also heard from readers who asked me to expand on why some leaders, teams and or organizations get and or remain stuck. I’m happy to do so.

There are four primary reasons why people either get or stay stuck – two of them I’m posting today and the remaining two tomorrow.

1. Indifference:
Indifference is best characterized by a lack of caring. People who are indifferent recognize that a project, task or issue needs to be addressed, but don’t see any value or importance in doing so. Indifference can be caused by limited resources and or time, both of which are understandable and can be addressed.

But when indifference creeps into your customer interactions as it has with three out of the five contractors working on my front door, then as Tom Hanks said in Apollo 13, “Mission control, we have a problem.”

Indifference is rooted in prioritization, and prioritization is influenced by what’s important to you. If, as a leader you believe it’s a priority to spend time with employees enabling them to feel engaged and excited about making a difference in their customers life, you will prioritize your time accordingly. If on the other hand that’s not a priority, you devote your time to other areas. In my case, my contractors are indifferent to me because they see our door as a small project and less important than other larger projects. Is this understandable? Yes. Is it building trust, respect and a pipeline of referrals? No.

Spending time with people who are indifferent takes energy, so the best strategy I’ve found for dealing with indifference is benign neglect…simply minimize the amount of time you spend with people who are indifferent. If you don’t their indifference plants mustard seed sized seeds of indifference in your own imagination. Guard against this at all costs.

Aside to reader: This can be the most frustrating of the four reasons why people remain stuck for you to deal with. While you undoubtedly have high hopes and aspirations for your work and personal life, you have to learn to be more discerning about what’s most important to you and the company you choose to keep.

2. Ignorance:
Ignorance is characterized as either not knowing “how” to do something (which can be corrected with education or training) or its cousin, a lack of knowledge regarding the consequences or impact of a decision (which can be corrected with greater awareness). In either case ignorance is not a crime, but it does cause unnecessary frustration and eventually customer dissatisfaction or defection.

We all know or have worked with someone who claims ignorance and uses it as a form of manipulation. We also know or have worked with someone who uses ignorance as a way of avoiding responsibility. In both cases, people who use ignorance as a crutch end up allowing one person to over-function (typically you) and another person to under-fuction (typically them). In the real world this is called dysfunctional.

Let me give the benefit of the doubt to the vast majority of people you and I work with. Most people want to do good work and they want to make a difference. What they also want is to be coached and or mentored and to get better at what they do. For most people they recognize that they have a blind spot and are open to replacing their ignorance with inspired performance.

Aside to reader: While ignorance is not a crime, remaining intellectually complacent is a career limiting move that also is the death knell for all of your important relationships. Remaining vibrant and engaged requires the courageousness to think bigger and the curiosity to question your assumptions.

Here are two questions for you:
1. Which of the above two reasons do you deal with the most?
2. Which of the above two reasons do your direct reports deal with the most?

Today’s Monday Morning Minute is longer than usual…but worth it.

Muhammad Ali once said:

“Impossible is just a big word thrown around by small men who find it easier to live in the world they’ve been given than to explore the power they have to change it. Impossible is not a fact. It’s an opinion. Impossible is not a declaration. It’s a dare. Impossible is potential. Impossible is temporary. Impossible is nothing.”

If you agree with his quote I have two questions for you:

1.  What part of your personal or professional life have you told yourself “that’s impossible?”

2.  What would happen if you turned that area of your life into a dare instead of a declaration?

No matter what your answers are, just remember that impossible is temporary and is nothing!