Transcript - Episode 005 - The Myth of "Bring me a solution!"
Today, I'm feeling rather opinionated. I know, what's new, right? But today is special. There is something in leadership that I am sick of. It's created what I call "fly by leadership." How many times have you heard someone be told "don't bring me a problem without a solution!"
I'm going to suggest something radical. That saying that is an ostrich approach, an avoidance innovation, failure to train employees, and a lack of ability to push yourself further as a mentor and leader.
Hi, I'm Daava Mills. I've been in the trenches of finding people for organizations for over 20 years. I've seen and heard every leadership cliché play out in the workplace. I'm going to share my thoughts on training today.
So, pull up a seat, and let's chat.
(Intro Music)
I've seen an interesting thing happen in the past couple of decades. I've seen companies slash training budgets, refuse to hire people without experience, look for only people who can "hit the ground running" and basically side step the entire process of what leadership looks like through these excuses. And avoid training all together.
Hiring people who know how to do the job requires capital. Training people to do a job right requires capital.
We have a resume crisis. People who know how to make their resume look like they have stronger skills than they actually have, duping you the business owner in the process.
We have a cultural mis-understanding of what micro-management really is, and when forms of it are helpful in business. I could really dive in on this subject, but that's for another Monday.
I've watched managers keep slashing the bottom 10% of their departments without a thought of training those individuals up, or without replacing those individuals, causing more work to be piled on other team members, and the manager.
We've had these cultural idioms happen, and very few people are asking why… And what they can do to solve them. I see it affecting businesses everywhere. Employees are encouraged to solve problems without training, which causes bad reviews, loss of customers, and loss or revenue.
This has all led to a work crisis. We are overloaded with fake it until you make it workers, with managers who are strung too thin to be bothered with the little stuff… and add to it the cultural idiom of "Don't bring me a problem without a solution…" Is it any wonder we complain about the generational shifts in business? Our millenials don't have the same training that early Gen X had access to, and certainly not what the Boomers had access to. They don't have access because we are missing 20 years of this type of training. Entire corporations have been built without it. What is it? Mentoring. Specifically mentoring with company values as the guide.
You know, I'm a parent. Before I gave birth and while I was pregnant I like every other paranoid, first time mom, on the planet. I read every possible book I could get my hands on that reflected the type of parenting an parent I thought I wanted to be. prior to giving birth, I was a voracious reader if I got a new book I'd put it down in a matter of a day or two days. New Dan Brown book comes out? I'd be reading at the very same day. And it would be done by that night. New Harry Potter book. Same thing. And then I had a kid and there was a shift for me. I still like to read. But I don't really have the ability to sit down and read a book cover to cover anymore. What has happened to me is a shift in how I take an information and process. I'm not quite sure how this shift took place. But these shifts happen to people overtime as we get older. And that's part of that's part of business, it's learning to recognize when we have these shifts inside ourselves and when these shifts happen within our employees. Or maybe haven't happened in with our employees.
One of the books that I read, was playful parenting by Lawrence Cohen period now at the time I didn't read the whole thing cover to cover. But I did read a lot of the book I did scan pages I did flip through referencing information. But one of the things that stood out to me, was kids often don't go to parents to get a solution unless they can't figure out how to get the solution. So what we're really looking at here is if you look at some of our management principles as basic communication principles and a lot of our parenting principles as basic communication principles there's a lot of overlap.
So why don't we for a second take the time to really just pretend that these principles have overlapped in how people are solving problems period can we give some of our workers the benefit of the doubt that they literally do not have enough information, enough knowledge, enough training, or enough confidence, that they are actually in that moment unable to solve that problem and that's why they come to you.
So instead of looking at our employees from the standpoint of them wasting our times, we should take this opportunity to teach them how to solve a problem in the way that you think a problem should be solved so that you are creating an a methodology that supports your values and tenets that make your company the unique beast that it is.
I like to look at cost benefit analysis all the time.
And a recent cost benefit analysis got me thinking about training. So much so that a few months ago I created a flow chart for decision making that included company values, subject matter experts, cost of employees time, and over all cost of time and product to the company.
Then it got me thinking about decision making as a competency. If it's a competency, then it can be trained into your staff, some competencies are harder to train for, some are easier, but competencies are trainable. If it can be trained into your staff, it can be built around your tenets or values as a company. The other issue is that lower level employees often don't see, or have not been invited to the strategy decision making that runs a company.
So, this begs the question. How do you train your staff, when you don't have time to train your staff. I'm going to suggest that you do have time to train your staff. Especially if you don't want to rehash their issues, from a leadership perspective. Again, as a culture corporations are focused on turning training into department, which is fine for hard skills. Soft skill training isn't a department, it's not something you can buy a learning package for, and direct your employees to use it. Sure, software packages that focus on learning and development will say that is what they do, and have fancy stats, and big company names behind them. But softskill training is in the nuance, it's hidden in the values that you display as a company, in the habits of your leaders.
I once worked for a larger corporation. Early on there when I needed to learn a new soft skill it was usually a VP that would drop by my office, or a Director and just take a few minutes to walk me through a process. Rinse and repeat a couple times, in very clear language, and I got it.
Then we had a leadership change, along with that came an implementation of an online learning system. The system was cool, but it was not rolled out in a way that employees understood what it was for. And it put training back into the hands of the employees, and leadership was able to step away. This is not a good thing, there was no instruction what it was about, why we would use it, and expectations that employees should use it.
Here's the thing.
People don't know what they don't know. To blindly throw an expensive tool at staff and expect to see improvement in skills will only happen with a select few. Training requires oversight, conversation, and reinforcement. And a degree or certification doesn't back up the way you like things done as a leader.
Training for soft skills and unwritten rules of your business and unspoken ideals will come to the surface when you spend your time one on one with employees to actually go over a piece of your business, and explain your decision making process, how if affects your company, and what value you place on what parts of the process.
It would start something like this…
"Hey Pam, I'm about to go over the new managed services proposal. Please come in my office and go over it with me."
The first time you do this it's going to feel weird, especially if you've never formally trained a person. That's okay, just read it with her and explain what is important to you in a proposal. Reviewing your business objectives. Why you need this proposal. What is failing with the current vendor or current processes if you don't have a vendor. Don't worry about getting her opinion. But do ask her to reiterate what she hears back to you. And, most important… or “Ocheen Vazshna” as I would have said to my eastern european staff when I wanted to make my point…Make sure she is physically capturing this information too. Make her write it down, and ensure she has two or three key take aways.
The next time you get another business contract or proposal, send it to Pam, and say make some notes in line with what I have told you is important to our business. Drop into my office in an hour, and let's go over this.
Keep adding responsibilities to this protocol, until you trust Pam to actually take over reviewing and negotiating a proposal.
During this time Pam will start to understand how your tenets wrap back into decision making, and when Pam sees a problem… Pam will do one of three things:
She'll bring it to your attention because it doesn't align with company values or history of making decisions. Give her advice, walk through it, and make the final decision.
She'll say she noticed something and she'll make a suggestion based on her training with you on how to best solve it.
She take care of it appropriately and you'll find out about it after the fact. Because that is what you are training her to do.
Realize that option two is not capable of happening without one on one time with Pam. And option three can't happen without total trust. And if you are a student of Pat Lencioni and the Five Dysfunctions of a team you'll know that trust is the foundational step to your building a team and building your business.
My challenge for you is to stop "Fly By Leadership". Catch yourself, and catch your leaders when they say "don't bring me a problem without a solution." Telling them that can cause issues to continue to happen in your business like a festering wound, and it won't give you the opportunity to build trust with your team. Also, it gives them confidence that you care about what they are seeing. It will cause business conversations, and it gives you an opportunity to reinforce your company tenets, your mission, your vision for the future. The future of your company that provides for you, your family, and your employees family. It creates an environment that begins to move your employees away from the Dunning Kruger Effect.
What's the Dunning Kruger Effect? Tune in next week when we talk about that…
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It’s great to meet you and thank you for listening. I know you only have so many hours in the week, and I am grateful to spend this time with you. Until then, make it a great day! See you on the flip side.