Many times the solutions we seek are waltzing around in full sight, but we don’t see them.  Let me give you a personal example.

I started RampUp Solutions in 1997, but finding a simple way to describe what we did took several years.

In the show Gypsy there’s a song that says, “Ya gotta have a gimmick” to succeed and I doubt that’s unlikely to change anytime soon.

I wanted one clear, concise term that gave insight to RampUp’s coaching approach, not a couple of paragraphs—no matter how well written.

When the light finally went on I had to laugh. The term I settled on was MAP (mindset, attitude, philosophy™) and the humor comes from the fact that I’ve been talking about mindset, attitude and philosophy my whole life—even using those terms.

But formalizing it never crossed my mind, which just goes to show how blind we can be.

There’s a reason ‘you can’t see the forest for the trees’ achieved the status of an adage more than a century ago.

Some people are focused on trees, while others have the opposite problem and focus strictly on the forest—neither offers optimal performance.

In my case it didn’t matter that much, sure, it would have been easier to create the company’s marketing messages, but it didn’t cripple us.

However, if your forests are made of people then it’s critical that you see them both.

It’s only by seeing your people as both individuals and collectively as a team that you can recognize the obvious solutions you miss when you focus on just one view.

Since Leadership Turn is ending December 29 I’ve been encouraging you to click over and follow me at MAPping Company Success.

Ducks in a Row will continue every Tuesday; check out Why ‘Cracked Pots’ are Good For Your Team and you’ll know why you should subscribe via RSS or EMAIL.

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Image credit:  ZedBee|Zoë Power on flickr

I’ve mentioned from time to time that there are the two basic principles that you need to believe in if you want to implement the kind of culture that I and most other pundits describe.

Here’s the first one.

People are intelligent, motivated, and they genuinely want to support their company in achieving its objectives.

Sadly, many managers don’t believe this. They may say they do, but deep down their thoughts run more along the lines of ‘people are stupid, lazy and don’t really give a damn’.

I’ve know managers who would actually say this out loud, while in others it’s buried so deeply they may not even realize it themselves—but they all manage accordingly.

The second principle is even more open to distortion.

People are most productive when they receive all the information needed all at once to do their job efficiently.

Based on the games so many managers play perhaps we should rewrite it—

People are most productive when they receive all the information needed all at once to do their job efficiently.

Not dribbled out over the course of the project, given grudgingly or only when asked and then only the narrowest parameter forcing the employee to return over and over.

You would think that managers would do everything in their power to create an environment that enabled the highest levels of creativity and productivity.

But for better or worse, what they produce in fact is a reflection of their MAP.

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Image credit: flickr