Let’s Improve Our Forecasting and Policymaking

Posted on December 3, 2025 by David Shedd

In reading and studying history, I never cease to be amazed at how badly political, economic, business, academic, and media policymakers and thinktanks forecast the future.  Their predictions for a strategy or the effects of a law or policy are nearly always wrong.  More than that, they continue to make the same mistakes repeatedly while forecasting the future.

Below I list some ‘truths’ that these leaders and TV pundits continue to forget when making predictions or policies.

The Basics of Human Nature Rarely Change

There are several basics of human nature that have existed for hundreds and thousands of years and will continue to exist into the future.  These basics filter through to the other ‘truths’ that we must keep front of mind in our forecasting and policymaking.

  • Self-Interest and Self-Preservation:  We are all motivated by what is in it for us.  How can we protect ourselves, advance our own goals, and improve our own lives?
  • Humans are Social Creatures: We have a need for connection, family, community and belonging and will do much to remain a valued part of our different groups.
  • Status and Esteem: We are driven by a need for social status, respect and recognition from others within our group and in the wider world overall.  We don’t just work hard for more money; we will work hard to raise our status.
  • Power: Like status and esteem, many (although not all) of us are driven to seek and exercise power.  As historian Rufus Fears writes, “history tells us that freedom…is not a globally shared value.  By contrast, desire for power, whether wielded as a despot or as a benevolent empire or superpower, is a universal value.”  We will also work hard to gain power.
  • Humans are Not Always Logical: Our behavior is influenced by logic and reason and by feelings, biases, and unconscious motivations.  Author Darren Hardy goes so far to write that, “human beings, including you, decide emotionally and then justify logically.”
  • Humans are Adaptable: In pursuit of self-interest, self-preservation, social status, esteem, and power, humans are incredibly adaptive.  We can learn, grow, and change and deal with widely different situations and motivations.
  • Humans are Lazy: Part of self-interest requires us to be rested in mind and body.  As such, most humans are lazy and procrastinate, putting off hard and difficult work.
  • Humans are Short-Sighted: We remain focused on what we want in the next few days, weeks or months at the expense of what might be best for us over the long-term course of our lives.

People Adjust

As above, humans are adaptable.  This means that when circumstances change, people change their behaviors – sometimes rationally, sometimes not.

Incentives Work

In general, people make decisions based on the incentives (monetary, status, power, etc.) and the situation (or their understanding of the incentives and the situation).  So, most people are deciding based on what is rational for them even if does not appear to be rational to a policymaker.

People Act in Herds

As social creatures, people will follow the herd and behave or make decisions because other people are doing the same, even if they don’t know the reason why they are doing what they are doing.

Supply and Demand Works

When prices go up, people buy or use less of any item.  Price signals work and change the dynamic of situations and the results of policies.

Not All the World is Zero Sum

Politicians are especially guilty in considering that for someone to win someone else must lose.  Think of the partisanship between the two political parties in the US or trade policy everywhere.  Zero sum thinking may work in some situations; but not in many others.  Sometimes, win-win is reality.  And that is a good thing.

Surprises Happen All the Time

As historian Gregory Aldrete writes, “history is a history of surprises.”  In any forecast, we need to be aware that surprises, technical, political, economic, etc. happen all the time, and they can happen quickly.  We need to ensure that our policies can adapt and adjust to a surprise.

Things Don’t Continue in Straight Lines

All too often, we extrapolate from current trends, upward and downward, in straight lines.  This leads to extreme predictions that are unlikely ever to happen.

Complexity Kills

As humans are lazy, all too often complex processes, laws, and policies are ignored (even when beneficial) because they are too complex and mentally taxing for the individual to determine how to follow or take advantage of them. 

Top Down Rarely Works

As author Matt Ridley writes, “the story of economic development is a bottom-up story.  The story of lack of development is a top-down story.”  As in economics and politics, so in business, the best ideas and best policies usually come from the people on the front lines living the daily reality.  We need to be humble about what our big top-down process or policy will do.

Unintended Consequences

In a complex world, all actions and policies will lead to unintended and often negative consequences.  As Adam Grant writes, “appreciating complexity reminds us that no behavior is always effective and that all cures have unintended consequences.” 

Summary

Looking at this list of truths, we realize that we can make better forecasts and make better policies by being humble, by thinking smaller, and by focusing on the individual and his or her incentives and motivations.  Way back in 1959, the American economist and political scientist, Charles Lindblom, said it well:

A wise policy maker consequently expects that his policies will achieve only part of what he hopes and at the same time will produce unintended consequences he would have preferred to avoid.  If he proceeds through a succession of incremental changes, he avoids serious lasting mistakes in several ways.

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10 Words to Improve Our Communication

Posted on November 5, 2025 by David Shedd

As an individual, as a company, as a nation, and as a world we continue to struggle with effective communication.  Here is a list of 10 key words to keep front of mind to improve as we work to become better communicators.

  1. Prepare: We need to prepare our communication ahead of time to ensure that it expresses what we want to express and follows the guidelines below.  Winging it just does not work.
  2. Clear: We need to ensure that our message is crystal clear.  We would do well to follow Napoleon advice on giving orders: “Orders must not be easy to understand. They must be impossible to misunderstand.”
  3. Simple: Our message must be simple with readily understood language and sentence structure.
  4. Moderate: We need to moderate what we communicate.  At most, we should only bring up 3 – 5 ideas or issues.  With more ideas than that, the brains of our audience cannot understand all; our full message will not get through.
  5. Why: In communicating, we do well to always give the why – why am I asking you to do this?  This why gives the audience the reason to understand that the message is important and should be listened to.
  6. Story: Whenever possible, we should share a story. Stories help us relate, digest and remember the information to be communicated.  As American Cognitive Psychologist, Roger Schank writes:  “Humans are not ideally set up to understand logic; they are ideally set up to understand stories.” 
  7. Read: While we communicate, we need to read the faces and body language of our audience to detect their understanding, agreement with, and support of what we are communicating.
  8. Listen: We need to ask for questions and feedback.  We need to be specific, avoiding the simple question of ‘do you understand’ which is inevitably answered as ‘yes.’  We then need to listen to their response – what they say, how they say it, and what they leave unsaid.  We then need to take this feedback and incorporate into our message as we….
  9. Repeat: We need to repeat our message, especially the few, crucial points of our message.  This allows our message to be processed more easily and fully as it is being heard a second (or third) time.
  10. Confirm: At the end, we need to recap and confirm what the next requested action is that will allow the message and details communicated to be fully implemented.

None of these 10 words or concepts are difficult.  But they are hard to implement daily.  Nevertheless, following these 10 words in our communication will make each of us a better and more valuable communicator.

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Too Many Cooks in the Kitchen

Posted on October 1, 2025 by David Shedd

Inevitably, there will be times when there are too many managers and executives involved in a decision.  This often happens for significant decisions that cross department or business unit lines.  As leaders, we need to ensure that the decision-making process is as effective as possible.

Three simple steps to follow:

  1. Have One Decision Maker: Ideally, this should be the person at the lowest level that has authority over all aspects of the decision.
  2. Get Higher Ups Out of the Room: The decision maker’s boss or bosses need to get out of the meetings and the decision process to give the decision maker the autonomy to make and implement the decision.  The bosses’ role should be in support or in being a sounding board for the decision maker behind the scenes.
  3. Reduce the Core Team Size: As with the higher ups, others tangentially involved in the decision need to be a support or sounding board or, if they must participate, a loyal foot soldier who will help implement the decision.

In summary, team decision making requires a small, accountable team that can make a decision and move forward without the input and egos of other executives.    Too many cooks in the kitchen, too many decision makers in on a decision makes for a worse solution, that takes longer to reach, and that will be harder to get all stakeholders to rally around and implement.

The lesson for leaders is that sometimes we lead best when we don’t lead at all.

Soup please.

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Making IT Work

Posted on September 3, 2025 by David Shedd

In today’s world, technology is everywhere, and we collect more data than ever before. But just having lots of data doesn’t mean we’re using it well.

“We are drowning in information, while starving for wisdom.” E.O. Wilson

That’s why good IT practices are so important. They help turn confusing information into clear, helpful tools that actually make our lives easier while helping us move our companies forward.

Make Data Usable, Understandable, and Actionable

First things first—data needs to be useful. It’s not enough to gather numbers and charts. The information has to be easy to understand and help people make decisions. For example, if a store has sales data, it should be organized in a way that helps them see what products are doing well and which ones aren’t. That way, we can act on it—perhaps by ordering more of a popular item or running a sale on something that’s not selling.

Work With the Team to Find the Right Questions

Sometimes our teams collect data without knowing what they’re looking for. A better approach is to work with our team to figure out what questions they need answers to. Do they want to know why a product isn’t selling? Are they trying to improve how fast a website loads? Once you know the questions, it’s easier to find the right data and create tools that solve real problems. Good IT starts with good communication.

Focus on the End User

Always think about the people who will use the system. This includes both the occasional user and the person who uses it every day. A tool that looks fancy but is hard to use won’t help anyone. But a simple, well-designed system can make everyday tasks faster and less stressful. We need to test our tools with real users and listen to their feedback. This will make all the difference.

Keep It Simple: Less Is More

When building systems or dashboards, we need to remember the rule: less is more. The goal isn’t to collect every piece of data—just the ones that matter.

“Instead of building the largest data store it could, Tesco set out to build the smallest store of data that would give useful information.” Clive Humby (Scoring Points: How Tesco is Winning Customer Loyalty)

This smart approach helped Tesco stay focused and make better choices. A simple tool that works is better than a complex one that confuses people.

Final Thoughts

IT isn’t just about computers and data—it’s about helping our people do their jobs better. By making data clear, asking the right questions, focusing on the user, and keeping things simple, we can turn information into wisdom. And that’s what great IT is all about.

Full Disclosure

Since this blog was about IT, I thought I would use ChatGPT to help write it.  I had to give ChatGPT the framework and the key points.  And then I had to edit the output from ChatGPT.  But, overall, I was able to get my points across, and ChatGPT made the process much easier.

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A Good Leader is a Good Facilitator

Posted on August 6, 2025 by David Shedd

As a leader, our objective must be to drive success and move our companies forward.  To do this, we need to have effective team communication and decision – making.  In short, we need to have excellent meetings.

“As a consultant, the most common weakness I see in organizations is the lack of work that is done in a meeting.”  Stan Sipes

Good leaders need to run meetings well; they need to be effective facilitators.

Before the Meeting

  • Ensure that the meeting is needed
  • Determine the objective for the meeting and create an agenda (with suggested time frames within the meeting if needed)
  • Invite the right attendees and only the right attendees to keep the meeting to a reasonable size
  • Pass out all meeting presentation materials ahead of time
  • Require that all attendees review the presentation materials and come prepared

During the Meeting

  • Have the meeting room and seating arrangement the way we want it (Hint: be careful of having those supporting one side of the argument on one side of the table and those supporting the other side of the argument on the other side of the table).
  • Start the meeting on time
  • Ensure the meeting sticks to the suggested time frames
  • Avoid repeating what is in the pre-meeting materials
  • Manage the atmosphere in the meeting, keeping it positive and productive and diffusing anger and other negative emotions
  • Keep the discussion on point, pulling the discussion out of ‘rabbit holes’ and avoiding tangents
  • Shut down (politely) the chatter boxes
  • Call on lower ranking employees first so that their viewpoint is not affected by their boss’ viewpoint
  • By the end, make sure everyone has been heard by calling on everyone to get their opinions (even the silent types)
  • Keep the meeting moving forward
  • Do interim summaries and time checks
  • Conclude with a final summary and action item list (3 – 5 items are enough) for next steps (with due dates)
  • End the meeting on time

After the Meeting

  • Send everyone an E-Mail meeting recap with the action item list
  • Follow up to ensure that the 3 – 5 action items are completed on time

To Improve Our Business, We Need to Improve Our Meetings

This list is a simple meeting facilitator checklist.  If we follow them, we will be able to facilitate our meetings better ensuring that we have more effective meetings. 

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Relearning

Posted on July 2, 2025 by David Shedd

Much has been written about the importance of learning throughout our careers and how we can Learn Better.  As we progress in our careers, it is equally important to relearn.  That is, to review previously learned material to revise and refresh our understanding.

Why Relearn?

Remember What We Have Forgotten:  Relearning material will also remind us of much of what we have forgotten.  As the historian of science and technology, Lawrence Principe, writes:

“We study history to remind ourselves of what we have forgotten.”

And we have all forgotten a lot.  In fact, we have often forgotten what we have forgotten.  From my perspective in business, we need to relearn and not forget business and leadership fundamentals.  Just as in the Dot Com era, the housing bubble, and now the AI boom, we cannot forget that the fundamentals of business (the need for profits and positive cash flow) will always re-assert themselves.

Revise our Understanding: When we review and relearn material, we update and often correct our understanding.  Let me give an example.  Up until about 10 years ago, I believed and taught that business decisions were best made by forming an initial hypothesis and then using that hypothesis to guide our fact-finding and prove or disprove the hypothesis (just as was done on those CSI shows on television).  Through further study on decision making and experience in the world, I realized that the confirmation bias in most people (myself included) is so strong that that initial hypothesis will almost always be the conclusion. Instead, we need to collect the evidence and avoid making an early hypothesis.  My understanding of decision making has been revised.

“The Illiterate of the 21st century will not be those who cannot read and write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn and relearn.” Alvin Toffler

Keep Front of Mind: Relearning material serves as a reminder.  More important, this re-engagement with the material deepens our understanding of the material and keeps it front of mind.  Once the material is fully understood and front of mind we will more readily and effectively use it in our daily role as a leader.  An example for keeping front of mind will be various tactics we can use to coach direct reports.  The more of these tactics we have front of mind, the more we can use and the better we can counsel our direct reports in a way that is engaging and relevant to them.

How to Relearn?

To relearn, we just need to continue to read widely, listen to and actively engage with material that we already have learned, keeping an open mind and a willingness to change our understanding as need be.  Yes, much of what we read and hear may be repetitive with what we already know.  But, in most books or lectures, there is usually one or two gems that we have forgotten or that will help revise our understanding.  Even if there are no gems in the book or lecture, we will be reminded of something we already know, helping us keep it front of mind and readily available the next time it is needed.

Happy Relearning!

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Career Advice (For All Ages)

Posted on June 4, 2025 by David Shedd

It is graduation season again.  Having just come from my 35th reunion for business school, I feel inspired to offer some advice to recent graduates and some reminders to all of us (old and young) in the working world.

  • Be Humble:  The biggest turn-off to other people is arrogance.  Arrogance shows up in thinking that we are better than everyone else and that we know all the answers.  One thing I have learned in these 35 years is that there are many many hard-working and talented people and that we can and need to learn from all of them.
  • Keep Learning and Re-learning: Graduation is called commencement for a good reason.  Graduation from school is truly the commencement of learning that we will be doing for the rest of our careers and the rest of our lives.  We can never stop reading, listening and learning.  In the pursuit of learning new ideas, we cannot forget that much of what we learned in school will stay relevant throughout our careers.  We will just need to learn it and re-learn it and be reminded of it in different guises over the years.
  • Keep Things Simple: Unfortunately, one thing that education often teaches us is that complexity is good.  In the business world and real life, simplicity is good and complexity (especially needless complexity) is bad.  Unfortunately, left alone all things become more complex and thus more difficult over time.  Every day, we need to fight the battle to keep things simple in our work and in our personal lives.
  • Work With and For People You Like and Respect:  In the pursuit of money and career, this piece of advice is often forgotten.  As social animals, we humans become more similar to the people we send a great deal of time with.  If we don’t like and respect the people we work with, we ourselves will become more and more similar to someone we don’t like.  Work and life are a whole lot easier and more fun when we are around people that we like and respect.

“When you take a job take a long look at the people you’re going to be working with – because the odds are you’re going to become like them; they are not going to become like you. You can’t change them. If it doesn’t fit who you are, it’s not going to work.” Bob Sutton

None of this advice is rocket science.  But one thing 35 years has taught this old geezer is that following these four pieces of advice can lead to a successful and enjoyable working life where we stay true to ourselves.

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Avoid Problems

Posted on May 7, 2025 by David Shedd

There are two ways to look at avoiding problems.  The first way, as the cartoon points out, is to ignore the problem, sweeping the problem under the rug and hoping it just goes away.  Humorous for a cartoon; deadly for a leader.

The second way is for the leader to be proactive and steer his or her company to avoid problems or issues even before they crop up.

In short, while good leaders are good at solving problems; excellent leaders are good at avoiding them.

How to Avoid Problems?

  • Care About the People.  With a strong, people-centric culture, we can have our Human Resources team focus on training and developing the team rather than resolving employee complaints.
  • Stamp out Bad Leadership: Bad leaders inevitably lead to HR issues and poorer performance and all the knock-on effects, including low morale and having good people leave the company.
  • Address Issues Before They Fester: Solving problems, complaints, or similar issues as soon as they appear in even the mildest of ways will avoid the mess such problems create later.  The most damaging festering issues that need to be addressed immediately are ethical lapses, especially by leaders or other high performing employees.
  • Avoid Ambiguity: If something is ambiguous or unclear, there will be multiple ways to interpret it.  This nearly allows leads to problems down the road.  Excellent leaders take their lumps now and require clarity and concreteness.
  • Require Excellent Quality and Customer Service: This comes from doing our job right and treating our customers well the first time.  Instead, too many companies spend time fixing poor quality work or mending relationships with dissatisfied customers.  The old adage  – “we never have the time to do it right the first time, but we have the time to correct it now” – is just sad.
  • Sound Decision Making:  With good decision making, we anticipate next order effects and responses from either a competitor, a customer, an employee, or a vendor.  We also plan for unintended consequences of any decision we make.
  • Vision (In the Medium Term): Excellent leaders, be it for a project and/or for a company, need to have the vision to see what problems could occur over the next 6 months to a year and create a plan to side-step these problems.

Conclusion

To avoid problems, excellent leaders are proactive and focused on creating a winning team that does the right thing and gives great customer service.

The billionaire, Warren Buffett, has a quote that sums it up well:

“Charlie [Munger] and I have not learned how to solve difficult business problems.  What we have learned is to avoid them.”

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Be the Right Kind of Lazy

Posted on April 1, 2025 by David Shedd

Laziness gets a bad rap and deservedly so.  Of course, we, ourselves, are never lazy.  No…  Never…

But we know other people who are lazy.  They procrastinate.  They only do the minimum work necessary to stay employed (quiet quitters).  Or they do the easy work and avoid the hard and useful work needed to move the company forward. 

But there are three kinds of lazy that leaders need to embrace.

Long Term Lazy

Long term laziness involves looking for a way to complete a task with the least amount of work overall.  This usually consists of us doing all the hard work upfront to get everything set up right and in motion, allowing us to do much less work on the back end. It also consists of taking on uncomfortable tasks (such as firing an under-performing employee) now rather than dealing with the consequence and extra work that the employee’s under-performance will cause in the weeks and months ahead.  As author Jack Canfield writes:

Do the hard-easy.  Do the hard things now to have the rest of your life be easy.

Finding Shortcuts and Ways to Do Less Work

This type of laziness involves spending time to think through how a task can be simplified, streamlined, or automated.  This allows us to get our work done with the least amount of work.  As the British Management Consultant, Richard Koch, writes:

The determination to find a much better solution involving much less effort is the highest form of laziness.

Avoiding Low Impact / Low Priority Work

If there is no high impact / high priority work to be done, we need to be “lazy” and just do nothing.  There is a saying in Lean production, “don’t just do something, stand there.”  This encapsulates the idea that it is better to do nothing than to create more work and complexity (for ourselves and for our teams) by doing something that is not important or is a distraction.  This is especially true for leaders who can overwhelm their teams with unimportant and mundane tasks just so that the leader can feel like he or she is doing something.  Historian Ben Hunnicut show that this tendency to be busy has deep roots:

In the Middle Ages, the sin of sloth had two forms.  One was paralysis – the inability to do anything – what we would see as lazy.  But, the other side was something called acedia – running about frantically.

Conclusion

By practicing these three types of laziness, we can get our work done more efficiently, saving time and mental energy for relaxation or to come up with improvements and/or new insights and opportunities.  Famed science fiction writer, Robert Heinlein, sums up the benefits of these good types of laziness:

Progress is made by lazy men looking for easier ways to do things.

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Be a Decision Architect

Posted on March 4, 2025 by David Shedd

Good individual and group decision-making is key to being a successful leader and driving a successful business forward.  But we are all subject to individual biases (such as Confirmation Bias) and group behaviors (such as Groupthink) that lead to poor decision making.  As leaders then, we need to be Decision Architects who create the processes and culture within our businesses that overcome these biases and behaviors and lead to consistently better decision-making.

“A key task of a leader is, therefore, to be a decision architect who ‘decides how to decide,’ introducing collaboration and process in the organization’s decision practices.”  Olivier Sibony

The Basics of a Solid Decision-Making Architecture

  • Assemble the Correct, Small Group to Make the Decision: This group should include those people who are actively involved in doing the work, those who are most affected by the work, and a leader or executive to manage the decision and sign off on it.
  • Require a One-Page Decision Memo: This memo will define the decision to be made and the criteria in making the decision, give the pros and cons, and discuss the implications (and possible unintended consequences) of the decision and its implementation.  One page is sufficient to give the highlights and ensure that everyone is on the same page.  One page also ensures that the memo will be written. 
  • Consider the Base Rate and History: Consider the historic cost and benefits of similar decisions and the time and effort to implement these previous decisions.  This creates the base rate – an outsider view on how the decision will really pan out instead of the over-optimistic insider view.
  • Give the Group Time to Think About the Decision: Send out the One-Page Decision Memo ahead of time and ensure that no decision is final until everyone has agreed and reflected on the decision.  Spur of the moment decisions as often seen in the movies rarely work out; we all need time to process the information (and stew on it) before making an informed decision.
  • Lower Ranking Employees Speak First: In any discussion, require reverse hierarchical order for speaking.  This prevents the senior leader from giving their view and everyone else agreeing so as not to go against the leader.  In addition, we need to ensure that everyone gives their point of view.

“Fair process: if people have had a chance to express their point of view and be heard, once the final decision is made, the motivation of all contributors is increased, not reduced.”  W. Chan Kim

  • Have a Devil’s Advocate in the Room: This Devil’s Advocate is someone who will seek out contradictory information and argue the opposing viewpoint pointing out the risks and possible downsides of the possible decision.  A Devil’s Advocate is required to prevent motivated reasoning where the leader or the group has already reached a conclusion and all the discussion has the aim, conscious or unconscious, of reaching that predetermined conclusion.
  • Require Respect: There can be disagreements.  But all group members must respect each other and their individual points of view.
  • Make the Decision: Once we have run through all the elements, we need to decide: do nothing, choose an alternative, or re-evaluate in 6 or 12 months.  To quote the book, Skills for Success

Decisiveness in decision [whether individual or group decisions] is vital.

  • Create a Decision-Making Checklist: Use these suggestions as a starter and then build out a decision-making checklist of the processes and behaviors to follow when making group decisions.

Other Elements of a Solid Decision-Making Architecture

  • Consider Alternatives: Better decisions are made when evaluating a limited number of options and alternatives and not just a Go / No Go decision.
  • Evaluate Key Decisions: Assess and evaluate the decisions by having a formal post-mortem or post-decision review process and keep track of these evaluations.
  • Judge Decisions Fairly: Decisions need to be judged by the quality of the decision-making process not by the results.  This is especially true when making risky decisions which have a much higher failure rate.  If we penalize someone for the results of a risky experiment that fails even when the decision-making process was strong, we will implicitly discourage risky decisions or experiments (that could prove valuable in the future).
  • Be Honest and Humble: Making decisions under uncertainty is challenging and we certainly will not get them all right.  As leaders we need to be honest when we make mistakes and humble when we achieve success.

Conclusion

By being a Decision Architect, we can create the process and conditions for good individual and group decision-making.  But we cannot stop there.  Good decision-making is a skill and requires constant assessment to see whether we are making good decisions and reflection on how we could have improved the quality of our individual and group decision-making.   A key feature of excellent decision-makers is that they do not try to explain away their decision-making errors rather they use their errors as a ‘source of calibration’ to improve their decision-making process in the future.

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Criticize Less

Posted on February 5, 2025 by David Shedd

As leaders, we need develop and maintain a strong, positive culture within our companies.  To help us do this, we need to stop criticizing so much!! 

“The first order of business should be to eliminate the negative, not accentuate the positive.”  Robert Sutton (Management Professor)

The Allure of Criticism

For most of us, it is far easier to criticize someone than to praise them.  First, being a critic makes us feel smarter (and we all like to feel smarter).  As Teresa Amabile, a scholar on creativity and motivation, writes:

When people hear negative, critical views, they regard them as inherently more intelligent than optimistic ones; when we’re trying to seem smart to others, we tend to say critical, negative things.

Second, criticizing someone deflects responsibility away from ourselves.  It is too easy for us to criticize our team’s poor performance without looking at our own roles in that poor performance: Did we communicate the objectives clearly and timely?  Did we provide the team with all the necessary resources and support to achieve the objective?  Did we follow up consistently to ensure the team was on the right track?

The Problem with Criticism

It is no surprise to anyone that negativity and criticism weigh more heavily on us than compliments and positivity.  Research suggests that to maintain a neutral position, we need our positive sentiments to outweigh our critiques by 3 to 1.  As Psychology Researcher Martin Seligman has determined:

Companies and relationships that are above a 2.9:1 ratio for positive statements and comments to negative statements and comments are flourishing.  Below that ratio (the Losada ratio), companies and relationships are not doing well.

This means that we need to dole out 3 compliments for every one criticism.

With less than this 2.9 to 1 positive to negative ratio, our teams will perceive us as always being negative.  In more dramatic cases, when we are constantly criticizing or being negative the criticism gets ignored because that is all that is heard, and any compliment gets ignored because that is just a brief exception from the sheer negativity.

The Critic’s Response

All you critics out there are thinking… 

How do I get people to improve if I don’t call out their poor behavior or mistakes?

Yes, we still need to evaluate and critique performance.  With good performers, however, we need to ensure that we give plenty of compliments so that the critique is heard or internalized.  For weaker performers, we may have to be more consistently critical.  But this should happen only for a short time.  If the critiques are frequent and we have fully and clearly communicated our expectations, then it is time to let the person go.  In a successful, positive company, consistent poor behavior and performance cannot be tolerated.

Creating a Less Critical Company Culture

To ensure that our positive comments massively outweigh our negative comments we need to…

  • Have the Right People on the Team: the right people on any team are those that rarely need to be criticized as they will be beating themselves up for their mistakes far stronger than we would ever do so. 
  • Create the Right Culture: We want a culture where we focus on the quality of the decisions and the actions and not on the outcomes.  Mistakes happen and circumstances change so that even the best plans can fail.  Such a culture will also be focused on learning from our mistakes.  If we criticize someone for failing when trying something new, they will stop trying something new.
  • Overlook the Small Stuff: We need to overlook small non-essential errors and imperfections to focus only on what is important.  As Pope John XXIII commented:

See everything; overlook  a great deal; correct a little.

  • Avoid the “But”: When we give compliments, we need to give compliments.  Full Stop.  Compliments with “but” or “what about” will be heard as criticism.  The compliment will be forgotten and the criticism that comes after the “but” or the implied criticism for “what about” will be all that will be remembered.
  • Finding Someone Doing Something Right: This old line to find someone doing something right every day and then complimenting and then thanking remains as essential today as when it was first quoted decades ago.
  • We Still Need to Criticize (When needed):  To have a positive culture, there needs to be accountability for lapses of judgment or poor behavior.  In such situations, we need to criticize the employee or the team (while taking responsibility for any poor communication or actions on our part).  When surrounded by many positive comments, our good employees will take the criticism to heart and up their game.

Conclusion

By following these suggestions above, we will create a more positive and a more enjoyable workplace. Moreover, we will be able to attract and retain stronger, more engaged employees who will help move our companies forward.

Finally, criticizing less in our business will help us to criticize less in our personal lives and that will just make us happier overall. 

“To be a good partner…what’s crucial is avoiding the negative.  Being able to hold your tongue rather than say something nasty or spiteful will do much more for your relationship than a good word or deed.”  Roy Baumeister (Social Psychologist)

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Learn Better

Posted on January 8, 2025 by David Shedd

When learning new ideas or concepts, most of us learn as we did in high school and college.  We listen to a lecture or podcast, read a book or textbook, highlight the key ideas, and then re-read our highlights as we cram to review the material right before a test.

Continuing research in learning and how the brain works has proven (beyond a reasonable doubt) that this method of learning is ineffective and largely a waste of time!

So, how can we learn better…

Background

A key saying in brain and learning research is:

Neurons that fire together, wire together

When neurons fire together, the connection between the neurons gets stronger creating a long-lasting connection between the neurons.  This is called long-term potentiation and is required for memory and understanding.

To learn well we need to create this long-term potentiation.  But this cannot be done passively (by reading the material alone) nor can it be done within a short period of time.  Learning requires actively working with the material over time.  As Doug Larsen, a Professor of Neurology, writes:

Making the brain work is actually what seems to make a difference – bringing in more complex networks, then using those circuits repeatedly, which makes them more robust.

Ways to Learn Better

Test Ourselves on the Material Before We Learn It.  As counterintuitive as it sounds, by testing ourselves before we learn the material or by trying to solve a problem before being taught the solution, we get our mind primed to learn, we recognize what we already know, and we realize what we don’t know and must learn.  All of this makes us more engaged and interested in the upcoming learning.

Ignore the Idea of Our Unique Learning Style.  Research continues to show that learning style just reflects the way we like to learn; it does not reflect how we best learn.  In fact, learning in our preferred learning style is usually counter productive as we think that we know (the illusion of knowledge) because it appears to come easier to us.  The research shows that we learn better when we embrace difficulties in our learning.  As quoted in the book, Make It Stick: The Science of Successful Learning:

Learning is deeper and more durable when it’s effortful.

Retrieval Practice – recalling facts or concepts from memory – is most effective.  The more we work with the facts or concepts the more that we create the robust connections between the neurons and long-term potentiation.  Retrieval practice comes in many forms:

  • Self-testing
  • Pausing periodically to ask ourselves questions about the material
  • Summarizing in our own words
  • Connecting the facts or concepts with our prior knowledge
  • Creating a metaphor or visual image of the learning material
  • Doing the homework
  • Or (best of all) explaining the facts or concepts to someone else. 

As a one-time teacher, I can vouch for the truth of the saying:

You never fully learn a subject until you teach it.

Space Out and Mix Up Our Studying.  Cramming may have some benefit to passing a test on the next day; but it is entirely ineffective at creating long term memory and understanding.  With cramming, we are stuffing ideas into our short-term memory without creating the required long-term potentiation needed for full understanding.  To create the long-term potentiation, we should space out our retrieval practice over time and mix up, or interleave, our studying with other subjects or ideas.  Thus, our retrieval requires more cognitive effort and deepens the connections.  Importantly, as we gain more expertise in a subject, we should go back and re-test ourselves on the material (or work on problems) that we may have learned several weeks before to further strengthen the neural pathways on this material. 

Conclusion

The academic work on learning better is clear.  We need to:

  • test ourselves on the material first;
  • embrace and overcome learning difficulties;
  • recall the facts or concepts from memory by testing and quizzing ourselves, or by doing our homework, or by summarizing and putting in our own words, or by teaching the facts or concepts to someone else;
  • space out our learning over time; and
  • interleave our learning with other subjects.

Now, close this blog.  Get a piece of paper.  And write down in your own words the five key strategies that we should use to learn better.

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The When of Negotiation

Posted on December 3, 2024 by David Shedd

In negotiation, there is always a bargaining range within which a deal can be struck – a zone of potential agreement. 

This bargaining range runs from the Seller Breakpoint (the absolute least that the seller will sell their product or service) to the Buyer Breakpoint (the absolute most that the buyer will pay to buy the product or service). 

A good negotiator will get more of the value in this bargaining range than a poor negotiator. 

  • In this model, splitting a difference would mean a deal at 105 halfway between the Seller Breakpoint of 95 and the Buyer Breakpoint of 115.
  • A good seller will sell at a price where the buyer pays almost as much as the Buyer Breakpoint.  In this model, the good seller will sell at somewhere between 110 to 115.
  • A good buyer will buy at a price where the seller sells almost as low as the Seller Breakpoint.  In this model, the buyer will buy at somewhere between 95 to 100.

See my blog, Negotiation – An Overview, for some tips on how to be a good negotiator.

But the best negotiators get the most value by negotiating when the bargaining range is most favorable to them.

In short, when we negotiate is as important as how well we negotiate. 

Some obvious examples relating to buying a car will highlight this point.

  • The economy is strong, and the car market is tight with many cars on back order and low inventory.  Your current car breaks down for the final time and you are renting a car to get to work until you buy a new car.
  • The economy is weak with inventory stacking up on dealer lots.  Your current car is getting old; but still runs well.  You would like to buy a new car; but don’t have to.

In which case will the car buyer strike a better deal?

So, how can we master the ‘when’ of negotiation to get the best deal possible?

Buy or Sell When We Still Have Options

We need to begin the buying or selling process when we still have options available and are not desperate to buy or sell.  For a buyer, this avoids the first scenario above where he or she will have to pay a higher price.  The challenge with doing this is that we all like to hold on to get that better price or to sell when that stock or the economy is just a bit better.  We need to avoid this situation and settle for good enough and transact when we have a good (perhaps, not the best) time to transact.

Buy or Sell When the Conditions are Most Favorable

For a buyer, identify the value earlier than other people and buy quickly.  For a seller, sell when the market is favorable (and good enough) rather than hanging on.

Three Further Pieces of Advice

Of course, these two pieces of advice are easier said than done.  But we can increase our odds of buying or selling when we have options and when the conditions are most favorable in three ways:

Always Be Looking:  Keep track of the market of what you want to buy or sell and notice the ups and downs and the general price ranges and keep looking and considering options to buy or sell.

Be Patient: While always looking, be patient to wait for a good time to buy or sell.  A little hint: rarely buy or sell when everyone else is doing the same.  Buying a house in a hot market or buying a company when mergers and acquisitions are booming rarely work out.

Be Opportunistic: At the same time, when the time is right, take advantage of the opportunity and move quickly to complete the buying or selling.

An anecdote serves to illustrate these ways of mastering the “when” of negotiation.

Earlier in my career, I worked with a large multinational that has had success over the last 45 year in being a serial acquirer of other companies.  This success comes the company’s continued focus on acquisitions and acquisition targets.  Key managers in the company are always looking to acquire companies.  At the same time, the company can be patient.  In my role, I started talking to one acquisition candidate in 1996.  We finally completed the acquisition, after many ups and downs, in 2004.  At the same time, we were opportunistic when the time was right.  We completed one deal within two months of first contact.

By following these pieces of advice, we can win the negotiation even before the negotiation has started by mastering the “when” of negotiation.

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Overcoming the Stupidity of Smart People

Posted on November 5, 2024 by David Shedd

Every day, we experience the consequences of smart people making stupid decisions. 

What causes intelligent people to make decisions that do not work and could never work or decisions that have unintended, negative consequences?

Arrogance: Far too many smart people pride themselves on their intelligence believing that whatever they do or decide must be correct because they are intelligent.  Further, smart people believe that their intelligence and success in one area means that they have intelligence and above average insight in another. 

Over-Confidence: Their over-confidence leads to their making predictions and then believing in and acting on these predictions without realizing how inaccurate we humans all are in making predictions.

Laziness: Smart people compound these errors by being too lazy to evaluate their decisions or predictions after the fact to see whether they were correct or not.

Information Bubble: Smart people, especially politicians, academics, and those in Hollywood, live in an information bubble where often only one type of view is represented.  This gives a distorted sense of reality.

Blind to Cognitive Biases:  We all have cognitive biases and make poor decisions when influenced by these biases, especially the confirmation bias (the tendency to accept information that confirms what we already believe and ignore information that goes against what we believe).  But smart people have the intelligence to be even better at justifying the strength and quality of their decisions, even when they are wrong.

“Even the smartest people tend to seek out evidence that confirms what they already think, rather than new information that would give them a more robust view of reality.”  Steven D. Levitt

“It is not that smart people aren’t capable of believing in cultish things; instead, it’s that smart people are better at defending beliefs they arrived at for non-smart reasons.”  Michael Shermer

Value Theory over Practical Experience: Being book smart is important; but only if mixed with practical knowledge and experience.  Philosophers and boosters of large government projects (that work in theory) are especially susceptible to this. 

“It doesn’t matter how beautiful your theory is, it doesn’t matter how smart you are. If it doesn’t agree with experiment, it’s wrong.” Richard Feynman

Or as my former boss, Jim Schack, used to say:

“What works in theory may not work in reality.  But what works in reality just may work in theory.”

Undervalue the Frontline: Smart people are often far from where the decision will be implemented, and the work will be done.  By undervaluing the frontline, decision-makers do not consider the capabilities of those on the frontline to understand and be able to implement decisions made from on high.  This is seen with complex government and corporate policies and procedures or with complex products or software. Further, decision-makers do not consider the motivations of the people implementing the decision or doing the work and their ability and incentive to do what is right for themselves.   As President Dwight Eisenhower sums up well:

“The further you are from the front line, the dumber you are.”

How to Overcome This Stupidity

Here are some recommendations we can use to avoid making stupid decisions.

Make decisions based on short-term reality and be skeptical of our ability to make accurate medium term to long term predictions.  Nearly all medium-term and long-term predictions (especially from pundits and supposed experts) will be wildly inaccurate.  We just need to focus on doing well what is right in front of us.

Evaluate our decision making to keep humble. 

During business school, I had no money; but for the two years, I managed a virtual group of stocks thinking that I would be good at managing stocks because (after all) I was a finance major at business school.  I was a terrible stock picker.  After graduation and as soon as I had some money, I invested in S&P 500 Index mutual funds and have been doing that ever since.

Get out of our information bubble.  We need to ensure that we are reading and listening to ideas that we disagree with.  This will ensure that we are not living in an information bubble.  When interacting with these ideas, we need to focus on their positive aspects to see if they give us some further insight.  Alas, this is more difficult and a whole lot less fun than shooting down opposing ideas.  But, we all need to do it.

Focus on the people doing the work and their commitment and motivations.  If we truly understand the people on the frontline and/or our customers and involve them in the decisions that affect them every single day, we will avoid the large corporate and policy mistakes we still laugh at: from General Motors’ attempt in the 1980’s to replace their workers with robots to New Coke to JC Penney’s failed move upscale by eliminating sales and discounts.

Stay humble and stick to what we know and are good at: 

Several years ago, I took a leadership development class.  Before the class, we took an Ability Battery of tests that measured all different intelligences: analytical reasoning, inductive reasoning, ability to work with numbers and designs, verbal aptitude, structural visualization….  I quickly realized that while I was good in several categories and above average in several others, I was distinctly below average and downright bad in other categories.  Spoiler alert, we all have the mix of skills and abilities – some great, many good, many below average, and some bad.  So, we all would do well to stick to what we know and are good at.

Don’t make big decisions alone: Get other people’s insights and advice, especially others that think and act independently from the way we do and that have different strengths, and that are willing to challenge our thinking.  As Satchel Paige said well:

“None of us is as smart as all of us.”

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Make Continuous Improvement Easier

Posted on October 2, 2024 by David Shedd

For all companies, continuous improvement is vital.  We and our companies need to be better today than we were yesterday and better tomorrow than we are today.  Unfortunately, most improvement initiatives (including most lean kaizen events) fail.  They fail because they are too top-down, too all-encompassing, and too difficult for the employee.

To succeed at continuous improvement, our companies need to make it easier for the individual employee to improve.  An improved process does not work if the employee still does things the way that they have always done it.

To make continuous improvement easier and more successful, we need to:

Start Small: The easiest way to get started is to start small.  Small, continuous improvements will make a huge difference within a short time frame when they are continuous.  The lean expert, Paul Akers, has the concept of 2 Second Lean.  What small, two second changes can each of us make to improve our efficiency and effectiveness at our jobs?  What small, two second change can we make in a process or procedure?

Focus First on Eliminating and Simplifying:  What can we do to make the individual employees’ job easier?  If we normally collect five pieces of information or require that they review four reports, can we only collect three pieces of information and require that they review only two reports.  We need to focus on only the essential.  What are the 2 – 3 things that we can stop doing right now to make someone’s job easier and to not waste their time?

Involve the Employees Doing the Work: We need to ask our employees about what seems like a waste of time, what is annoying to do, what they think can be simplified or eliminated.  Then, we should ask them to share some best practices that they have done to make their jobs easier.  With this, we can then simplify and streamline further eliminating needless work and getting everyone in a department performing tasks in the most effective way. 

Automate: Only after we have eliminated, simplified, and improved should we automate the process or task.  This also applies to the use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) tools.  As Bill Gates wrote:

“The first rule of any technology used in a business is that automation applied to an efficient operation will magnify the efficiency. The second is that automation applied to an inefficient operation will magnify the inefficiency.”

Create and Distribute Best Practices: All positions or significant tasks should have a best practice guide (1 – 2 pages maximum) that can be reviewed by employees in those positions before they perform the task.  These should be written by the employees doing the task and need to be short and written in plain English. 

Use Checklists: For complex tasks, have the employee put together a checklist for how to complete the task that can be used and followed.  As Lean guru, Shigeo Shingo, writes:

“We use checklists so as not to forget that we have forgotten.”

Short, Simple and Readily Available: All best practices, checklists, teaching documents, and reminders need to be short, simple, and indexed with key words so that they are readily accessible and thus easy to use.

Think Bigger: Only now, that we have improved and gotten everyone performing best practices on the small, local basis, can we move out of the small realm and think bigger.  How can we rationalize or improve on a larger, broader, and more global basis?

Repeat: Continuous improvement is continuous.  We must never stop trying to improve.

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Don’t Be a Comfort Junkie

Posted on September 4, 2024 by David Shedd

I just finished reading an excellent book, The Comfort Crisis: Embrace Discomfort to Reclaim Your Wild, Happy, Healthy Self.  As written by Michael Easter, the comfort crisis results from each of us not doing anything uncomfortable: not exercising, never going hungry, eating comfort food, never challenging ourselves…  In the end, this comfort crisis leads to us being less healthy and less happy.

As leaders, we need to embrace discomfort on a personal level – eating right, exercising vigorously, getting out into nature – to be as healthy as possible while leading our companies.

On a leadership level, we can also get into a comfort crisis as we get complacent in our positions and our organizations.  In the book, The Prophet, Kahil Gibran says it well.

“Or have you only comfort, and the lust for comfort, that stealthy thing that enters the house a guest, and then becomes a host, and then a master.”

To lead our businesses well, we cannot become comfort junkies.  We must embrace discomfort.

Do the Hard Work Upfront: All too often, we put off doing the hard and uncomfortable work.  Instead, we procrastinate and occupy ourselves with unimportant but easy tasks.  As author Tim Ferriss writes, we do…

“Senseless pseudo work procrasterbating.”

Similarly, Sadler Training describes constructive avoidance as:

“The busywork that keeps you from reaching out to people or doing the other important and uncomfortable work that you need to get done.”

We need to approach our day, week and year doing the hard work first.  That means doing the hard thing first thing in the morning and doing the difficult legwork upfront that will make the rest of the job or project much easier.  We need to do the hard easy – hard stuff first, then the easy stuff.

Have Uncomfortable Conversations: The dirty little secret of leadership is that most of us are wimps when it comes to having uncomfortable conversations with under-performing employees.  All too often, the conversation does not take place with the result that the employee continues to under-perform and morale suffers as team members resent the person’s attitude and/or underperformance.  Instead, we need to have these conversations timely to address and resolve these problems now.

Learn: Too many of us are complacent in what we know and what we do; we resist learning and trying new things.  The advice from countless Commencement Speeches is accurate.  We need to be learning and getting better every day for the rest of our lives.  Learning challenges us with new (and often uncomfortable) thoughts and ideas.  And learning, to be successful, needs to be uncomfortable.  As Adam Grant writes,

“Learning styles are a myth.  The way you like to learn is what makes you comfortable; but it isn’t necessarily how you learn best.  Sometimes you even learn better in the mode that makes you the most uncomfortable, because you have to work harder at it.”

Do What Needs to Be Done:  As leaders we naturally gravitate towards doing what we like to do and what we are good at.  This happens often when someone gets promoted to a leadership position and continues to do the job that they used to do.  The classic example is a salesperson getting promoted to a sales manager position and continuing to do sales rather than manage.  As leaders we are not paid to do what we want to do, we are paid to do what needs to be done to move our business forward whether we enjoy doing that task or not.

Conclusion

To paraphrase Michael Easter in The Comfort Crisis, the best long-term comfort comes from becoming comfortable with being uncomfortable.  Only then, will we eat better and in moderation and get the exercise, fresh air, and experiences we need to be healthy and happy.  Only then will we do the hard work now that needs to be done, have the uncomfortable conversations, and continue the learning that will make our teams and businesses stronger. As hedge fund manager and author Ray Dalio writes:

“Putting comfort ahead of success produces worse results for everyone.”

Let’s get uncomfortable.

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Manage the Data Overload

Posted on August 6, 2024 by David Shedd

We are awash in data – round the clock news, social media, E-Mails, texts… The challenge for the business leader remains the same:

“The important thing is detecting whispers of useful information in a howling hurricane of noise.”  The Economist

So, how can we manage all this data noise and be able to make effective and informed decisions?

Reduce Data Intake: We need to reduce the time we spend on watching or reading news, social media, articles, etc.  Specifically, we need to spend less time on the latest news and breaking news.  A good question to ask:

Will what I am reading now be important and relevant tomorrow?

Poor quality and useless information fills our minds and corrupts our thoughts even if we recognize and dismiss it as junk news.

Instead, we need to focus on reading the few viable sources of good quality news and information.  The Economist is one such source of information largely because it is a weekly publication and thus is not competing with the breaking news outlets. 

Store Less Information: One of the challenges for business leaders is finding the useful pieces of information among all the data that has been stored.  This is especially relevant today as more and more data are being collected to be used in data analytics and as sources for AI (artificial intelligence) models.  The British retailer, Tesco, is well known for their use of data.

Instead of building the largest data store it could, Tesco initially set out to build the smallest store of data that would give useful information. [Quoted in the book: Scoring Points: How Tesco is Winning Customer Loyalty]

In short, store only the information that you are certain you will need to refer to later.  One sneaky trick that I use is to store data that I think may possibly be important in an E-Mail folder or file folder called “Temporary”.  I can always sort through these folders if I really need to find that E-Mail or file.  But this rarely, if ever, happens.  Psychologically, not junking the ‘possibly important’ makes it easier to ensure that my other E-Mail and File Folders only contain essential information that is now much easier to access (because it is not buried amongst countless barely relevant E-Mails and files).

Scan and Evaluate the Data Upfront: Before reading anything in detail, we should scan through the information very quickly asking ourselves three questions:

What? So What? Now What?

What is this information? What does it tell us that will help us or our company? Is it immediately relevant to us?  If we evaluate what we read upfront like this, we will realize that much of what we receive from E-Mails to articles to breaking news can be scanned and then deleted or tossed into that Temporary folder I just wrote about.  This saves us time to focus on important, relevant, and timely information.

Read the Data at the Right Time: After the quick scan, we may determine that the information is valuable but not immediately applicable.  This is the time to store this information and schedule a task to read thoroughly at a time when it would be applicable.  Important information that won’t be relevant for several weeks is usually best to read in several weeks at the time it is relevant.  As with training, where just in time training (the trainee is immediately able to put into practice) is far more effective, just in time information leads to better and more informed decision making.

Conclusion

Managing the data overload is a daily and never-ending task.  We will always be struggling against the “howling hurricane.”  By using these four ideas we should do better in managing our data intake and storage.  This will ensure that we have the right, high quality data at the time it is needed to allow us to make the best decisions to move our companies forward.

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Let’s Complete Our Projects On-Time

Posted on July 2, 2024 by David Shedd

The data on project performance is distressing. 

A staggering 91.5% of projects go over budget, over schedule, or both.  Worse. Less than 1% of projects are completed on time and on schedule, and actually deliver the benefits promised. Bent Flyvbjerg (Author of How Big Things Get Done)

The average project cost overrun was 27%. Harvard Business Review Research

Much of these cost overruns result from schedule delays.  According to Master of Project Academy, the biggest issues in terms of project management are schedule delays (47.2%) followed by incompetent resources (24.5%) and budget overruns (5.7%).

So, let’s focus on the most important and suggest some basics in how we can avoid schedule delays and get our projects done done done on time.

  • Consider the Big Picture: Look at the project and its objective from an overall perspective to ensure that the objectives are doable within the time and budget allotted for the project.
  • Pre-plan and prepare: Take the time to develop a detailed, tested, and doable plan before doing anything else.  This means doing the work upfront to ensure that as many unknowns and even a few unknown unknowns are known, understood, and planned for.  Nail down the details and determine the conflicts and clashes upfront.  Partner with the people who are actually going to do the work and get their insights and buy-in. As Bent Flyvbjerg writes, “think slow and act fast.” 
  • Simplify and eliminate: Whether it is an IT project, an internal improvement project, a construction project, or any other type of project, look to simplify and eliminate unessential objectives and tasks wherever and whenever possible.
  • Map out the project: Working as a collective team, put together a detailed overall schedule for the completion of the project, including a sequencing of when the tasks are going to be done and by whom.

First, be realistic:  Avoid the planning fallacy (the tendency to be too optimistic about our estimates) by considering the base rate for all tasks (how long such tasks have taken in the past) and use the base rate durations unless there is an excellent justification for why these durations can be shortened.

Second, start with the end in mind: When scheduling and sequencing, start at the end of the job and work backwards to the beginning.

Third, consider the critical path: Focus in relentlessly on those activities that are on the critical path (the stretch of activities that are dependent upon one another and the time required to complete them from start to finish).  Look to shorten this critical path wherever possible by speeding up the time of the tasks on the critical path or by doing activities in parallel at the same time.  Pay particular attention to items that might be on the critical path of a critical path item.  As an example, a long lead time item that is needed for someone to complete their task on the critical path.

Fourth, focus on the constraint or bottleneck in the process or schedule: As described in Eliyahu Goldratt’s classic 1984 book, The Goal, we need to identify the constraint – the absolutely most important bottleneck / critical resource / limiting factor / rate-determining step. Decide how to improve this constraint. Focus relentlessly on this constraint, subordinating everything else to the above decision and elevating the importance and making visible this constraint.

Fifth, create a catch-up plan:  Mistakes and delays will happen, and commitments will not be kept.  It is important to plan out ahead of time what actions and repercussions will be taken when someone falls behind in the schedule.  The catch-up plans will usually cost more money.  But they need to be designed to not delay the schedule.

Sixth, get buy in: Get buy in and commitment from everyone involved in the project to the sequencing and the schedule.

Finally, simplify, eliminate, and revise:  Repeat these detailed mapping activities until there is a well thought out and achievable project sequence and schedule.  We always need to remember the words of process expert Michael Hammer, “You don’t have the right processes if it takes exceptional people to do ordinary things or if it takes heroics to perform tasks that should be routine.”

  • Avoid Changes Like the Plague: If we have done our job and pre-planned and prepared well, there should be no or minimal (and minor) changes.  Any changes made once the project has started are killers to both cost and schedule.
  • Set up Accountability Metrics: The business author Chris Cooper says it well.  Create a “simple, at-a-glance analysis of actual process performance vs. planned and theoretical.  Also enable the team to highlight problems and their relative impact in order to sequence problem-solving and improvement efforts.”
  • Hold Everyone Accountable: Holding everyone accountable to completing their tasks in the sequence and within the scheduled time.  No excuses.  This is the fundamental day to day activity of the project leadership team.  For those that are not keeping to the sequence and schedule, implement the catch-up plan as detailed out above.

Focusing on these seven basics will not ensure that our projects will be completed on time.  There are still the challenges of incompetent resources (that is, poor project management and leadership) and the unknown unknowns which too often occur as a project progress.  But, following these seven basics, will certainly ensure that our projects get completed more quickly and maybe, just maybe, on time.

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Why Be Humble?

Posted on June 4, 2024 by David Shedd

Humility is vital as a business leader and for our teams in several different ways:

Humility ensures stronger relationships: With humility, we put ourselves at the same level as those with whom we communicate.  This is especially true with subordinates; we may out-rank them, but that does not mean we out-smart them. 

The less that you speak of your greatness, the more I shall think of it.  Henry Ford

Humility lets us listen: When humble, we listen and consider other’s opinions.  This listening also improves relationships.

Listening is an act of humility.  It says that other people’s ideas are interesting and important; that our own could be in error; that there is still plenty left for us to learn.  Kathryn Schulz

Humility leads to better decision-making.

Humility moves in the other direction; it opens up and increases incoming information.  As a result, there is more opportunity for pattern recognition.  James Olds

Humility leads to learning and continuous improvement: To learn we need to be humble and admit that we don’t know and that we can be better.  We become open to questioning our understanding and our opinions.  And we become open to new ideas and insights.

Learning requires the humility to realize one has something to learn.  Elizabeth Mancuso

Be humble: In the beginner’s mind there are many possibilities, but in the expert’s mind there are few. Shunryu Suzuki

If we feel that we know everything, then (to us) there is nothing more to learn and we will soon stagnate.  Those lacking in humility are well described by Yogi Berra:

There are some people who, if they don’t already know, you can’t tell them.

Two Cautions

  • Even when humble, we need to stick up for ourselves and take credit for the good work that we have done.  In a perfect world, our humility and our boss’ good insight would make sure that we receive the credit when it is due us.  We don’t live in a perfect world.
  • Beware of false humility and the humble brag that we see in college alumni notes or that Christmas letter from a friend:  ‘While picking up my Nobel Prize, I was so humbled by the people around me…’ 

Most of what they call humility is successfully disguised arrogance.  Nassim Nicholas Taleb

Don’t be so humble, you’re not that great.  Golda Meir

Conclusion

Our success as leaders comes from the success of others.  By remaining humble, we keep the focus where it needs to be: directed outward towards our team and our customers. 

To become humble, we should first realize the contributions of others and the pure luck that got us where we are today.  And, as humble leaders, we need to begin using some of those simple expressions of a good leader that I wrote about 3 months ago.

  • I don’t know…
  • I was wrong…
  • I’m sorry…
  • What can we do better…
  • Thank you…

Ken Blanchard says it well:

People with humility do not think less of themselves; they just think about themselves less.

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Minimize Negativity

Posted on May 7, 2024 by David Shedd

Negativity has been with mankind forever.  From the perspective of evolutionary psychology, we are all descendants of humans who scanned the horizon for negative (and dangerous) factors, acted to avoid these negative factors, survived, and reproduced.  In today’s world, we are less likely to be eaten by a lion, bitten by a snake, or eat poisonous berries; yet negativity persists.  Negativity becomes dysfunctional when our psychology interprets anything negative to be the same as seeing a lion in the bush sixty yards away.

Our Negative World

We focus too much on negativity.  Countless studies have shown that more than two-thirds of our self-talk is negative.  This continues when we get together in groups.  Biology professor Robert Sapolsky relates that:

Anthropologists, studying everyone from hunter-gatherers to urbanites, have found that about two thirds of everyday conversation is gossip, with the vast majority of it being negative.

The media thrives on negativity because negativity sells.  Look at a newspaper or listen to a news report and consider how many stories are negative and often blown out of proportion.  Negativity is everywhere because it makes the person being negative appear smarter.  As psychology and business professor, Teresa Amabile, writes:

“When people hear negative, critical views, they regard them as inherently more intelligent than optimistic ones; when we’re trying to seem smart to others, we tend to say critical, negative things.

The Effects of Negativity

All this negativity has a harmful effect on our individual happiness and our company morale.  The more we focus on the negative, the more pessimistic we become.  This is made worse by the negativity bias.  As Wikipedia defines it:

Negativity bias is a cognitive bias that results in adverse events having a more significant impact on our psychological state than positive events. Negativity bias occurs even when adverse events and positive events are of the same magnitude, meaning we feel negative events more intensely.

In short, as any sports fan will know, a win does not feel as good as a loss feels bad.

Minimizing the Negativity

The first order of business is to reduce our exposure to the negative. 

  • Reduce the time we spend reading or listening to negative or critical material. 
  • Have less contact with the negative people in our lives. 
  • Recognize that much of the negativity that we read and hear is designed to lure us into reading or to show us how smart the writer or speaker is.   
  • Be less negative ourselves.  As social psychologist Roy Baumeister writes:

To be a good partner…what’s crucial is avoiding the negative.  Being able to hold your tongue rather than say something nasty or spiteful will do much more for your relationship than a good word or deed.

  • Keep the negativity bias in mind and realize that the negative things we do read and hear are rarely as bad as they seem and that the negative predictions are usually just plain wrong. 

“The fact is that negative events do affect us, but they generally don’t affect us as much or for as long as we expect them to.”  Dan Gilbert (psychologist and writer)

“Similarly, we believe a lot of things because our innate negativity bias is reinforced by a constant stream of dire headlines, expert predictions of decline and doom, and vivid images of things going wrong.” Andrew McAfee (economist)

Leadership and Negativity

As leaders, our negativity affects us and our entire team.  As such, we need to be even more focused on minimizing negativity.  Some quick suggestions:

  • Be positive and be seen to be positive almost every day.  A leader’s energy and mood, whether positive or negative, is contagious. So, let’s infect our teams with positivity.
  • Compliment more:  Find someone doing something right every day and then compliment them.
  • Rarely criticize: When good employees make mistakes, they usually beat themselves up more than we would ever beat them up.  So, further criticism is just piling on.
  • Avoid “but”: All too often, we give a compliment and then temper it with “but” and then a suggestion for improvement.  In these situations, the employee forgets the compliment and focuses on the criticism.
  • Don’t dwell on the past; but focus on the future.  When a negative event occurs, we can do nothing about it except focus on how we can do better, overcome the negative event, and move our business forward.

“Learning to shift your attention away from unhelpful thoughts and emotions and recast negative events in the most productive light possible is one of the most important health [and business] habits to cultivate.”  Winifred Gallagher

Conclusion

Whether as individuals in relationships or as leaders in companies, we need to accentuate the positive and minimize the negative.  Martin Seligman, the father of positive psychology, summarizes the research on positivity and negativity:

Companies and relationships that are above a 2.9:1 ratio for positive statements and comments to negative statements and comments are flourishing.  Below that ratio (the Losada ratio), companies and relationships are not doing well.

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