Decision-making

Leaders–It’s all about the context

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Music Droid

Image by The Smurf. via Flickr

Being an authentic leader means being true to who you are in dynamic situations and with different audiences and scenarios.  In this excerpt of an interview with Dr. David Darnell, Department Chair and Associate Professor of Education Leadership at Drake University in Des Moines, Iowa he talks about how his experiences as a leader differ when working with his graduate students, his colleagues at Drake and his work in his local church, as well as touching on his lifelong experiences in education.  The subject of this excerpt is how being a leader may change given different contexts and in working with different constituents.  His comment about remaining true to yourself while helping others get where they are going is particularly keen.

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Open the Box 3–The Pressure Washer

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Pressure Washer

Image by Goins via Flickr

So I Opened the Box today and found a pressure washer.

I began meditating on what this might represent, other than the forcible removal of gunk from my patio, driveway, sidewalk, etc.  What has come up for me is the process I go through to figure out whether I should have something done by someone else or whether I should do it myself.  This has broad implications for personal endeavors and business.

First some backstory…

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Open the Box 3–The Pressure Washer

/ / Leave a comment
Pressure Washer

Image by Goins via Flickr

So I Opened the Box today and found a pressure washer.

I began meditating on what this might represent, other than the forcible removal of gunk from my patio, driveway, sidewalk, etc.  What has come up for me is the process I go through to figure out whether I should have something done by someone else or whether I should do it myself.  This has broad implications for personal endeavors and business.

First some backstory…

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Dr. Who and the War of Art

/ Jeff Hora / 2 Comments

The Mark 2 fibreglass (Tom Yardley-Jones) Tard...

Image via Wikipedia

OK, so the title of this post may seem a little like link bait, but stay with me.

I have been a Dr. Who fan for a long time.  Generally each season of the show has some kind of overarching storyline.  This season a race of beings calling themselves The Silence are introduced.  They have a number of disturbing traits, but the back story on them implies they’ve been on Earth for thousands of years and have had a controlling hand in the destiny of mankind.  No one has noticed because they have a particularly disturbing ability: they can erase all memory of themselves from a person’s memory once the person looks away from them.  How do you fight against something when you can’t even remember it when you’re not looking at it?

Where this thought connected for me in my professional development comes with my completion of Steve Pressfield’s excellent book The War of Art last night.

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Open the Box 2–The Golden Table

/ Jeff Hora / 1 Comment
Golden table 2

Image by Underpuppy via Flickr

So I Opened the Box today and found a golden table.

So I thought about what this actually might refer to and I came up with: meetings.

Seriously. Meetings…

When was the last time one of those landed in your inbox and made you respond, “Hot diggety, a meeting!” as you snapped your hand to the Accept button?

…I thought so.  Me neither.  So I had to think about it some more.

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Open the Box 2–The Golden Table

/ / 1 Comment
Golden table 2

Image by Underpuppy via Flickr

So I Opened the Box today and found a golden table.

So I thought about what this actually might refer to and I came up with: meetings.

Seriously. Meetings…

When was the last time one of those landed in your inbox and made you respond, “Hot diggety, a meeting!” as you snapped your hand to the Accept button?

…I thought so.  Me neither.  So I had to think about it some more.

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Reaction is not Solution

/ Jeff Hora / Leave a comment
A full tree of probabilities for the Monty Hal...

Image via Wikipedia
There is a common wisdom that if you discover a problem, you shouldn’t make anyone aware of it unless you also have a solution at the ready….something like, “I notice the widget sales on our site are way down, so I propose we drop the price.”
I’m not sure that this is the best way to approach problem-solving, at least not in all cases. Here’s why: