Tag Archives: leadership

Fish can’t climb trees!

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So if you’re like me, half your friends on Facebook post uplifting pics, sarcastic pics, stupid pics, people I would like to punch in the throat pics (okay I do like that one).  Most of the time I either ignore, chuckle, or shake my head as appropriate and move on to bigger and better things.  This one however resonated with me.

“Everybody is a genius, but if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid”  This made me wonder to myself, how many tree climbing fish do I know?  Or more importantly, how many fish am I trying to get to climb a tree?

How much energy might we be wasting trying to get conformity, or trying to get people to do something they are not wired to do?  The answer to that question might be scary.  Are the right people not on the bus, or are we putting them in the wrong seats?  As leaders we need to leverage our resources to maximize our output.  That is not going to be achieved with an extensive tree climbing training program for our fish, and I certainly don’t want to be judged by my ability to teach fish to climb.

Now if there isn’t a roll for fish in our organization, that is a different problem.  But we need to let the monkeys climb and let the fish swim. In other words, let people do what they do best. Leverage their skill sets to your mutual advantage. I regularly see marketing people struggle to produce a spreadsheet, and it falls short of the mark anyway.  If they had asked anyone in the finance department it would have been done in minutes, and done better.  Conversely, I can try and make an accountant artistic, or maybe I could let them do accounting.   Different skill sets, different roles perhaps?

Justin Verlander isn’t judged by his ability to play shortstop or hit a ball.  Barry Sanders wasn’t kept out of the hall of fame because he never kicked a field goal.  Are we judging our fish on their tree climbing?  I think that Big Al might be on to something.

 

The Big Disconnect

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Once upon a time in a land far, far, away….Oh wait wrong fairly tale.  What am I talking about? The fact that not too long ago the provision ofr services in Michigan used to be a shared responsibility between state government and local government.  But, over the past decade or more what we have seen is a devolving of those responsibilities to primarily locals as the state has used nearly $5 billion meant for locals to fill its own budget hole.  As a result we’ve seen locals layoff police and fire personnel, close parks and libraries, and put off much need upgrades to important infrastructure such as local streets and sewers. At the same time, getting state government (governors and legislators) to come together on the need for additional revenues has been virtually impossible.  Take additional revenues to help fix our roads and bridges and support transit alternatives.  Even with federal dollars at stake, the legislature can’t seem to find a way to agree to something…anything that would bring such areas into the 21st century.

And yet, at the local level, residents are passing millage after millage to support any number of services.  As a matter of fact at the August election, 90% of all local millages were approved.  This included 100% of all public transit millage requests!   The story has been the same the past couple of years. In the August 2010 election, 86% of all millages were approved and in May of 2011 more than 80% were adopted.

So what’s the deal in the halls of Lansing or Washington?   Clearly, local voters are more than willing to support additional revenues for items when the case is made for specific services that add to our quality of life.  Lets just be sure that the next time we hear a state legislator say the public is against raising taxes to remind them of the reality.

Power and Creativity: Can they play together?

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Do you remember the childrens story about the emperor with no clothes?  Because of the atmosphere he had created, no one felt that they could be honest and tell him that he was sans pants.  His lack of humility was his ultimate undoing.  Have you ever paused to ask yourself if you have created such an environment, and considered the impact that has on innovation?

Research conducted by USC Marshall professor Nathanael Fast the Marshall School of Business suggests that power can have a negative impact on innovation if the environment doesn’t allow for an honest critique of the boss.  “The overall sense of control that comes with power tends to make people feel overconfident in their ability to make good decisions,” Fast said.  In other words, you start to believe your own hype.

As leaders in an organization I believe the goal is to strike an appropriate balance of confidence and humility.  Ego can be a good thing in that it helps give you the confidence to make decisions and move forward.  Too much can be your downfall as you cut off the creative process and limit thinking.  Don’t surround yourself with people that feed your ego, surround yourself with people that will push you and the process with honest feedback.

Now please, go put on some pants!