As a coach, I am exposed to a wide variety of people and issues, and one of the issues that I feel is holding far too many people and companies back, is that they are amazing at identifying problems, but very few come prepared to discuss the solution.
I have been working with two extremely large multi nationals in the natural resources sector and I can see that I could really make a difference if they would only be open to being solution focused and open minded to other ways of doing things.
The problem in many industries is that they only recruit within the industry, which means you are only recruiting people with preconceived ideas of the industry.
Some of the most innovative and productive solutions in fact come from people who are naive to the industry and truly question why things are done a certain way.
These innovations and challenging of the status quo however, are only of benefit if the management are open minded and willing to give things a go.
One client was open minded, and the CEO was welcoming and inviting of RdL coming into their operation. They were not threatened by RdL and in fact wanted to meet and discuss my observations and ideas whenever I was on site.
In partnership with the team I was working with, we introduced initiatives that saved the company millions of dollars, simply because the CEO was open to new ideas.
On the other extremely, another client has old school management that are threatened by other people’s ideas, stuck in the old ways of doing things, lack trust in its leaders, has a poor workplace culture, and if anything, I can see the senior managers are fearful of job loss.
I know I can make a significant difference for this client, but unless the management are willing to be open minded, the company, its people, and operational results will never change.
There is so much waste in daily operations, inefficiencies across many parts of the business ,and the company is populated with a number of poor leaders.
People do not come to work to get disciplined. They want to do well, feel their voices are heard, feel valued and contribute to the longevity of the company they work for.
Having trust in your people, allowing them to share their suggestions, will ultimately deliver success not only for the individuals but also the management and the company as a whole.
I use a 1-3-1 approach to developing a solution.
1 – Problem
3 – Suggested solutions
1 – Recommendation
If we can help our people adopt this approach to solving problems, the problems will be overcome faster, with ownership at the people level and not just the senior management level.
Wouldn’t that be a great place to work – high profits, great morale, passionate people, and people having fun at work?
How do you deal with problems in your workplace?