Leadership

“Leadership ultimately is about influence and leverage. You are, after all, only one person. To be successful, you need to mobilize the energy of many others in your organization.”

Feedback Continuous improvement

Situation-behaviour-impact

Situation-Behavior-Impact | Untools

When we perceive someone’s behavior negatively, we often jump to conclusions and make assumptions about why someone acted the way they did. When giving feedback to that person, it can be hard to stay objective. Situation-Behavior-Impact (SBI™) is a tool developed by the Center for Creative Leadership that helps you remove judgement out of the feedback you give and make it clearer.

Communication

Conway’s law

Minto Pyramid

Minto Pyramid | Untools

When communicating, format the message like this:

1. Conclusion

2. Key arguments

3. Detailed information

Problem solving

A well defined problem is half-done problem

Productive thinking model

Productive Thinking Model | Untools

Use this when the problem is already defined to look for creative solutions

1. Ask “What’s going on” -> What’s the problem exactly, impact, etc.

2. Ask “What’s a success” -> What is the correct behavior, how do you envision this working?

3. Ask “What’s the question” -> How can I help? How can I …?

4. Generate answers -> Judgment free brainstorm, collect ideas

5. Forge the solution -> Narrow ideas into actionable items.

6. Align resources -> Execute

Inversion

Inversion | Untools

Approach a problem from a different point of view.

1. Ask yourself: What would be the worst decision/solution in this situation?

2. Ask yourself: Why would it be bad? Write those reasons down.

3. Try to come up with a good decision/solution, now by looking at the reasons that would make a bad decision.

Issue trees

Issue Trees

They give a clear and systematic way of looking at a problem. They help break a big problem into smaller ones. this could also help you to prioritize them in a different way. They are useful to “divide and conquer”

There are two basics kinds of issue trees:

1. Problem trees, created by answering “why?”

2. Solution trees, created by answering “how?”

Abstraction laddering

Abstraction laddering

Framing problems from a different abstraction layer (lower or higher) to define the problem from a point beyond the initial point of reference.

Move up to expand the scopes and see the forest rather than the trees. Move down to develop concrete solutions.