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AI is the sexy buzzword of the day, but just dropping AI into the discussion isn’t going to get you the results you need. We all find ourselves in conversations that include AI more and more lately. But what do we actually mean when we add “AI”? As leaders, it’s important to understand the practical implementation of this valuable tool.

Vendors understand this too – without a compelling story around how their offerings utilize AI, they risk losing the attention of prospects. To move beyond the vague shiny object stage and into practical implementation, we need to understand our use case for AI.

Let’s focus on how AI will make operations more cost-effective, reduce or avoid outages, and increase the speed and quality of work. Whether you are inside the company trying to get budget approval or a vendor outside trying to make the sale, if you can’t build the business case around the classic concepts of ‘faster, better, cheaper’, you’re just another shiny object distraction.

What’s one task you’d love to hand over to AI?

We’ve all set goals before, whether it’s to lose weight, save money, or get a promotion. Sometimes we succeed and sometimes we fail. But what if I told you that setting goals might not be the most effective way to achieve lasting results?

I’ve struggled with weight loss my entire life. But it wasn’t until my youngest daughter was diagnosed with celiacs (a severe gluten allergy) that I realized the power of forming habits. As a new celiacs dad, I absentmindedly handed her a cupcake at a party. She took two steps and stopped to ask “Dad, does this have gluten?” When I realized my mistake and told her yes it was gluten, she set the cupcake down and walked away. Watching my 5 year old effortlessly say no to a cupcake made me realize that I needed to change my identity from an overweight guy with weight loss goals, to a guy with an “allergy” to sugars, breads and pastas.

By adopting a new mindset, I was forced to form lasting habits instead of setting “SMART goals”. Six months later, I had lost 75lbs and lowered my A1C to 5.8! Instead of setting a goal to eat healthier, I identified as a health conscience eater. This shift in mindset allowed me to make sustainable changes to my diet and lifestyle.

So next time you’re tempted to set a goal, consider forming habits instead. Habits create lasting results, while goals are often forgotten once achieved. Identify as the person you want to be and let your habits guide you towards success.

“We have too much work and not enough people. I’ve asked for more headcount, but it’s not happening. This feels like a no-win situation.”

Sound familiar? If so, let’s explore a different perspective. It’s a common feeling, but constantly focusing on needing more people overlooks other powerful tools within a leader’s control.

If you have already asked for headcount and got rejected or if you didn’t even ask because you know its not an option, you might be temped to ask your team to work longer hours or demanding they “do more with less”. Effective leaders find ways to maximize their existing resources, but looking for heroes among your staff isn’t sustainable. Let’s look at some key strategies you can use:

If the blanket isn’t long enough, your shoulders or your feet are going to be in the cold. As a leader, prioritizing work is your responsibility. When your to-do list exceeds your team’s capacity, it means some things won’t happen on time. Your job is to make sure the most important projects get the attention they deserve, to make sure they don’t get left in the cold.

There will be times when negotiation with your peers and leadership is needed, but often, you have the information to make those calls. Don’t expect your boss to solve your team’s workload problems – that’s your role.

Employee engagement has seen concerning trends, with current levels around 32% according to Gallup. This means, on average, a significant portion of your team’s potential is untapped. While company-wide culture plays a role, you, as the direct leader, have the most influence.

I could write (and have written) many posts dedicated to engagement but here is a cheat sheet: match people to suitable tasks, clear lower priorities off their plate, and show them how their work matters to the bigger picture. If you do just that, you’ll see much higher engagement than the average manager.

Too often, teams work tirelessly, only to miss the mark because goals were unclear. Before declaring that you need more help, ensure you have a laser-sharp picture of what success looks like. What are the absolute must-haves, and what are the nice-to-haves?

Clarifying expectations not only shows your stakeholders you’re invested in their success but also minimizes time wasted on re-work or misaligned efforts.

While the three levers above are important, there are many others – process optimization, automation, skills development, etc. To be fair, in some cases, requesting additional headcount might be the right path – particularly if you’ve diligently employed these other strategies. However, if you aren’t consistently prioritizing, maximizing engagement, and ensuring crystal clear goals, more people aren’t the solution.

Focus on getting the most from the resources you have. True leadership is about maximizing your team’s potential, not just expecting someone else to solve your problems. Defaulting to “I need more people” is often lazy management over true leadership.

Do you disagree?

We have all had the experience of a boss demanding we do something difficult and do it in the dumbest way possible, like being told to cut the grass using a pair of dull scissors even though cutting the grass isn’t our job and despite the perfectly good lawn mower right there. How do you navigate situations where you have no control? While the knee-jerk reaction might be to embrace a victim mindset, it’s crucial to recognize that empowerment lies in intentional actions, even in seemingly dire circumstances.

The dull scissors dilemma is the problem posed in the cut the grass example above. These stressful situations will trigger instinctive reactions: fight, flight, freeze, or appease. Each of these reactions had value in certain situations, but if we want to impact our outcome, we should be intentional about how we react.

You can tell your boss that you won’t do it. Its not the best use of your talent and time and attempt to persuade them to recend the assignment. Arguing or rebelling in the face of adversity can be a natural response, but it comes with its own set of pros and cons.

Pros:

• Expression of frustration and resistance.
• Potential for initiating change.

Cons:

• Risk of larger repercussions.
• Escalation of tension.

Choosing to quit or seek another job is a form of flight, a decision that can be justified in certain situations. If this request is common, if fighting in the past hasn’t been successful, then this is a strong option. But you shouldn’t run every time you face a difficult task; every job has difficult situations eventually.

Pros:

• Freedom from a challenging environment.
• Pursuit of better opportunities.

Cons:

• May not address the root cause.
• Potential for burning bridges.

Doing nothing in response to a challenging task might seem counterproductive, but sometimes, strategic inaction can be beneficial.

Pros:

• Observing the situation before acting.
• Assessment of long-term implications.

Cons:

• Rarely helpful in actively resolving issues.
• Risk of missed opportunities.

Complying with a request regardless of personal feelings is appeasement.

Pros:

• Smooth navigation of political dynamics.
• Quick resolution in some cases.

Cons:

• May perpetuate unfavorable conditions.
• Compromise of personal values.

While these reactions often stem from instinct, recognizing them and consciously choosing a course of action is pivotal. It’s essential to remember that, in many instances, we have the power to influence change before reaching the point of fight, flight, freeze, or appease. Be intentional in your responses, take action with purpose in the face of workplace adversity.

The ancient folklore goes like this: An architect is required to stand under the arch as the keystone is put in place and the wood supports are removed. If the arch holds, the architect is validated but if it fails, he pays the ultimate price for his failure.

The anecdote was made popular in Ken Follett’s book, The Pillars of the Earth, but there is no evidence that any ancient architect actually had to endure such a test. Even though its not historical fact, there is a lesson we can learn from the story.

If your life was on the line, I imagine you would espire to do your best work. This is what accountability does – it challenges us to be the best we can be. The good news today is that holding yourself accountable isn’t likely to get you killed, which means you can learn from your mistakes.

Often we found ourselves acting as mercenaries; hired hands working on someone else’s projects. Mercenaries have no accountability for the outcome. They do what they are paid to do even if it doesn’t ultimately produce the desired results. This happens to all of us in our careers from time to time, but its never going to produce the best version of you.

I’ve seen countless tiktok and youtube shorts where some would suggest you should never do more than you are being paid for. This is a mercenary mindset, but even if your desire is to be the best mercenary, its not likely to get you there. Comments like “I do mediocre work because they pay me mediocre pay” only serves to create a mediocre you.

But when you not only hold yourself accountable for your work, but demand others hold you accountable as well, you will create better long term results.

How can you position yourself at work to ‘stand under the arch’?

• Ensure a well defined outcomes
• Create a clear due dates
• Set outcome expectations with management
• Report on the results
• Do a retrospective exercise in order to learn what you did right and what you did wrong

Be the best version of you, always. Accountability helps you to accomplish this goal.

“I listened to your debate with Mike on the podcast during my walk – I like how you pushed back but everyone was able to stay respectful.”

a recent comment from a co-worker

Huh? What podcast? We had a debate? OH yeah… I totally forgot about that. The link is below, but here is some background:

I had a calendar invite to a discussion on transformation and a dojo approach to learning. When I joined the call, Brent LaMotte and Michael Basil framed the agenda as wanting to record a longer than typical episode for Brent’s podcast “Faster than a Standup”.

I’m always up for a good conversation so of course I agreed and assumed the next steps were to discuss how we want the conversation to go, what our specific focus might be for the episode and to schedule the recording.

Brent however said, “great – let’s get started”, hit record and gave his intro to the episode. The impromptu result is, I think, an engaging conversation about why transformations happen, how we can facilitate necessary change, and how a dojo approach can work to make that happen.

If you have some time and these topics interest you – Check it out here!

Growing up, we would say the house needs to be ‘drop by ready’, so that if someone just dropped by, we could invite them in without having to scramble to move clothes off the sofa for them to have a seat and clean up last night’s pizza trash before offering them a glass of tea. Why are some people’s homes always drop by ready while others are always embarrassingly cluttered and dirty?

At work, I turn chaos into order. I do that by identifying the systems needed to produce the results the business is looking to achieve and then build or improve those systems. I don’t like buzz words like ‘systems thinker’ but in some cases, there just isn’t a better way to say something. I’m a systems thinker.

A quick google search provides us with this definition:

a set of principles or procedures according to which something is done; an organized framework or method.

When creating a system, I look first at the results we want to achieve and then back into the steps we need to achieve those results, and because I’m a systems thinker, I find myself thinking in systems at home just as often at work.

So what is the result I’m looking to achieve at home? I want my house to be drop by ready. What are my current outcomes? A messy house. Clearly we have a failure in systems.

TRASH: you live in your house along with family or roommates – and living anywhere creates trash. If you don’t have a system to process trash, you will live in trash. My kids default behavior is trash goes wherever it was created.

This is very efficient – when they take the last breakfast bar from the box, leaving the empty box on the pantry shelf while walking to their room with the bar takes no thought or effort. When they finish the bar, the wrapper it was in can also be dropped at the foot of their desk with same effort free inattention.

But… this doesn’t create the result we want. Trash is left all over the house and the goal is a trash free home. And while the initial efforts are low, the secondary effort to clean up the resulting mess is higher.

Lesson One: efficiency isn’t the goal, efficacy is.

DISHES: Eating is an everyday activity and this creates dirty dishes. My wife has suggested that eating out reduces or even eliminates this problem. She is correct and eating out would be very effective to create the outcome we want regarding dishes

But…eating out creates new challenges. First there is the obvious budget implications. Even ‘cheap’ options aren’t so cheap. It costs me $50-70 to take my family of six to most fast food places these days and a sit down place is double or triple that.

Second but maybe less obvious new challenge created by eating out is scheduling. Making dinner at home does take time but getting the family in the car to head out to eat not only takes much longer, it’s often not even possible, due to family events, kid functions, school activities. We don’t always have the chance to eat at the same time and certainly not for every meal.

Lesson Two: Second level impacts must be considered.

DIRTY CLOTHES: My teenages don’t seem to agree that this is a problem that needs to be solved. Left to them to decide, they would store their clean clothes in the same location as their dirty clothes; in a basket if we are lucky, but more often in a pile on the floor. Content with a sniff test to determine if an item is wearable – this system creates the outcome they care about. When items no longer pass the sniff – they get tossed into another pile that in some magical process eventually finds its way to the washer, dryer, and back into a basket in their room.

But…it isn’t magic. The adults in the house get fed up with the stink and either have a yelling match with the offending teenager to force them to do the dirtiest laundry or we do it ourselves.

Lesson Three: Different Stakeholders hold different priorities

When you have an outcome that isn’t what you want – the chances are you have a missing or broken system. This is true in our home or office. When you look at what systems you need in place, remember that they must be effective above everything else. This does not mean you get to ignore second level impacts like extremely inefficient processes that put a strain on other parts of the ecosystem. And if you do not align all the stakeholders, you will find conflict and resistance in executing whatever system you are implementing.

I use these principles daily in order to turn chaos into order, create the results I want to see, and keep my house drop by ready! Now if only I could figure out what system I need to finally lose the extra weight…

There is a LOT of money in selling secrets:

• The secret to losing weight
• The secret to getting rich
• The secret to a better love life
• The secret to success

If you google any of these phrases, you will not only get millions of search results, you’ll also get a TON of ads from content providers (books, podcasts, bloggers) all willing to sell you the secret you are looking for.

Whatever it is you are trying to do, someone is selling a solution and one very important way to get you to buy their solution is to convince you that the reason you have failed in the past is not your fault. Its because there is some secret information that you didn’t have access to. And they are going to sell you that answer.

The secret is… there is no secret.

A few years ago, my wife and I were arguing over our budget. Once a month we would sit down with the intention to align on how and what we spend money on, but often it would turn into a frustrating conversation. “Why do you get X but I can’t have Y” or “I don’t think we should do X right now – lets do Y now and put X in next month”. I’m a systems thinker so I was looking for a system where Stephanie and I could get on the same page without the frustrations we were running into. I also don’t like to reinvent the wheel – there had to be an answer to this already… this is where the QBR comes in.

If you have been in the corporate world for more than a minute, you’ve certainly run into the QBR. Quarterly Business Reporting is essential to maintaining focus and alignment across many areas of the company. We use it to measure our progress and ensure our future. So I proposed a similar approach to my wife – we would host a QMR (quarterly marriage report) meeting.

We needed to balance the stress with communion, the disagreement with alignment. So I proposed that once a quarter, we leave the kids and the house for a 3 day weekend, even if it’s just a hotel room in our town. We bring our budget, but we also bring our goal setting notebooks, at least one outfit for a fine dining event, and plan to connect with intentionality over our past, present, and future.

This has been one of the best things we have done in our marriage and I recommend it to everyone. We bring our individual work goals, our health goals, our family plans, and of course our budget with us, but we leave the daily distractions, the unfinished projects around the house, the kids, and the pets all at home.

You have get the joke, and the joke is, nothing’s personal. From the I love yous to the unreturned phone calls when your last picture didn’t perform they will pick you up in a limo, but you might have to catch a cab home. It’s not personal, it’s just business.

Matthew McConnaughey, Greenlights

My LinkedIn feed is flooded with close friends, colleagues, and aquantisces sharing what is one of the hardest days of their career – they were laid off. The tech sector has been hit particularly hard and my company just informed thousands that they were impacted (including me).

I’ve seen over a dozen layoffs in my career (first time on this end of one) and they are never easy for anyone involved. When I was much younger, I was more arrogant and assumed immune to company layoffs. One colleague said to me years ago, “Dale, the worst lay off you’ve ever seen is what, 10%? You only have to be better than 1 out of 10 people you work with”.

Of course this is not the case, but when you are in your twenties, you think you have it all figured out. Since then, both he and I have been laid off through no direct fault of our own. Still, it’s easy to take it personally. You know the five stages of grief; denial, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance? Well, they don’t happen one emotion at a time, transitioning you from denial to acceptance – they hit you like a ton of bricks in waves, moving between each so quickly you feel manic.

One of the thoughts that seem to dominate in the first few weeks is, “why? why me?”. This for me is part of the denial process. I recently read Greenlights by Matthew McConnaughey and I remembered the quote above. He has such a great way with words here; “they will pick you up in a limo, but you might have to catch a cab home”.

Next I hear a lot of the same idea regarding loyalty. “I guess loyalty doesn’t mean anything any more” one friend recently said to me after the round of layoffs at his company (interesting sidenote, he was not directly impacted by the layoffs). This idea is rooted in anger, the feeling of betrayal. But is loyalty the right word here? You’re exchanging value for value – your time and talent for their money. Loyalty is what you do when you help a friend move or pick them up in the middle of the night from a bad situation. Loyalty is staying with your spouse during the tough times. Loyalty is not a word we should use to describe a job or our relationship with a company, but it’s hard not to evoke the word when the feeling so closely matches loyalty’s counterpart – betrayal.

The point here for anyone going through being impacted by layoffs – you are not alone. What you are feeling is raw and real and you need to take time to process it all. Just don’t let it consume you. A colleague called me after I was impacted to tell me it took them 3 months to get over the anger of being laid off earlier in his career. He shared its ok to feel angry but holding on to it isn’t useful. I really appreciated his call and willingness to be open and vulnerable with me.

Every great inspiring story has adversity. We like to see the protagonist climb out of despair to triumph over the pain, but often only get to know the story by the end, when the victory has been won. The journey through the horror is told in the past tense but experienced in the present. Know that this is just a thing you are experiencing on the way to… actually, I don’t get to write the next part – you do. I look forward to hearing your story when you are ready to tell it, because losing your job might be “just business” but it’s also very personal.