The Einstein quote is well known enough: Problems cannot be solved by the same level of thinking that created them. But perhaps Einstein had something different in mind than the obvious meaning that you have to rise up to a higher level of thinking to solve a problem created at a lower level. What if it’s the reverse?

In management strategy we frequently encounter the problem that the solutions we propose are “too simple.” For instance, we point to the tremendous power of simple recognition by senior managers as a powerful force for engagement and performance of staff. Just acknowledge good work we say. It isn’t rocket science. All it takes is literally saying something as simple as, “wow, thanks, that was great” or “I really appreciate your taking the time to think that through, I’m not sure I could have found such a great answer.”

What stops managers from saying stuff like this and reaping the benefits of improved performance from people who will strive like mad to do even better the next time just for a few more words of praise? Can we ever get enough praise? Do we ever get enough so we don’t need more for weeks and weeks and weeks? No. Most of us can absorb that kind of comment almost daily and still crave more. We know what this feels like personally, but we somehow don’t ‘get it’ that others who report to us respond the same way.

Managers argue that employees will tire of this, take it for granted, be even more upset when they don’t get praised next time because we established a baseline (and, oh, it’s work, it takes time, it’s hard to remember to do it – true until it becomes habit!). Many worry that most of the praise would be false, provided for work that’s just a basic expectation of the employee to do a job. Well, I’ve seen tons of employees not do the basics, so it never bothered me to thank people for doing their job and doing it quite well. I never seemed to have too much trouble distinguishing something I could thank someone for and make an even bigger fuss over something truly unique. Psychology tells us repeatedly that positive reinforcement works. So why not?

Isn’t this exactly a case of a problem being solved at a different, but ‘lower level’ of thinking – basic human needs – than the level that created it – expecting all employees to be so ‘grown up’ they just do their jobs because, after all, isn’t that what they’re paid for? Maybe managers are hung up looking for ‘higher level’ solutions when ‘lower level’ would actually work better. Maybe I’ll be accused of ‘lowering the level’ in organizations or in HR, but if it works, if everyone is happy and productivity increases, why not? What do you think?

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One area that’s particularly challenging to train or develop, but extremely important in 21^st Century leadership is how to help people improve at managing emotional content.

EI or EQ (emotional intelligence or quotient) has proven to be a key missing ingredient for a lot of otherwise promising managers and has never been more necessary than in dealing with today’s more capable workforce and knowledgeable customers. Only by engaging them fully and not turning them off can we unleash the creativity and innovation needed to keep up and keep ahead.

Now, from New Brunswick, a small start-up called Lymbix, has turned a budding idea into a practical application that just might help. but only if enough senior managers take it seriously and ‘walk the talk.’

It’s an add-in for Outlook email called ToneCheck (first version actually free for now at www.tonecheck.com). Like Spell Check, but for emotional content, it can review your email just before sending to see if it is likely to be misunderstood or cause offense. Simple to use, it highlights any section that sounds angry or fits  other emotional descriptors so you can edit if you want to be sure you’re getting across not just your idea, but the tone you’re trying for.

According to Lymbix Founder and CEO, Matt Eldridge, “We want to help organizations precisely determine tone in any text-based communication. Email  and text messaging services simply don’t allow us to gauge body language and verbal queues, leaving us with just text. With the growth of business email, it is becoming more critical to get the tone of your message right because you often don’t get a second chance with a customer of an employee.” (And can’t we all just think of times when we wish we’d taken a second look before hitting ‘Send?’)

This was developed partly in response to academic research studies that show 50% of emails are misunderstood by providing a practical way to review your hasty typing to make sure it will get your message across effectively. Though it takes just seconds to use, the key will be establishing that it’s needed. Unfortunately many of those who need it most will undoubtedly be last to click the check button.

The good news is senior executives (and HR) have an opportunity to make it clear they’re using it themselves and expect others to as well. People do what the boss does and what the culture expects especially if it takes only moments. The better news is if we can get even a few of our less effective managers to improve at this (and this tool is a learning guide that is private, easy to use and causes them to think in emotional terms they may never have bothered much about before) we all benefit.

We already see developments in robotic devices that assess emotions in people, that read faces, tones and body language and report or respond appropriately to others’ emotional states. Look for this area to evolve considerably in the next decade or two.

Not only for email, but there’s a huge potential spin-off benefit here. As people work privately to correct their shortfalls via email edits, they inevitably will learn to think before speaking as well before as snapping off emails. Imagine if a lot of ‘foot in mouth’ went away as a result of a handy tool people can practice with on their own as opposed to anyone preaching to them about the need to ‘be more sensitive.’ No one is comfortable on either side of an EQ conversation. Here’s a way to automate learning that’s increasingly important for our organizations to master for future success.

The key question is whether you and your teams will be ahead of this curve or less effective than those who are. This budding Canadian success story so far has one workable tool and more planned. Who better to help the world learn to be more tuned to human effectiveness than Canada – but just handing it to staff won’t ensure it’s used. It will requires clear knowledge that it is being used and is expected right to the highest levels. Isn’t that worth the saving in upset customers and disengaged staff? Just imagine 50% of emails today are causing problems. and what do we spend more time doing?

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The most diverse teams come up with the widest range of ideas and offer the wide range of skills needed to implement them. But they are a challenge to manage, so better leadership is required.

What’s clear as well is that a single leader at the top of an organization or function makes an enormous difference. Only when the CEO (or function leader) puts an issue on his or her agenda, talks about it personally and follows its progress, does anything happen. This should be obvious, but like so many “obvious” facts, it is overlooked in a vast number of organizations.

The problem is you can’t talk about and monitor everything at once. You can’t make everything a priority. That confuses people, wears them out and makes them change priorities frequently as each item comes to the fore, so ultimately nothing is actually a priority except keeping your head above water – another “obvious” fact that is constantly ignored.

So what should a leader do? Again it sounds easy, but isn’t – pick the top three or four things and use them to drive results. Diversity today has to be among them because of the need for innovation, let alone that our employees, customers and other stakeholders are now more diverse and will work for, shop with and invest in only those they believe are on the right path (the latter being the good and sufficient reasons normally cited by diversity experts). Of all of these, it is the over-riding need for innovation that will ultimately drive the point home, but that hasn’t struck many organizations yet.

I’ll offer two examples that popped up on my screen recently. First is Antonio Perez talking specifically about how he learned the value of diversity and used it to resurrect Eastman Kodak, a company most of us thought was doomed for lack of it’s recognition that film was a fading commodity: http://bit.ly/9VbSkB and second, Clay Shirky, the media guru, talking about why newspapers have been even slower to recognize and find solutions for their dilemmas with the Internet eating their lunch (or more specifically their subscribers): http://bit.ly/18tDhy.

The more hidden point all this makes is that executives, human as they are themselves, tend to overlook basic human reasons why things are important. We see that diversity is valuable and can contribute, but we set up a ‘program’ for it and expect that will suffice. It won’t because our employees need reminders that matter from a boss that really cares about the issue and about them. We hesitate to make a ‘touchy feely’ item like diversity one of the top three objectives because we can’t quite overcome the feeling that today’s sales or marketing initiatives are more important. The fact is those will get done. done better than any one of us could do alone. if, but only if, we have a diverse and capable team around us. Get the right people in place and keep them motivated, that comes first. Is it something you can see in operation in your organization?

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Here’s an example. A problem in HR is so many of our efforts only pay off in a big way if they’re consistently applied over time. Yet we work in organizations where leaders dream of quick solutions and want to hop from program to program in hopes some new phenomenon will instantly solve immediate problems. Can you deliver both?

I ran into an interesting piece in the online Gallup Journal (http://bit.ly/9WZXTE) about creating personal well-being (a sometime topic I follow). It makes the point strongly that many personal solutions we pursue – for example, losing weight by eating right – actually align for value in the short term, too – eating sensibly keeps you awake and energized through afternoons where you’d be tired and sleepy if you eat the wrong lunch .and long term you lose weight. We know these things more or less, but we seldom push them to logical conclusion. For some reason even though we know both long and short term effects are positive and therefore aligned, we still gravitate to old, comforting habits rather than fully developing new, better ones even though we also know the new ones would become comfortable and comforting in time if we simply persist. Managers have the same problem building better management habits.

Take something like getting managers to recognize employees good work every day. Establishing a positive recognition culture has tremendous impact on results long term, but it also gets great reactions and increases motivation right away employee by employee. We tend to take both these for granted. Many managers hear the message, but still fall back immediately into their comfortable habits of command and control with no recognition. Why praise someone who’s merely done what you asked (likely not even as well as you could have)? If instead you’re asking them to think up better solutions, some of their work will genuinely surprise and please you and it becomes easy to say ‘great idea.’

Buried in these seemingly minor, hard to grasp human foibles are keys to vastly better outcomes for everyone. There doesn’t seem to be a magic pill to overcome habit inertia. At present the only help we seem able to offer is explanations. They seem to make more sense when I see how they work so similarly in personal and work situations. Will such information help line managers change their style? Will it help me eat protein as a late night snack instead of chips? Can that sort of insight help my clients to see the value of asking for ideas and praising them instead of their usual ’safe’ style of telling staff what to do day by day?

Is there a way to make such small insights help more with implementing long term HR strategies better? How can we make that leap?

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The principles apply directly to HR strategy. Oddly, just recently, one of the many HR/Learning & Development blogs out there published “Four tips for Effective Leadership,” namely: Be counterintuitive, live comfortably in gray areas, learn by doing and exercise soft skills – exactly what Duggan points to with his great strategists. Strategy isn’t arrived at by ‘planning’ in the sense of laying out exact steps and stages with time lines and benchmarks. Napoleon and the others ‘put their teams in motion,’ ‘looked for small battles they could win decisively,’ ’stuck to the course with firm resolution,’ and learned to evolve strategies as they went rather than work them out in detail beforehand.

Reading these, I realized that, yes, most successes I ran into along the way evolved ‘in the midst of action’ (a phrase I also recognized from a Zen master talking about finding your way calmly ‘in the midst of action’). Does this apply to HR? My former company got into elearning early and heavily, with great results, because we were asked to look at ‘expert systems’ that the CEO saw at a conference (a different computer technology) and we jumped to use the budget and just get going, without being in the least sure where we were headed, but seeing some possibilities in using technical systems to leverage more people learning more things.

If we’d waited for our IT process that called for developing a technical plan in detail, with projected costs three to five years out, we’d never have gotten off the ground. Yet planning is valuable. In the words of Eisenhower, the top allied General of WWII, “Plans are nothing, planning is everything.” The difference, in other words, is active versus passive. Get going, planning as you go, through the unexpected twists and uncertainties – don’t wait for “a plan” designed to resolve something you think may happen – it won’t.

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Depending on how you read these, the messages are puzzling. The long term HR head is replaced with a former operations executive. Layers of management have been laid off to streamline things and shake up the physical bureaucracy, but whether this shakes the bureaucratic habits of thinking and behavior that inevitably form the anchors of culture remains to be seen. HR is dropped from some key operating senior teams, but is tagged as an ‘enabler’ of the change process. Enabling from the outside?

There are suggestions that the new CEO sees the culture change as ‘done’ (or more likely sees it as having been given a momentum-driving start through his bankruptcy restructuring, which appears to have been sold to managers as ‘a gift’). There are other hints he understands it must be a continuing process. I’m skeptical of calling precipitous down-sizing a gift. For sure you can try to make lemonade from such lemons and if you look at the CN restructuring (in Les Dakens excellent new book, Switchpoints) that preceded the sort of culture change GM is talking about, you can see it is possible to make necessity work more for you than against you, but it’s still a wrenching process with some uncertainty as to what it produces.

You can also see with the CN example that it took 10 years in various stages to evolve something like the full impact on culture that GM almost certainly needs. Yes, you can make early gains, but if you assume that’s all, you will certainly fall short of what’s possible and perhaps even create a situation where culture falls back toward what it used to be. Habits take time and repetition to change.

It’s very hard to tell from reports such as this whether the people managing the new structure really understand that it takes years of stable and continuing reinforcement of consistent practices to actually change culture. Are reporters putting their interpretations on things – that change is ‘done’ or that it is ‘in progress?’ We won’t know for some time, but the reporting is worrisome.

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Reading their link to the “First Pages” of the older book is really worthwhile to make instantly clear the history of effective HR and OD and how early lessons apply directly today, ultimately explaining how smart financial leaders led us into the current mess.

Conclusion? McLaughlin quotes Weisbord. .from 1987! “The world is changing too fast for experts, and old-fashioned “problem-solving” no longer works. For the past forty years productive workplaces on several continents have been evolving another way entirely of thinking and acting. First, they have been moving away from problem-solving toward whole-systems improvement as the secret for solving great handfuls of problems at once. Second, they have been moving away from getting experts to fix systems toward having experts join everybody else in learning how to make improvements.”

Doesn’t that sound like social networking and The Wisdom of Crowds over command-and-control leadership? You bet! So why haven’t we arrived yet at the point where everyone understands this? I suppose double-entry bookkeeping wasn’t thoroughly accepted by 100% of business for its first hundred years either, though now you wouldn’t start into serious business management without such basic accounting.

McLaughlin goes on to link another excellent article by NYT’s Nicholas Kristof, illustrating how well-functioning groups should be able to out-do experts and ties it directly to today’s disasters. When will we finally learn these lessons and concentrate on leading in new ways?

PS: I love one of Kristof’s references to Berkeley’s Philip Tetlock (author of the 2005 book, Expert Political Judgment – which could have been subtitled ‘yeah, right’). Tetlock, he notes, uses the description “hedgehog” in a negative way. For me that illustrates balancing Jim Collins’ use of it in Good to Great to describe the positive need for focus, which in turn illustrates again the need for balance rather than too much of any one element of effective leadership. And in many cases balance only is achievable by including more people in the process of leadership.

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First, I often am introduced for my success in handling some major mergers, not easy when 80% are known to fail, mostly for "HR" reasons – poor culture fit, bad leadership, etc. What I point out is that most of the layoffs I had to manage – and there were many in the turbulent retail years I held a senior role there… most occurred in good times, not in recessions. Layoffs don’t only occur in tough times nor does hiring only occur in good periods. Both go on all the time. It’s simply a matter that there are a few more in one or the other.

I got the watershed job in my own career history the very day a major city newspaper emblazoned this headline on page 1: Worst Job Market in 20 Years (the height of the 1982 recession). And I’m not the greatest job hunter, being basically a shy, non-marketing type. "If I can do it, you can," is a pretty accurate message.

In most years average turnover is about 15% – one job in six has to be refilled. Most are filled from within… in good times… and then replaced by hiring junior staff. This background rate of turnover doesn’t vary too much in bad times. And when many companies lay off, they inevitably find just afterward that turnover continues. Other companies are grabbing their best people hoping to fill growing gaps with better players; your own company cut to the bone and didn’t anticipate continuing routine departures of people they depend on. They still have to hire.

While it’s true that relatively speaking it will probably take longer to get a job (managers who might average 3 to 5 months searching might need 6 to 9), they will inevitably find work. Those who keep looking will at least! Of course that’s hard on people. No one likes to envision such lengthy periods without pay, but allowing for just a bit of luck, severance packages, outplacement counseling and good planning really do help.

By the time layoff are decided, paperwork processed and job searches are fully underway (usually 2 to 3 months), don’t forget that we’re that much closer to the upturn. Those laid off early may have longer searches, but they’re more fully networked and closer to finding work earlier in the  upturn than those laid off later, who take a few months to get well started. So even though layoffs may continue for a while, it isn’t all doom and gloom for everyone. Those who keep their heads, stay focused and pursue all leads as consistently as they can usually end up with better jobs that the ones they left.

It’s not a time to panic and jump at the very first job offer… unless it’s a great one. Steady, logical work pays off all the way through the process from networking to negotiating the offer. It’s just a bit tougher to stay positive. As always balancing pressures and alternatives is the key to coming out on top.

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I’d said there are times when command and control is still the most appropriate style – and used an example of a sinking ship where you want the person who knows best what to do to assume control and direct the best actions for everyone, the more firmly the better – no panic, life jackets, lifeboats, line up here!

The coach trainer insisted that even on the Titanic, if the captain had coached, everyone might have been saved. In fact, it would undoubtedly have led to a better outcome if the captain had coached the crew sufficiently before the emergency so they knew how to take charge, but I can’t honestly see the opportunity to coach once the iceberg was hit. If you think about the coaching process and questions, is it really an appropriate time to ask people “how’s it going, what do you really want, what should our strategy be, what needs to be different and what will we do now?” Or do you hope the crew lines people up firmly, guides them into lifeboats and tells them how to launch?

The one antidote to panic is clear confidence from a leader who remains calm and balanced and seems to know what to do when you don’t. This is true for any situation, but in true emergencies, it can take a pretty directive leader to convince people. Once things are underway, you hope individuals will take initiative and you may be able to coach that once everyone’s in boats and away, but in those first stages of crisis finding the right balance of command first before coaching seems wisest.

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A key function of Human Resources is trying to get people hired or existing ones moved into jobs that fit their strengths. Buckingham would be right in thinking I’d be wasting my time aiming for the Olympics, definitely not in my strengths. But every athlete or manager who legitimately wants his or her role and has talent still has “weaknesses” to work on. It would make no difference to me if my biggest problem in the 100 meter dash  was my start, but for those who win or lose by microseconds, knowing their weaknesses and working on them is huge. And to suggest they not bother would be completely wrong.

So, should we only work on strengths – no way! But starting with strengths and working on them as well as what makes them weaker than they could be is essential. Since studies show the lowest rated skills for most leaders are all aspects of working with people (versus things), we clearly need to promote those with inclination and relevant ability, but we also need to work hard to ensure they get exposed to experiences that help them grow people skills.

Tips: How to choose what to work on

Ideally trial and error and solid self-reflection have landed you in a job you like a lot. (If not, figuring out what you really prefer is priority #1.) Then, to get better at what you like doing:

1.    Try to evaluate and especially ask others for their opinions of your strengths and weaknesses for this work. Take time to assess accuracy. Don’t be reactive to emotional issues about these and don’t take anyone’s first word, especially your own.

2.    Work on your three or four biggest strengths… by looking at your weaknesses in those areas, planning a strategy to improve them and consistently doing a bit each day whenever they come up. Set reminders for yourself or you’ll forget.

3.    Then look at your two or three biggest weaknesses. Really look. Some may not be as bad as you think; others are worse. Be aware you have a couple of approaches – first, get someone else to do those things instead (a team member, co-leader, spouse, etc.). Figure out how to be great without ever doing these. Don’t let yourself be tempted. Pamper the people who do this for you so you’ll never have to. …But also… decide on one, just one, weakness you really, really, really want to change. Create a plan and work on it every day, asking people continually how you are doing and asking for their help and suggestions. Make this into a daily habit of practice. In a few months or a year or two, evaluate your results. Chances are you’ve made enough progress (and built some continuing habits) that you can choose a second miserable area to work on. But expect to keep working on these for the rest of your life. They will never come entirely naturally.

4.    Periodically assess your results and the balance between work on strengths and weaknesses, not letting either completely absorb your energy – do both. The proportion of time you spend on each is a balance only you can decide.

The bottom line is you can’t easily change weaknesses, but you better know what they are and have a strategy to prevent them de-railing you. Over time you can certainly improve some of these areas, but only if you work hard on one at a time and choose only those you really want to change… and then persist, persist, persist. For me this has meant a lifelong drive to get over feeling shy. I’ve developed tons of behaviors that work most of the time, but there are still areas where my original habits continue to affect what I do and unless the day ever comes that isn’t the case, I’ll keep this in mind and keep working away at little bits.

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The larger question is who reads blogs and do they help? Clearly most of the people writing business blogs intend them to help and most must believe at some level that they do. Vanity undoubtedly drives a lot of short term efforts to get seen on the Internet, but to stick with it year after year, disciplining yourself to write two or three or more times  a week on your subject takes something more than vanity, especially if few ever read or comment on the majority of what’s out there.

Why bother? Of course some derive solid marketing benefits. I doubt that I will. I’m not great at marketing in any forum and see that a more of a by-product of the real question. For me that is… can blogging about leadership really help?

In organizations over the year, my most startling observation is there are so many people talked into leadership roles, for the money, the power, the prestige, the challenges and on and on, who have no training, no real inclination to lead or much knowledge of what its about at least when they start. In some ways perhaps that makes sense because leadership is best learned by doing. But lots of people never learn, which produces pain and misery for vast masses of employees, co-workers and organizations themselves so to speak.

The hopeful fact is that the best approach to leadership is extremely basic, human and easy to follow. Conversation about it can help. For me, I haven’t fully been able to figure out the best way to say it or develop those conversations widely. This medium may work. Only time will tell. It’s a new way to feel that I’m making the effort. As time goes on the results will enhance reflection and perhaps jointly the blogging community will ultimately identify what creates value and how. Right now it’s a bit of the wild west.

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McKinsey & Company in their latest weekly points out long term recruiting strategies are necessary in China to overcome growing shortages of managers – an external marketing challenge.

Susan Abbott who runs an excellent blog on marketing and branding points out in her newsletter today that for a group to be effective they need to keep focused in for the long term… stick to the strategy.

And finally, Sherrill Burns of Culture-Strategy Fit Inc. emphasized in a presentation this morning that a strong culture makes HR work – and that requires a long term, consistent marketing strategy focused on getting everyone step by step into the same cultural mold and keeping them there.

The message? People don’t just work superbly together by accident. There needs to be a strategy, clearly focused and consistently pursued, to make that happen. It’s simple enough, but so few organizations manage it that the ones who do win awards. Sherrill brought along the President/Founder, Pat McNamara, of one such award-wining model company, APEX, a 32-consultant PR/issues management firm with remarkably low turnover for their industry, achieved by internal marketing to their staff – which enables them to use that as a powerful selling feature with clients and thereby earn exceptional returns.

Awarded “Best agency of the year” twice in a row, Pat has also been named one of the Top 100 Women Entrepreurs. One of her comments – “it takes a lot of time – more than you ever expect – to engage every single person, but it’s absolutely worth it.” They turn business away to keep the positive culture and people’s lives and sanity intact. And make enough money to give perks like an extra five days off in an employee’s fifth year and a month paid sabbatical in the eighth. Sticking to those policies requires commitment… long term. The message – basics: long term, strategy, commitment, consistency and marketing internally as much or more than externally… if  you want happy staff and great results!

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Yesterday I suggested that "multitasking" would be OK if you’re working to help people become better while also working toward an objective was an exception to the rule against trying to do two things at once. That’s not what I intended, I see in retrospect.

In fact, it’s better to say you should look for ways to achieve two ends at the same time with the same, single action. By helping others improve, you get work done – through them, with them and even on your own as you model for them how they could approach things. It’s a way of working and thinking about work that ultimately produces better results in every situation.

It really isn’t a "multitask" because you’re not stopping to help them and then stopping that to go back to work, you are doing both together, sometimes working alongside them on a problem, sometimes on your own, but with the objective that your work will help them move forward in some way.

Of course, we can’t avoid distractions. They happen all day long inevitably. But we can avoid distracting ourselves by attempting multiple tasks at the same time. Everyone gets caught up in the sense of urgency and the layering on of one new demand on top of the last.

We have to catch our breath sometimes and say stop the roller coaster, let me sort out what to work on first, second and third and then do those in that order… without trying to do every task simultaneously. If the goals of every task include how this improves things for people as well as achieves results, we’re on the right track. If we can’t see how, we need to rethink our approach to it until we find a better strategy for it.

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Rather it’s the combination of a designated new start following a substantial mental break with the preceding grind and what you do after that. The elements work best when the work together.

Mentally we think "the old can be left behind at least partly" and "we have an accepted point at which to start something new," where, for instance, sales people begin with a fresh set of goals, a blank page. There’s nothing they can change about the past, but mentally a "do over" opportunity appears.

Whatever different stresses the holiday season presents – last minute shopping, more family than you see all year, special efforts for parties, celebrations, dinners and possibly travel – the new stresses ensure time for the old routines to fall into a bit of perspective.

You can think in terms of a "do over" each day, too, as Mark LeBlanc, outgoing President of the US National Speakers Association captures in his book, Growing Your Business (reviews at bottom of the linked page).

It’s a great idea for tasks with targets like selling or losing weight – do just one thing each day. Get into a habit. Don’t beat yourself up if you didn’t do it one day, but make sure you do that one thing TODAY. Don’t feel you have to "catch up" and do two today. The goal is simply to get into the pattern of one per day until it feels comfortable, you know where in your typical days to fit it in and it starts to get done regularly.

One sales call a day, or one task on some project you need to get done (sending out those resumes?) or one step in building a strategy (signing up for or scheduling training?) or implementing an idea. One-a-day. 

Even Jerry Seinfeld says, "Mark each day on the calendar when you do that one thing. Don’t break the chain whatever you do." If you keep shooting to lengthen that unbroken chain the habit becomes more and more automatic and you get better and more comfortable. Doing whatever it is just once in a day generally seems easy enough to keep you going. Once you’ve mastered the flow, you can move on to a new "one thing."

Not a bad reminder for two weeks into the new year. That’s when I start to see people at the gym who made an early new year’s effort start to drop away. Are they doing just one thing to stay fit somewhere else? We can hope. It’s fine for the way you do it to evolve. Just don’t stop. But don’t beat yourself up for one miss. Make sure you do it next time… today, tomorrow, the day after, somewhere, sometime, somehow. Get into the groove.

By the way. If you find you just can’t, that you rarely or never get it into your day and that continues week after week, it’s time to think up a new strategy to try out, a new variation that you CAN do once each day. You only get better at what you can tolerate doing regularly. Don’t wait for another New Year’s to modify your plan. The real commitment is to progress, whatever it might be or however it comes about.

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It’s great to have a group identify an area they want to know more about and recognize they might have limitations.  It’s often said you can’t learn anything you think you already know.

The good news is most of this group already have a great deal of creative skill.  They just don’t know what it feels like and how to find it.  That’s a key purpose of understanding the five basic leadership skills.  When you know how they work, you know where to find your creativity.

Creativity arises together with use of the other four skills as a package.  Each of us tends to be more creative in areas where we do the most work.  Since accounting frowns on "creative bookkeeping," it’s a concept accountants don’t think they know much about, but as a group they’re about as creative as anyone else.

The first key to creativity is to develop a goal for something new you’d like to achieve.  That takes practice.  Goals aren’t as easy to come by as people make out.  In fact developing a goal happens while using the other skills, through repetition. 

Great goal setting is a habit like any other.  Take your best shot at setting a new goal for yourself, then working toward it will clarify the process. As you start toward this tentative goal, you need to believe you can achieve it or, more accurately, get beyond it.  Don’t let it be too small.  This also takes practice.  Just do your best. 

Start to research how others achieve this sort of goal.  As you do, you’ll struggle with doubts and flashes of inspiration and positive thinking.  Keep balancing pros and cons as you test out each new idea for achieving your goal.  Keep trying. 

Keep looking for new ideas as you encounter hurdles.  Don’t give up the goal… but you can modify it, expand it and refine it.  Persist.  Think of this process as developing habits that will help you piece by piece to move forward. Here’s where creativity really begins. As you persist you’ll find yourself coming up with more and more creative, new ideas that didn’t occur to you at first.  Eventually they will begin to be substantially different and new, beyond things you’ve been reading or have heard about.  That’s creativity pure and simple.  Remember the famous quote from the most prolific inventor of all time, Thomas Edison, "Genius is one per cent inspiration, ninety-nine per cent perspiration."  This is the way to perspire effectively.

In short, creativity is a habit that takes time to build.  No matter how creative we think someone is they got there trying one idea at a time with a stretch objective in mind.

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