God's Work in Progress- The Essentials

Essentials

^ Prov 13:4 ^ The sluggard craves and gets nothing, but the desires of the diligent are fully satisfied

I am all about helping people and organizations fulfill their potential.  Based on my knowledge and experience, for you or your company or organization to become truly great you must press in to every situation and get to what I call the “essentials”.

Essentials are those ideas or that understanding that make up the fabric or essence of what you do. This is why it is so important that your core values and your organization’s purpose be true, authentic, based on reality and NOT aspirational.   If you don’t go through the hard work to determining what your purpose and values really ARE, you risk being called hypocritical, “do what I say not as I do.”   There is no quicker way to waste your time and energy. You need a valid process, and a facilitator who understands and will not “let you off the hook” until to get to this core.

Once this core is established you will still have problems. Problems have their own core or root cause.  Truly solving them is the key to actually getting better because “if you always do what you always did, you always get what you always got.’ So here is technique that may help. I suggest what has come to be called the “5 Whys”.  Generally you keep asking the question why about the situation, based on the answer you get and the idea is that it takes about “Five Whys” to get to the root.  It can go like this:

Problem Statement: You are on your way home from work and your car stops in the middle of the road.
1. Why did your car stop?
  - Because it ran out of gas.
2. Why did it run out of gas?
  - Because I didn't buy any gas on my way to work.
3. Why didn't you buy any gas this morning?
  - Because I didn't have any money.
4. Why didn't you have any money?
  - Because I spent it bowling the night before.
5. Why did you spend your money on bowling?
  - Because my friends called me and said there was a two for one deal, and I thought I could make it on the gas I had so I went bowling instead of buying the gas.

 A problem, by definition, is the difference between what you want to happen and what is actually happening (or happened). The difference in the above example is the habit of impulsiveness.  This problem became the difference between having gas and not having gas. That habit, that addiction, is the problem because it led to a wrong choice.  The “difference” is the problem. 

Once you identify the problem there is the essential idea of getting to it’s root or cause.  The 5 Why’s are a very good tool to accomplish this.  Be sure to ask the questions with the intent of solving the problem, NOT in finding the guilty party.  The 5 Why’s are really a technique that helps people to see the real value of getting to the root of the matter.  If people are “grilled” or if they feel like you are “prosecuting” them they will not participate.  The point is that if you do it focused on WHAT happened not on WHO”s wrong, you will eventually have the 2 Why’s or the 1 Why to get the root.

And, quite frankly if you focus on WHAT versus WHO you build  TRUST  as your people or friends will realize that you just want to get to the root of the problem and help them to solve it.

Jeff Pelletier is an Organizational Effectiveness Consultant and Host of  “God’s Work in Progress” on the World Talk Radio Network.  jeff@righteousfreeenterprise.net