Paul Sloane

Most managers ask these kinds of questions:

o Why are sales down?
o What is holding up production?
o What can we do about customer complaints?
o What can I do about difficult staff?
o What is wrong with the current process?
o Where can we speed things up?
o How can we stop all these problems?

These are good questions and the problems have to be addressed. However, by focussing our attention on the negative we miss the innovation opportunities presented by the positive. We should also spend some time asking questions like these:

o What are our key strengths?
o What do customers like about us?
o What is going well?
o What unexpectedly good things have happened here recently?
o What new customers have we won?
o In what ways have we delighted customers?
o What is it that only we can do?

By focussing on our strengths and capabilities we can see positive opportunities. If we concentrate on fixing the current model then we can easily miss new possibilities. All our energies are going into alleviating problems and weaknesses – this denies us the chance to create new initiatives.

It is the same with people. When we are toddlers everyone praises us and tells us how wonderful all the things we do are. Then as we go through the school process things change and the emphasis switches, the errors in our work are pointed out and teachers tell us all the things we could better. This is well meant but the impact on fragile egos can be severe.

When we get to work we are at first acutely aware of our lack of experience and authority. At our annual appraisal we are told the things we need to focus on to improve. We plan training and coaching to improve our weak areas. Our strengths are taken for granted and development focuses on our weaknesses in order to make us ‘more rounded’.

In business we have to figure out what the true assets of the business are – what are our core strengths and abilities? What can we excel at? If we are great at marketing but lousy at administration then we should probably stop spending time and energy trying to get our administrative systems fixed. Outsource it to someone who is good at that and let’s concentrate on playing the game we are good at – marketing.

In addition to fixing what is wrong we should spend time examining what is right. Look for success stories, talk to delighted customers, ask them what makes us better than the others and then build on that. Find the right partners to compensate the areas where we are ordinary or weak and free up time to find creative new ways to exploit our strengths. We need to find unexpected and unusual things that we do really well because they can give us the competitive advantage we need. Let’s focus on what our organisation is really good at and build our success on that.

Paul Sloane

I discovered that it is based in truth.  It happened in 1939 to the American mathematician, George Dantzig (1914 – 2005) when he was a graduate student.  Here is the story in his own words:

‘It happened because during my first year at Berkeley I arrived late one day to one of Neyman’s classes.  On the blackboard were two problems which I assumed had been assigned for homework.  I copied them down.  A few days later I apologized to Neyman for taking so long to do  the homework–the problems seemed to be a little harder to do than usual.  I asked him if he still wanted the work.  He told me to throw it on his desk.  I did so reluctantly because his desk was covered with such a heap of papers that I feared my homework would be lost there forever.  About six weeks later, one Sunday morning about eight o’clock, Anne and I were awakened by someone banging on our front door.  It was Neyman.  He rushed in with papers in hand, all excited: “I’ve just written an introduction to one of your papers.  Read it so I can send it out right away for publication.”  For a minute I had no idea what he was talking about.  To make a long story short, the problems on the blackboard which I had solved thinking they were homework were in fact two famous unsolved problems in statistics.  That was the first inkling I had that there was anything special about them.’

Here is the link describing the way the myth has developed on Snopes.

Paul Sloane