Ready to finally do strategy right?

Strategy. Such an ominous word. Most of us strategize in our heads every day without realizing it. For some, it has connotations of excessive work and we avoid it at all costs. For leaders, nothing will change and mass confusion becomes the state of work without a written strategy. For the longest time, I preferred to keep my business and life strategies in my head, and not surprisingly, it is not effective. For the past few years, I have been writing my strategies down to reach goals and most importantly, to empower my team. They cannot perform if they have no clue what they are working towards and why.

The new book Strategy First – How Businesses Win Big by Brad Chase is one of the first books highlighting business strategy that I have enjoyed in a long time. The book is an easy read, fun, relevant, has over 50 company examples of corporate strategy. I learn best by real-world examples and Brad’s book kept me entertained. I learned ideas to incorporate into my life that are reasonable and not just all theory.

Brad has an impressive background leading at Microsoft and MSN where he worked with teams at all levels to set strategy. He illustrated how strategies can flow down so that everyone was on board. Likewise, he was open to new ideas and craved input from the employees in areas that are doing the work.

Brad has proven that success is all about strategy and without it, no plan is complete. He developed an effective theory that any business or person can incorporate into their day. E x mc2 can teach strategy to build and execute winning strategies relative to the competition. The three elements are:

• C:  Customer, the most important factor as noted in the equation

• M: Market Potential

• E: Execution – There are three variables here including strategic, customer value, and financial

Managers should adhere to the Strategy First Score (SFS) when using the equation. Doing so allows us to calculate a score that offers both an analytical and visual representation of how your strategy stacks up to the competition. A quality strategy is unbiased and is an independent method to remain ahead of the game in the same competitive business arena.

Here are some factors that address change within our equation:

• Technology

• Innovation

• New Business Model

• Societal Trends

• New Markets

Brad offers interesting examples of companies in a variety of fields to illustrate how the factors above can make an impact. The stories are my favorite part of the book because they offer numerous “Aha” moments. Not only did I remain engaged, but I was also entertained throughout the entire book.

Strategy First spends ample time looking at what factors can influence our strategy in an ever-changing world. Note that these are similar to internal factors that influence us. Brad calls them TIDE:

• Technology

• Institutional

• Demographics

• Economics and environmental

• Social

No company can live in a bubble or without international competition and factors that can put a company out of business quickly. If Covid19 has taught us anything, those companies that are nimble and can change tactics on a dime will survive. Strategy First unintentionally addresses the pandemic that we are struggling with what Brad calls “Expanding the Universe” factors. To me, these are very relevant right now.

• Develop or change products and services

• Partnerships

• Adapt to change

• Expansion plans that consistent with your strategy

• Mergers and acquisitions

A strategy is useless if it is not executed and followed by action. Don’t write one just to say that you have one. Live it every day. Leaders need to make priorities clear and concise. This involves alignment, communication, and most importantly, tracking. You will never know if your strategy is working if you fail to track progress. Moreover, you must be willing to make swift changes to new challenges. You want your strategy to grow and prosper over time. Here are some tips to bring strategy growth and success.

• Seek change

• Mine any gaps

• Adapt to the tides mentioned earlier

• Expand the universe

• Climb short walls and build tall walls

I thoroughly enjoyed Strategy First by Brad Chase! I have read other strategy books and they have been so theoretical or intense I quickly lost my concentration. I did not have any actionable strategies or ideas that I could personally apply.

Business is disrupted by the pandemic. I have had to revisit my strategies in several categories to align with the current environment. Several of my goals have changed and how I address growing key financial areas is upside down.

If you are committed to strategy and have been turned off by other resources, read Brad’s book. I promise that you will not be disappointed and will come away with at least a few nuggets!

As employees have more career choices and the availability of jobs, they have the luxury of deciding what they want from their job or the company that they work with. The days of accepting the job with the highest salary are gone. Employees want flexibility, the ability to work from home, more vacation days, yoga classes and other unique benefits.

One of the number one factors that employees look for in a new opportunity is a robust, positive, and open culture. Culture has always been my number one priority when looking for a new job. Culture is the lifeblood of a company and can make or break success. The new book Creating Constructive Cultures – Leading People and Organizations to Effectively Solve Problems and Achieve Goals by Janet L Szumal Ph.D. and Robert A. Cooke Ph.D. offers a model to assist leaders in creating ideal cultures. They utilize over 40 years of research that reveal some interesting insight into the various types of cultures in the workplace as well as disconnects.

This book is very science, data, and theoretical based. If you love data and textbook or academic learning, you will delve right into this book. It offers robust charts and graphs, and a variety of graphics to explain theories to drive the authors’ ideas home. Cleary the authors understand what distinguishes a strong culture from a weak or poisoned one. They layout the plusses and minuses of cultures that are closed, self-centered on power, and not inclusive. On the other side, they explain in-depth how cultures power a company to success by encouraging people to reach their potential, take intuitive approaches and think independently, are open to free thought and new ideas, value quality over quantity, and how cultures that depend on collaboration and coordination bring results.

The authors describe the main theoretical premise in the book that exists in most organizations. They offer a concise summary of the Human Synergistics Circumplex applied to cultures as part of a system they call the Integrated Diagnostic System. Ultimately, there is no single way to approach culture change however; having a common language, measurement, and uniform approach to change can be a powerful tool for leaders. There are twelve cultural norms and within these norms, we see three different cultural styles in most organizations. Here are the three styles:

1. Constructive Style: Cultures are based on achievement, self-actualization, encouraging and humanistic. This type of culture focuses on improvement and the development of individuals and the company

2. Passive/Defensive Style: Focused on approval, conventional practices, and dependence and avoidance. The goal is to protect the existing organization and individuals

3. Aggressive/Defensive Style: Full of opposition, power and competitiveness and perfection. This culture is often in hostile or negative companies trying to protect themselves from change

Clearly, leaders need to understand their current culture. They need to be aware of who holds the power or who controls the culture and understand the ultimate impact. Looking at their culture through the lenses noted above will help identify weaknesses and point out how the organization can work towards a cultural transformation from within. Leaders have sound reasons for changing norms and working toward a constructive thinking organization.

· Attracting and retaining talent

· Teamwork and problem solving

· Strategy implementation

· Innovation and adaptability

· Consistency with organizational values

· Financial

· Closing the gap between current and ideal culture

My favorite part of the book is Part II. Szumal and Cooke highlight nine organizations that have used practical principles and concepts from the book to enhance and grow their cultures. The companies that they highlight are from all over the world and each has its own unique story. This area of the book is where everything falls into place for the reader and real lessons hit home. Here are some of the companies highlighted:

· San Diego Unified Port District

· Spreadsheet – Germany

· Strauman – Switzerland

· PONS Bakery – Serbia

· Dreher Brewery

· Agroenzy Mas – Mexico

Each company had a fascinating journey, which resulted in their organizations being more productive, more cohesive, and more collaborative. The stories highlight that there is no one way to approach culture change and influence the overall company climate. Overall culture change was aligned with improvements in employee satisfaction, innovation, revenue growth, and other factors.

The final portion of the book closes with a four-phase process for strengthening true constructive culture and amplifying results. These phases bring all the concepts, ideas, tools and experiences to fruition for the benefit of both the teams and organizations. Again, this book is academically focused on models, key intricate strategies, and presents over 40 years of research so the reader needs to be prepared to jump in for a new way of learning.

Outward Bound Lessons of Leadership

I have always been an avid reader – a book nerd. Ever since my boys were little I would tell them that “Readers are Leaders”. Wouldn’t it be great if this were true? However, it takes more than reading to become a true servant leader. It also takes grit, experience, uncomfortable confrontation, and throwing yourself into situations where you are scared, challenged, and willing to do what others shy away from. 

Some of the strongest leaders in the world have grown through fear, challenge and jumping into the unknown. The new book Outward Bound Lessons to Live a Life of Leadership – To Serve, To Strive, and Not to Yield by Mark Michaux Brown along with Outward Bound USA tells the story of how experienced-based learning is how leaders are made. 

Outward Bound is a learning and leadership based program for youth and adults. The core of the program leads people into the wilderness (hiking, biking, desert/jungle trips) and throwing them out of their comfort zone. Those who are fortunate enough to build their skills and enhance relationships become some of our strongest leaders. Outward Bound Lessons shares powerful personal stories, ideas, and real-world success traits that Outward Bound leaders bring as change agents to companies and communities around the world. Being thrown into unknown situations transforms people into “Expeditionary Leaders”. 

There are three key factors to being an Expeditionary leader. The motto is simple: 

· To Serve: Focus on employees, customers, communities, and the greater good

· To Strive: See challenges as opportunities to grow, value your learning and how to offer it to the greater good

· Not to Yield: Leaders learn that the “finish line” is forever and the best is always to come. Leaders should always stick to their principles under pressure. Never yield to weakness and always put others first. That means playing the long game, foregoing short term profits, and having the true moral courage 

The Outward Bound program has changed lives. It has pushed people to the edge of their humanity. As a result, they impact those around them and share the lessons they learned. The principles that we need to develop include effectively serving, striving, and not yielding. I was immersed in the numerous stories that people shared during the trips that they experienced in the book as well as the awe and courage they felt when they beat the odds. They had to live the “pages” of a leadership book to truly become leaders. 

Here are some common themes that the Outward Bound leaders experienced: 

· A yearning to serve a higher calling by taking risks and trying new paths to pave the way for others

· Problems are what spark leaders to jump into action

· Become core connectors and foster community interaction to build stronger communities

· Take advantage of teachable moments and reflect on learning’s

· Continually use uncertainty, adversity, and challenge for personal development

· Always be curious, never settle

· Relay on compassion for others no matter what the challenge

· Mentor and tech others the three Expeditionary Leadership qualities

· Go with your gut in situations while holding to your values

· Develop grit and stand up for yourself so that you can support others

· Know that you will need to continually take more risks and stay out of your comfort zone or your growth will diminish 

Outward Bound Lessons is a fascinating book. It is more than just getting teams together to experience zip lining or trust games for a day. It’s about people being with one another on a long and perhaps dangerous journey. Growth requires time and true reliance on others. Not only are the stories and lessons engaging, but at the end of each chapter, there are reflection questions to ask yourself and challenge what your notions of leadership are and what true leadership is. 

If you are looking for a fresh book on leadership where you can share the adventures of others and learn from the experiences that they had, this is a must-read. Learn how YOU should climb out of your skin once in a while and face the unknown for eye-opening lessons and personal growth

Guest Post From Alex Vorobieff - Transform Your Company

In our hectic world it is more important than ever to bring our work and personal lives into focus. Alex Vorobieff’s new book Transform Your Company - Escape Frustration, Align Your Business, and Get Your Life Back is an effective tool to Discover, Learn, and Eliminate in order to make change whether you are a business owner or part of a team.

The Other Form of Compensation – Does Your Company Offer it or Extract a Tax?

By Alex Vorobieff

Why do people want to work for your company? Do you have a clearly defined answer? Why are the best going to give to your company their all and majority of their waking hours? Monetary compensation only goes so far especially with the younger generation. More and more people want to work for companies with a purpose and culture that aligns with their values while performing work that is fulfilling. In addition to monetary compensation, they are seeking emotional compensation.

Unfortunately, companies without a thought-out emotional compensation plan are more likely to extract an emotional tax. When a company is frustrating to work in, people feel it especially A-players and they grow resentful. People leave companies when they are frustrated when they realize marginal dollars don’t compensate for the emotional taxes. When you hire A-players, does their life-cycle with the company follow a similar pattern? Do they join the company engaged but grow distant and surly over time? They likely grow tired of paying emotional taxes.

Alright, Vorobieff, I get it, our company needs to remove the emotional taxes and replace it with emotional compensation. What are the forms of emotional compensation?

It starts with acknowledgment. People want to be acknowledged for their effort and contribution. “But they are paid to do their job.” Acknowledgment doesn’t cost anything. When you acknowledge the good when you point out poor performance they know you see the positive and the negative and it is more likely better received. Many people spend more energy on trying to receive acknowledgment than on achieving material objectives and if your compensation plan focuses solely on money? Your wasting money.

Other parts of emotional compensation include being proactive. Consistently work to identify what processes are working and which are not. If they are paying a frustration tax, working with them to eliminate it is a RAISE. Companies that pay emotional compensation do not force their employees to find competitive offers from other companies to leverage changes in their current positions.

Emotional compensation is a neglected topic. The good news is the IRS has ignored it as well since they can’t easily tax it, yet 😉

But where do you start? Assess whether your company is paying emotional compensation or extracting an emotional tax. The most common form of an emotional tax is frustration working in a dysfunctional business. Lifting a burden is a raise and the first step to unleashing your HumanPower.

About Alex Vorobieff

Founder and CEO of The Vorobieff Company, Alex Vorobieff is a business turnaround specialist, working to implement Business Alignment Tools for their specific needs. Alex has served as clean-up CFO and president of companies in telecommunications, aviation, aerospace, and real estate development, leading successful turnarounds in as little as three months. He shares his how-tos and techniques through Confident ROi magazine and his latest book, Transform Your Company: Escape Frustration, Align Your Business, and Get Your Life Back.

Differentiation Increases Complexity By Sunnie Giles

I'm honored to share a guest post from Sunnie Giles author of the new book The New Science of Radical Innovation - The Six Competencies Leaders Need to Win in a Complex World. Her insights and big-picture thinking focusing on the complexity around us is fascinating. 

According to complex systems theory, differentiation increases positive (internal) complexity. By allowing more variation, each differentiated agent in a system can make different connections with other agents and systems, which adds more variety and strength to the quality of connection. This additional connection increases the probability of natural selection and evolution because the organism’s variations (i.e., mutations) facilitate better adaptation to the environment. Complexity increases when differentiated parts are connected. This increased internal complexity, in turn, enables an organism to respond even more effectively to unexpected challenges from the environment and increases its chances of survival.

My church choir provides a simple example of how differentiation increases complexity. When we learn a new song, the soprano, alto, tenor, and bass voices practice their parts by themselves. When each part is sung in unison, the resulting music doesn’t sound very rich or complex. When the four parts are finally combined, they produce a rich tapestry of beautiful, complex music.

Let’s take another example. Fruit flies and humans share 60 percent of their DNA—a surprisingly high number. One would be right to question how the remaining 40 percent could account for the much higher complexity of humans. The key is in the number of interactions in many-to-many networks among the genes. Humans have about twenty-five thousand unique genes; fruit flies, about fourteen thousand. The number of protein interactions among the genes in humans is about 650,000—ten times as many as that of fruit flies. Each additional differentiated gene produces exponential growth in the number of genetic interactions. The network effect, which we discussed in chapter 2, resulting from the interaction among genes explains how a small difference in the number of genes can create an enormous difference in the complexity level between humans and fruit flies. The same pattern of exponential growth we see in the relationship between the number of genes and the gene interactions.

The highest level of internal complexity can be achieved by developing optimal differentiation, connecting the differentiated parts, and replicating that connection on multiple levels. If you have just undifferentiated parts, there is nothing to integrate, which results in suboptimal complexity. Once the foundation of safety is in place, Quantum Leaders facilitate differentiation in each of their team members, as well as the whole team as a unit, maximizing each member’s unique talents, skills, and perspectives.

Differentiation is so important to the optimal functioning of the human race that a differentiation mechanism is inherently built into the human development phase—it’s called pruning, and it takes place in the teenage brain. At birth, neuronal synapses in a child’s brain are more numerous than in an adult’s. Synapses multiply rapidly during childhood, soaking up knowledge like a sponge. This is why it’s much easier for children to learn foreign languages, musical instruments, and sports. As a child matures into a teenager, the brain prunes away underutilized synapses, so the synapses used most often can work more efficiently. The long body of the retained neurons get myelinated in a myelin sheath, which accelerates the conduction speed of the ions between neurons a hundredfold. This increased speed is made possible through the process of saltatory conduction, in which ions jump between nodes instead of steadily traveling along the axonal length of the neuron. In addition, myelination accelerates the resting period between neuronal firings—the refractory period—thirtyfold. The combination of these functions makes pruned synapses three thousand times more efficient than unpruned ones.

The pruning process produces unique patterns of neuronal synapses manifested into unique strengths and talents. This evolutionary mechanism highlights the importance of differentiating individuation before integrating with another differentiated person (e.g., a spouse or a team). Once parts are fully differentiated, connecting differentiated parts and replicating these connections to the next level (in this case, raising the next generation of children or leaders) increases internal complexity. All complex systems strive to increase internal complexity by nature because higher complexity means better chances of natural selection.

About Dr. Sunnie Giles:

Dr. Sunnie Giles is a new generation expert who catalyzes organizations to produce radical innovation by harnessing volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity (VUCA).

Her research reveals that applying concepts from neuroscience, complex systems approach, and quantum mechanics can produce radical innovation consistently. Her expertise is based on years as an executive with Accenture, IBM and Samsung. Her profound, science-backed insight is encapsulated in her leadership development program, Quantum Leadership.

An advisor to the Stanford University Graduate School of Business, she also is a sought-after speaker and expert source, having been quoted in Harvard Business Review, Entrepreneur, Fast Company, Forbes, and Inc.

Dr. Giles’ latest book, The New Science of Radical Innovation, provides a clear process for radical innovation that produces 10x improvements and has been endorsed prominent industry leaders such as Jonathan Rosenberg, Daniel Pink, Marshall Goldsmith and Sean Covey.

Tackling Workplace Conflict: Research and Best Practices to Stop the Drama by Nate Regier

Nate Regier is the author of the new book Conflict Without Casualties. Nate's work sheds some new light on the conflict in the workplace and the costs that arise when we don't address it. If you have ever avoided conflict or don't understand how to deal with it pick up Nate's book today. Here is a guest post from Nate to help you start taking on conflict at work this week.

Tackling Workplace Conflict: Research And Best Practices To Stop The Drama

By Nate Regier

On average, employees around the world spend about 2.1 hours per week, or over one day per month, dealing with workplace conflict in some way. In the US, that number is higher (2.8 hrs/week) equating to approximately $359 billion in paid hours. Non-profit sectors experience the most workplace conflict, with nearly 48% of employees reporting conflict at work.

What is the actual prevalence of conflict in the workplace, what causes it, and what opportunities are there for positive changes? To answer this, I’ve studied the most comprehensive workplace conflict research I could find, a 2008 study commissioned by CCP Inc., one of Europe’s leading business psychology firms, and Fellipelli, one of South America’s leading business psychology firms. The study included survey data from 5000 employees at all levels of their companies in nine countries around Europe and the Americas and remains some of the most comprehensive and useful research available. Here’s a summary.  

Costs of workplace conflict

Conflict often escalates into personal attacks, insults, or absence from work.

• 2.1 hours per week spent dealing with conflict (Belgium was the lowest at 1.3 hrs/wk. Germany and Ireland, the highest at 3.3 hrs/wk).
• 90% of respondents experienced a conflict that escalated, most often into personal attacks and insults, sickness or absence from work, and cross-departmental problems.
• Feeling demotivated, angry, frustrated, nervous, and stressed are the most common psychosocial consequences.
• Negative conflict with customers is risky since it is less costly to keep an existing customer than to replace one who has left dissatisfied.  

Causes of workplace conflict

Personality clashes are the number one cause of workplace conflict.

• Personality clashes and warring egos top the list at 48% overall, but much higher in Ireland (66%), the US (62%), and the UK (59%).
• Stress, too much work without enough support, and poor leadership are also significant (around 30%).

Who is responsible to deal with it?

• Everyone! 62% of respondents believed conflict is everyone’s responsibility.
• Surprisingly, only 15% felt that HR should be the ones to deal with workplace conflict.  

What should leaders do to improve how conflict is handled?

• Identify and address underlying tensions before things go wrong (54%).
• More informal one-to-one conversations with direct reports (42%).
• Act as mediators (40%).

Research reported in Harvard Business Review revealed that 69% of managers are uncomfortable communicating with employees.

• Provide more clarity and guidance over healthy behavior (40%).

* Twelve key leadership behaviors were highlighted by respondents in this study. Our PCM and LOD training and certification programs target all 12 areas.  

What have companies tried and how did it work?

• Less than half of the employees surveyed (44%) have received any formal conflict training. Belgium and France have the lowest level of workplace conflict training (28% and 27% respectively).
• 27% of those receiving formal training said it helped them feel more comfortable and confident in handling a conflict situation. Confidence is one of the biggest predictors of success (which is why our trainers use NEOS to measure changes in self-efficacy for their conflict communication training programs).
• The most frequent positive outcomes of training were better understanding of others, improved work relationships, and finding a better solution to a problem.
• 39% said training provided no help at all. We concur with the researchers that many conflict-communication training programs do not target the right issues and skills, especially personality differences and communication skills.
• Conflict can generate positive outcomes. Three quarters (76%) of respondents had seen conflict lead to something positive.

In a nutshell

• Conflict is costly.
• Personality and ego clashes are the top cause.
• Everyone is responsible.
• Coaching and mentoring through daily conversations is the key to improvement.
• Conflict can be positive and requires targeted training at all levels of an organization.  

Best Practices

Companies will make the most gains around workplace conflict by following these guidelines;

1. Implement formal training targeted on understanding and communicating with different personalities.
2. Focus not just on individual competencies, but skills to coach, facilitate, and mentor others during difficult conversations.
3. Adopt a pro-active approach that recognizes conflict is inevitable, and is a source of energy for positive outcomes.

 Train these Core Competencies

Search for training programs that assess, develop, and measure these competencies:

1. Self-awareness and recognition of positive and negative conflict in self and others.
2. Awareness of personality, communication, and motivational differences in self and others.
3. Ability to assess and respond to individual differences in and out of conflict.
4. Ability to lead self and others out of drama and into positive conflict conversations.

About Dr. Nate Regier
Dr. Nate Regier is the co-founding owner and chief executive officer of Next Element, a global advisory firm specializing in building cultures of compassionate accountability. A former practicing psychologist, Regier is an expert in social-emotional intelligence and leadership, positive conflict, mind-body-spirit health, neuropsychology, group dynamics, interpersonal and leadership communication, executive assessment and coaching, organizational development, team building and change management. An international adviser, he is a certified Leading Out of Drama master trainer, Process Communication Model® certifying master trainer and co-developer of Next Element’s Leading Out of Drama® training and coaching. Nate has published two books: Beyond Drama and his latest work, Conflict without Casualties.

Does "Going Green" Need to Cost You Green? By Nat Greene

I have an unwavering passion for growth in the garden and of people. Following is a guest post from Nat Greene that really speaks to me and the impact that we can all have on the world every day. Nat is the author of the new book Stop Guessing - The 9 Behaviors of Great Problem Solvers. His book reflects on how we should be solving problems and he offers 9 behaviors to push our skills to the next level. Nat's book is available on Amazon.com

I’ve seen environmental sustainability gradually added to almost every business's short list of bottom-line success metrics over the past decades, right up alongside safety, employee happiness, and profit. It’s a priority for many businesses to improve their environmental impact, but they often find themselves at a tough decision point: how much money should they invest in improving their environmental impact? How much will they demand of their shareholders, and how much should they put their bottom line at risk for the good of their community?

Environmental sustainability doesn’t have to be a trade-off between the earth and the business’s financial health. Most people believe in this fundamental trade-off because they don’t believe they can effectively improve their environmental performance using their current assets and business processes. So many businesses will upgrade to new infrastructure that runs more efficiently or uses fewer resources. They may switch their electricity to a more expensive alternative. Or they may switch their raw materials to a more expensive recycled or environmentally-friendly alternative. Even if these pay off in the long-term, they require significant up-front capital investment.

The reason many businesses only believe in shelling out money to improve their environmental performance is that they believe their business processes are nearly optimized. They believe their assets can only work with the amount of fuel or electricity going into them, that the waste they produce is inevitable, or simply that they can’t make more of their product without adding new systems to the mix. But, on the contrary, the performance of every business process has incredible potential to be improved. There are critical performance problems holding every process back from its best performance. Great businesses, instead of horking over money, solve these problems--leading to both greater profitability and better environmental performance in the same stroke.

If businesses develop the skills in their employees to identify and solve these problems, they’ll turn sustainability from a scary word into an addiction.

War Stories

Reducing wasted raw material:

At a business that makes rubber belts, they had a scrap problem. Their belt-cutting process intentionally created a significant amount of scrap in order to make sure the belts were the right width. They had accepted this as a part of the business until the plant’s leadership piled a week’s worth of scrap in the middle of the plant to visually demonstrate how much they were throwing away.

When the business set about to solving the problem, they understood that they were cutting the belts because the process that made them was unreliable, and the width of the belt varied. They dug into how the machine controlled belt width, and were able to reduce variation almost entirely, allowing them to make the belts thinner and cut 90% less scrap.

Transportation optimization:

A consumer products company shipped materials from its plants to warehouses all over the country in order to deliver it to customers. They found that their deliveries were late over 60% of the time, but struggled to solve the problem--they manufactured each product in a day and could not safely and legally drive the trucks any faster.

They approached the problem by modeling their shipping network and schedule, and challenging every shipping route. They found that they were transporting many products from facilities much farther away than was necessary, and were sometimes even shipping twice to make up for shortages in other warehouses. They rebuilt their shipping schedule to reduce the total distance each product traveled, bringing their on-time deliveries to over 95% and reducing fuel burned per product by over 20%.

Reducing CO2 output:

A chemical upgrader has iconic yellow flares, that are used to alleviate pressure in the plant as variations occur. The business had accepted these flares as part of life, but when they analyzed how much money they were losing by flaring this gas rather than selling it, they found an urgency to solve the problem.

They dug into understanding what controlled pressure variations, and found they could greatly reduce variation by eliminating clogging in some of the smaller pipes. They searched for and found the source of the clogging, leading to smoother operation. This saved them millions per year in flaring, and eliminated enough excess CO2 production to offset the carbon footprints of everyone in the facility for their whole lifetimes.

Avoiding a new facility:

A consumer products business was planning on building a large new facility to take on additional volume. When they realized how much opportunity was in their current facility to produce more, they realized they could increase the production of their current assets and avoid the new facility altogether.

In the span of three months, they solved a number of large, valuable problems in the business that let them take on the new volume almost a year earlier than previously estimated, and eliminated the cost and footprint of a new facility.

Every business process can run more effectively by solving problems. No matter the business, the environmental impact per product can be reduced by increasing the performance of the process. Even in processes that have little marginal environmental impact can improve the impact per product by solving problems to produce more with the same overhead.

Improving Problem-Solving In Your Business

Businesses can improve their problem solving results by investing in developing their talent to become better problem solvers, and unleashing them on valuable problems in the business. Most problem solving efforts in business are held back by a habit of using brainstorming, guess-and-check, or more structured ways of “producing ideas” to solve problems. Such approaches waste time, often cost money, and frequently don’t work.

To solve these problems, teams need a new approach to stop guessing and improve their skills. To replace the guessing habit, teach your team a new set of behaviors that far more effectively solves problems. Help them practice by unleashing them on easier problems in the business, and progress them to harder problems as their skills and confidence grow.

Want to test which behaviors are your team’s greatest strengths? Use this quick quiz.

Nathaniel Greene is the co-founder and current CEO of Stroud International, and author of Stop Guessing: The 9 Behaviors of Great Problem-Solvers. Nat has a Masters of Engineering from Oxford University and studied design, manufacturing and management at Cambridge University, in addition to executive education coursework in Harvard Business School's Owner/President Management program.