Excellence in execution requires aligning stakeholders with the same empowering mindsets and behaviors, creating a common language and expectation for how collaboration occurs throughout the implementation of a new project. In a recent article entitled "Seven Conscious Project Management Capabilities For Today's 'New Normal'" I wrote about the importance of communications, critical thinking, negotiations, risk management, subject matter expertise and meeting management. We can add being detail oriented, solutions oriented and politcally astute as important attributes for today's manager in execution. But none of these capabilities come without having the right mindset behind them. Our beliefs and mindsets determine how we act and the extent to which we develop these capabilities. So what mindsets make the difference and how do they translate across geography and cultures?
Sharing common beliefs and mindsets regarding responsibility and learning drive collaboration and transcend local cultural norms. By shifting and aligning on a few essential mindsets for execution a new common culture emerges that fits comfortably within larger cultural contexts.
What follows are four essential shifts that raise the effectiveness of people engaged in execution:
1. From Blamer to Empowered and Responsible is about raising our awareness regarding where we can choose to focus our time, attention and energy. We learn from a young age that to avoid perceived negative consequences we explain our reality in terms of variables external to ourselves and that are beyond our control, resulting in our ability to maintain innocence or not be responsible. It sounds something like this, "I was late because of traffic.", or "I can't get my job done because I don't have enough budget or resources." Shifting from this habitual, unconscious mindset of the blamer to the mindset of an empowered and responsible person, one who maintains their awareness and focus on their ability to respond is critical to raising individual responsibility, accountability, resourcefulness and resilience. Focusing on your ability to respond can sound like, "I came upon an accident I didn't know how to get around." or "I don't know how to achieve my objectives given the budget and resources I've been given."
2. From Certain to Curious requires a shift from holding a person’s beliefs and knowledge with certainty to seeing knowledge as something continuously growing when held with curiosity instead of certainty. This shift allows for more possibilities, solutions, innovation, creativity, and learning. Holding one’s knowledge with certainty creates a mindset wherein the holder of knowledge believes they are right and those that do not agree, are wrong. This closes down any openness to other possibilities or solutions. Whereas, when someone has knowledge but is at the same time curious, they believe that other’s ideas, opinions and input may be complimentary. They are always curious to learn more, opening the door to new possibilities and solutions.
3. From Rigid to Agile allows people to overcome the limits and paralysis associated with perfectionism. Although we often do not see ourselves as rigid, many of our and beliefs surrounding quality and excellence are linear and inflexible. Shifting our beliefs that progress comes from trial and error, reflective learning, and continuous feedback can make execution far more flexible and agile. Perfection is likely never to be achieved, but continuous learning can be, leading people to be flexible along the path of learning knowing that it never stops.
4. From a Fixed Mindset to a Growth Mindset opens our minds and intelligence to being expanded and developed with effort and learning. This in turn avails individuals to thinking, learning and acting without limits. Whereas, a fixed mindset believes its mind and intelligence’s capabilities are fixed. Few people say they believe they have a fixed mindset, yet observation reveals that people act as though their capabilities, talents and intelligence are fixed, thus limiting the level of contribution individuals and teams can bring to execution. This is evidenced by sayings such as, “That’s not possible.” or “We can’t do that around here.” or “We’ve never done things that way before.”
Shifting mindsets is achieved via a combination of in-person workshops, individual and group coaching. Workshops are used to communicate, explore and understand the impact of existing mindsets and introduce the power of new ones, while providing a powerful experience-based learning environment for training in new collaboration skills. Individual and group coaching help people apply and practice specific mindsets in the context of real-world situations and challenges.
The work of shifting, learning and adopting new mindsets is ongoing throughout execution or the life of a project’s implementation.
Throughout this work, individuals continuously improve their ability to be held accountable, focus on their ability to respond, be more creative, be resilient to turbulence during execution, engage in more direct communication and interaction that builds trust with others while placing focus on the task and desired outcomes of the project. Groups increase the level of trust held amongst themselves, thus increasing the amount, quality and speed of work they can do together. Over time, people and teams collaborate at higher levels of productivity with less stress and more meaning. This is the power of having the right mindsets for execution.
Comments