Elephant in the Room – Expose it, Resolve it, and Get on With a Productive Environment

Strategy Plan One

April 25, 2012 

Elephant in the Room

We have all heard the expression “Elephant in the room” as it describes the big issue (“elephant in the room”) that everyone obviously knows about but doesn’t want to talk about or deal with.  It’s an expression used when an issue is so big it can’t be ignored.

 

 

It may be a challenge that crops up in an organization, but due to its complex, controversial or sensitive nature, no one wants to deal with it.  Yet, without dealing with it adequately, stress and discomfort continues to build around the elephant in the room, as long as the issue has been unresolved.

So how do we rid of the elephant in the room? You may think it’s a simple task.  To deal with it adequately and effectively, you as a business leader and your staff or stakeholders need to recognize it, expose it, and focus in on it.  Bring it out in an open and transparent environment, sooner rather than later.  The longer you as a leader leave deep rooted issues unresolved, the more attention this elephant gets.  Staff anxiety and anger levels around the issue increase and it will deflect attention away from your productive work environment.

Leadership to Tackle Elephant in the Room

As an entrepreneur, you need strong leadership skills in identifying challenges in your organization and to adequately find resolution.  You need to have a few strategies in your back pocket to handle challenging circumstances.

Involving, empowering and encouraging staff and stakeholders to assist in problem solving will be a part of the overall resolution.

Identify the Elephant in the Room

In meetings, take on a new format of raising honest, deep-rooted problems in the organization.  Encourage team members to speak freely about anything without any repercussions or reprimands.  Time to get everything out in the open, and this is Step 1 … essentially issue identification.

Ask for Feedback and Recommended Solutions

With the elephant now exposed, time to wrap a harness around that elephant and give it some attention, meaning give the identified issue some attention.  How do we walk that elephant right out of the room?  Ask your valued team, stakeholders and customers for feedback and proposed solutions.  And not engaging with those parties for resolution could have been the issue.

Take it step by step to issue resolution.  Chances are that this issue is a complex one, and something that cannot be solved overnight.  Take steps and demonstrate partial resolution.  Now with interim milestones achieved, morale of all staff will have improved and the team will have some successes achieved. 

Show Strong Leadership

With recommendations in hand from valued staff and stakeholders, show strong leadership by implementing solutions to those sensitive or complex challenges.  Through your actions the elephant in the room will be eliminated for a stronger, more productive environment.

Business Planning to Resolve Elephant in the Room Syndrome

To be pro-active, ensure that in your business planning you should identify the serious, complex issues that you and your team will encounter.  Your plan will set up resolution mechanisms and contingencies to handle the most challenging circumstances.  You must be prepared to handle the difficult stuff that comes your way in your business.

 

Strategy Plan One

http://strategyplanone.com

Business information, resources and tips for the entrepreneur

© 2012 Strategy Plan One

5 Attributes of Modern Leadership

Strategy Plan One

February 8, 2012 

Leadership has changed with time and with varying economic and environmental circumstances.   Early to mid 20^th century, leaders often invoked a militaristic or autocratic leadership approach, and to most the extent, this worked for many successful companies and big corporations.

In the current age, the workforce is better educated with more rights.  Values and ethics are important, and company and personal values and ethics need to align to achieve common goals.  In order to compete on a global scale, leaders need to motivate and influence teams of valuable employees to thrive and survive.

 

Collaboration with team members

Leadership today is obviously quite different, with globalization, competition, values and ethics and people’s rights making big impacts on how leaders lead.  The global economic climate is challenging and is multi-faceted.  New leaders today need the ability to navigate through challenging environments, with multiple layers of complexity.  A new leader must be able to collaborate with professionals adequately, and to be able to adapt quickly to changing environments.

 

Engaging others

Twenty to thirty years ago, businesses relied on manual analysis of localized information.  Today, teams and leaders must competently analysis massive amounts of global information quickly.  Where leaders lack capacity, leaders must be able to source and acquire capacity to assist in meeting organizational goals and objectives.  Leaders need to have the skill to interact with, motivate and empower team members.  Effective interaction with employees leads to better buy-in of goals and objectives.  Frequent engagement tends to make the employees and teams feel valued.

 

Activating Efficiency

Today leaders must accomplish more with fewer resources.   In order to stay competitive in global markets, leaders must stay on top with efficient operations.  Leaders must have the ability to maximize results and benefits with decreasing levels of resources.  Leaders must seek ideas for efficient operations from their teams, as these valued employees are the subject matter experts.  There are several mechanisms to implement to achieve efficiencies, from empowering employees to take the lead, to compensatory mechanisms.

 

Ability to Vision

Experienced leaders thoroughly observe and analyze the past and present.  A great leader can envisage a successful way forward.  They are able to see an end goal and objective, and pathway to achieve the objective.  Only a few have this innate ability; most develop the skill through experience in operations and management.  This valuable trait may be the result of many years of experience leading to the ability to look forward, and some of it through trial and error.  Leaders with vision understand why they are in the business and why the company’s products or services are valuable or needed by the consumer.

 

Effective Communication

Effective leadership involves a high level of rich communication.  A great leader engages with others and can communicate the vision to the team.  With powerful, transparent communications, leaders will need to be influential on others, with the ability to convince and encourage the team to follow and buy-in.  The level of acceptance is a good indicator of the leader’s communication and influential effectiveness.

 

Strategy Plan One

© 2012 Strategy Plan One

Business information, resources and tips for the entrepreneur