WEDNESDAY HIGHLIGHTS: Top-Level Executive Education from the Leadership Institute
Learn. Play. Lego® In his two-part Wednesday Leadership Institute workshop, Leading by Simple Guiding Principles: Play. Learn. Lego ®, consultant Robert Rasmussen taught participants to think outside of the box by getting them to play with toys. Rasmussen is partner and chief facilitator for Rasmussen Consulting I/S, which specializes in using the Lego Serious Play (LSP) methodology that he developed when he worked for Lego ®. The session began with Rasmussen giving each participant six minutes to build a duck using six Lego bricks. Then they introduced themselves and their ducks to each person at their table. The lesson: "Even for something as simple as a duck, everybody has different ideas about what that means," Rasmussen said. The object of the lesson was to learn how to incorporate a variety of ideas into decision making. Rasmussen defined Simple Guiding Principles (SGPs) as "wisdoms of real life gained through experience," adding: "They specify in what spirit a solution should be chosen, but don’t offer the solution itself." One workshop game had participants use a large bag of Lego bricks to build pencil cups, using one of two sets of instructions. When they finished, they earned that the detailed but often hard-to-interpret A side of the instruction sheet was an example of "leading by command and control," while the simpler, more flexible B side represented "leading by SGPs." For the next few tasks, each person received a box containing several bags of bricks and other more intricate parts. They would each build a tower, followed by their choice of four models and a completely improvised Lego ® creation. Over time, furrowed brows and exclamations like "I hate this--I’m not creative" gave way to smiles and giggles, as workshop participants caught on to Rasmussen’s lessons in using an imaginative approach to strategic thinking, communicating and problem solving. Do You Have Organizational Savvy? In their two-part Leadership Institute workshop, Organizational Savvy—Secrets of the Inner Circle, Jovita Thomas-Williams, president of JTW Affiliates, LLC, and John Futterknecht, president of Optimum Associates, LLC, guided participants to create strategies to understand and thrive in their particular corporate cultures. Their students for the day read and discussed several case studies, including how they placed the characters involved on the presenters’ Organizational Savvy Continuum. The first case was a lesson on "the need to study and learn." John, the main character, was hired to implement a major change at a company. He failed badly, alienating the team and causing the HR department to be called in. He’s in trouble. What to do? One workshop participant suggested John start planning his exit strategy. Another said he should do a mea culpa to try to save his job. That’s when Thomas-Williams related her own personal experience, in which she was brought into a company to implement a re-organization and told that a complete personnel overhaul might be in order. Almost immediately, she informed the team that their jobs were in jeopardy, that the "train" of change was coming fast, and that they either needed to get on it or they would find themselves under it. That blunt approach, she now acknowledges, was inappropriate for that company’s culture. When her bosses called her on the carpet, she apologized and asked for another chance. But redemption didn’t come quickly or easily. "I had to pay a big personal price and eat a lot of crow for a long time," she said. Futterknecht, who told participants that the real John from the case study was unable to recover from his mistakes, offered several takeaways: Be aware of key relationships in your company. Know its cultural norms, values and taboos. Know your manager’s expectations. |
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