The Conversations You Are Not Having Are Killing Your Business

I work a great deal helping people and teams improve their conversations.  Whether the focus is on framing, feedback or process, most teams and most individuals are able to relate to and adopt new tools and approaches that help immediately. However, the most important issue that most leaders and teams face is not in what is being said, but rather, it's the important topics not being discussed. 

10 Popular Discussions Not Occurring in Your Organization Right Now:

1. The much overdue "crucial confrontation" with the toxic team member.

2. The brutally honest assessment of your firm's situation in the marketplace.

3. The fact that you have no visible sort of strategy…you've never had one and  now that times have turned tough, the absence of this strategy is visible to everyone but the boss.

4. The reality that last year's pet development project from the CEO is sucking the resources and morale out of the company, when everyone but the CEO knows this project just sucks.

5. How your "goals" and "metrics" connect to what's important for the firm. Heck, you would settle for goals.

6. What you really think about an employee's performance. The coating of sugar "sandwiched" between the bread of your watered down feedback is choking off the real message.

7. The painful reality that the last 243 "brainstorming" sessions you've participated in, have resulted in just one outcome…hiring the hypnotist for company holiday party. It was darned funny, but you find yourself wishing you could be hypnotized to forget the painful reality that there's little that ever changes in this slowly eroding business.

8. Why the boss spends her entire life flying around "meeting with customers" but nothing ever seems to come of it, other than the postponement of the already much postponed critical discussions.

9. How the latest reorganization plan, engineered  from the top, actually improves anything for anyone who works with people who send money to your firm.

10. Anything resembling a development discussion where you have a chance to share your ambitions and aspirations and the boss actually does something to help you move in that direction. The only direction you feel like moving now, is out.

The Bottom-Line for Now:

Chances are that the silence from at least a few of these conversations not happening in your firm is deafening. Feel free to print this out, highlight the "missing" conversation and pass it along to the silent parties.  Or, better yet…pick one and start the conversation rolling.

Words, carefully constructed and artfully executed are still the best way to start a revolution.

Thanks to Art Petty / Strategy & Management-Innovations, LLC.
http://artpetty.com/2011/09/22/the-conversations-you-are-not-having-are-killing-your-business/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+artpetty%2Fmanagement_excellence+%28Management+Excellence+by+Art+Petty%29