∎ Libro Free Know What You Don't Know How Great Leaders Prevent Problems Before They Happen Michael A Roberto 9780131568150 Books

Know What You Don't Know How Great Leaders Prevent Problems Before They Happen Michael A Roberto 9780131568150 Books

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Know What You Don't Know How Great Leaders Prevent Problems Before They Happen Michael A Roberto 9780131568150 Books

INTRODUCTION
Psychiatrist, Theodore Rubin, pointed out that “the problem is not that there are problems. The problem is expecting otherwise and thinking that having problems is a problem.”
The background to this book a conclusion the author came to about many organizations. They devote a great deal of effort and time to improving their staff’s problem-solving capabilities, but spend barely any time improving staff’s ability to discover problems.
Mistakes tend to compound over time with one error triggering another. “Many large-scale failures have long incubation periods,” Roberto explains, and this is an advantage. Managers have time to intervene and solve problems when they are small and so avoid the large-scale ones.
Through his research, Roberto has identified seven sets of capabilities that leaders should hone so they become effective problem-finders.
The first is to accept that your staff limit information, often with good intentions, before it reaches the manager. There are a range of reasons for this, from the structural to the personal.
Many managers believe that they are supposed to solve problems quietly and efficiently without involving others. This is a very misguided. Toyota’s attitude to problems, even small ones, are not isolated, but almost always is part of the bigger picture, window on the system as a whole.
An American executive reported on his first presentation to the Toyota senior management where he presented his excellent work. The Toyota executive stopped him and said: “Jim-san. We all know you are a good manager. Otherwise, we would not have hired you. But please talk to us about your problems so we can work on them together.”
Organizational complexity, the curse of any organization of size, makes spotting problems particularly difficult. Perhaps the best known catastrophic consequence of organizational complexity was the 9/11 terrorist attack. The U.S. had a labyrinth of agencies responsible for combatting terrorism against the country. As the Congressional Report revealed, all the warning signs were there, adequate information has been obtained, but the right information never made it into the right hands at the right time.
To identify problems, leaders need to behave like an anthropologist who learn about groups through the observes groups of people in natural settings.
Do not simply listen to what people say; watch what they do—
Many executives spend time talking with their current customers, employees, and suppliers.
How many speak on occasion with their noncustomers, nonemployees, and nonsuppliers—those who are currently not engaged with their organization in some fashion?
Effective problem-finders become especially adept at observing the unexpected without allowing preconceptions to cloud what they are seeing.
Sometimes, leaders need to walk outside without an umbrella and feel the raindrops on their skin.

“You can observe a lot just by watching.” —Yogi Berra
David Neeleman, the founder of JetBlue.
it also scored very highly on the airline quality rankings (AQR)—a scoring system that measures everything from on-time arrivals to mishandled baggage and customer complaints.
from to , JetBlue ranked number one or number two each year on the AQR,
He never allowed himself to become too distant from the basic process of helping customers enjoy their flights.
Neeleman would introduce himself to the passengers over the intercom. Then he would join his flight attendants in providing drink and snack service,
his “snack and schmooze drill.”
he also interacted closely with his pilots and flight attendants.
Mead
immersed herself in the Samoan society for five months in the s, and from her systematic observations, she wrote a groundbreaking book about how culture impacts the socioemotional development of young people.
Third, the most effective problem-finders become adept at searching for and identifying patterns.
Reflect on and refine your individual and collective pattern-recognition capability.
Fourth, you must refine your ability to “connect the dots” among seemingly disparate pieces of information.
Accident investigators in fields such as commercial aviation, the military, and medicine have shown that a chain of events and errors typically leads to a particular disaster.
Dismissing Intuition
Data rule the day; without a wealth of statistics and information, one does not persuade others to adopt his or her proposals. Those first early warning signs do not come from a large dataset, but rather from an individual’s gut.
you will become better at distinguishing the signals from the noise.
we heard that highly experienced nurses spotted trouble before the patient’s vital signs became abnormal.
novices often did not notice a problem until the quantitative measures moved outside the acceptable range.
“something just did not feel right.”
“I’ve been a nurse for twenty-two years. You develop instincts about patient behavior and appearance.
Did this mean that novices could not become superb problem-finders until they had accumulated decades of experience?
Fifth, effective problem-finders learn how to encourage people to take risks and learn from their mistakes.
You must distinguish between excusable and inexcusable mistakes,
the best problem-finders recognize that false alarms can be remarkable learning opportunities.
experience proves to be a great teacher.
“Bad news isn’t wine. It doesn’t improve with age.” —General Colin Powell
Sixth, you must refine your own and your organization’s communication skills.
You have to train people how to speak up more effectively and teach leaders at all levels how to respond appropriately to someone who surfaces a concern, points out a problem, or challenges the conventional wisdom.
Seventh, the best problem-finders become like great coaches who watch film of past performances and glean important lessons about their team’s problems as well as those of their principal rivals.
leaders must remember that problem-finding abilities tend to improve over time.
the processes of problem-finding and continuous improvement are inextricably linked.
Three Dimensions of a New MindsSET
We have provided an in-depth description of the seven critical skills and capabilities required to ensure that problems do not remain hidden in your organization.
Intellectual Curiosity
Problem-finding requires a certain amount of intellectual curiosity.
must have a restless mind,
never satisfied with its understanding of a topic—no matter how much expertise
EMBRACE SYSTEMIC THINKING.
small problems often do not occur due to the negligence or misconduct of an individual.
Instead, small errors frequently serve as indicators of broader systemic issues in the organization.
Retired Brigadier General Duane Deal
has studied a number of catastrophic failures.
most complex failures do not have a single cause.
Many small errors and mistakes often converge to create a catastrophe.
we must resist the temptation to stop when we have spotted the most visible problem that may be causing trouble for the organization.
What’s behind that obvious problem?
Healthy Paranoia
Andy Grove, former Chairman and CEO of Intel, once wrote a book titled Only the Paranoid Survive.
Effective problem-finders acknowledge that every organization, no matter how successful, has plenty of problems.
often lie beneath the surface, hidden from view.
They do not wait for problems to come to them.

CONCLUSIONS
Great leaders do not simply know how to solve problems. They know how to find them.
detect smoke, rather than simply trying to fight raging fires. leader does not necessarily have to consume an extraordinary amount of resources to surface and examine potential problems.
problems are not the enemy; hidden problems are. Lack of Training
Novartis senior executive Larry Allgaier
“I worry the most about what my people are not telling me.”
Readability Light ---+- Serious
Insights High +---- Low
Practical High +----Low

*Ian Mann of Gateways consults internationally on leadership and strategy and is the author of
Strategy that Works.


Tags : Know What You Don't Know: How Great Leaders Prevent Problems Before They Happen [Michael A. Roberto] on Amazon.com. *FREE* shipping on qualifying offers. <P style= MARGIN: 0px >Problems remain hidden in organizations for a number of reasons, including fear,Michael A. Roberto,Know What You Don't Know: How Great Leaders Prevent Problems Before They Happen,FT Press,0131568159,Leadership,Organizational change,Organizational change.,Organizational effectiveness,Organizational effectiveness.,Problem solving,Problem solving.,BUSINESS & ECONOMICS Business Communication General,BUSINESS & ECONOMICS Decision-Making & Problem Solving,BUSINESS & ECONOMICS Leadership,Business & Economics,Business & EconomicsLeadership,Business Economics Finance,BusinessEconomics,Decision Making & Problem Solving,GENERAL,General Adult,How-toDo-it-yourself,LEADERSHIP IN BUSINESS,Management & management techniques,Non-Fiction,United States

Know What You Don't Know How Great Leaders Prevent Problems Before They Happen Michael A Roberto 9780131568150 Books Reviews

Dr. Roberto has written an excellent, easy to read and comprehend treatise on Leadership. The case studies are especially helpful in understanding the underlying principles of finding the correct problems to be solved. A must read for all managers.
I honestly think this is a book that is a standard read and something that every business manager and leader should be reading but are you going to find something that you dont find in a Gladwell, Godin, Zig book?? no... but that isn't a bad thing as it reinforced some great tips that i need to keep at the top of my mind.
Very good book.Highly recommended for any type of readers!
Great book that makes sense for any large organization. I have reread the book and will continue to refer back to it. Provides great prospective to address challenging issues and a better prospective to problem solve. I have bought this book for others and they have confirmed that this is a great book;
Unlike many business leadership books, "Know What You Don't Know" does not focus on problem solving, but rather on "problem-finding." Conventional wisdom would have it that problems are to be avoided, but the leader of the organization must be ready to solve them when they arise.

This book describes the means for a leader to find problems before they become a catastrophe, including bypassing organizational structures when necessary, teaching your teams to communicate (Cockpit Resource Management), being paranoid when you need to be, recognizing patterns, and encouraging "useful" failures.

As a Naval Officer, the chapters I found most useful were "Watch the game film" and "How to communicate." Read this book if you want an idea on how to teach your organization to identify and correct problems before they become show stoppers.
A good reminder that we don't know what we don't know and often forget about that option or arrogantly assume we already know everything there is to know in our area of expertise. It's full of good tips on how to counteract this tendency, how to bring in different voices and ideas, how to listen to and value those voices and how to try out new ideas. It also reminds us that recognizing that we don't know is not a fault but an opening to new and creative thinking. A good concise read, good lessons and reminders.
Leaders need to become hunters who venture out in search of the problems that might lead to disaster for their firms; they cannot wait for the problems to come to them, according to Michael Roberts in this book. Unfortunately most business schools teach students how to solve pre-defined problems rather than how to search out the problems in the first place.

According to the author, there are seven critical skills which must be mastered in order to someone to become an effective problem finder

* Circumvent the filters which prevent you from receiving accurate information, particularly bad news
* Observe how groups of people behave in their natural settings
* Search for and identify patterns
* Connect the dots amongst seemingly disparate bits of information
* Encourage people to take risks and learn from their mistakes
* Refine your communication skills
* Become adept at review and reflection

The book is based on almost 150 interviews with CEOs, business unit leaders and staff executives of small and large enterprises, relating to successes, failures and efforts to prevent failures from taking place. In my view there is nothing particularly surprising about the author's findings or the seven critical skills which he has identified, but perhaps that is because it is fundamentally impossible to reduce the skill of finding previously unidentified problems to a science.
INTRODUCTION
Psychiatrist, Theodore Rubin, pointed out that “the problem is not that there are problems. The problem is expecting otherwise and thinking that having problems is a problem.”
The background to this book a conclusion the author came to about many organizations. They devote a great deal of effort and time to improving their staff’s problem-solving capabilities, but spend barely any time improving staff’s ability to discover problems.
Mistakes tend to compound over time with one error triggering another. “Many large-scale failures have long incubation periods,” Roberto explains, and this is an advantage. Managers have time to intervene and solve problems when they are small and so avoid the large-scale ones.
Through his research, Roberto has identified seven sets of capabilities that leaders should hone so they become effective problem-finders.
The first is to accept that your staff limit information, often with good intentions, before it reaches the manager. There are a range of reasons for this, from the structural to the personal.
Many managers believe that they are supposed to solve problems quietly and efficiently without involving others. This is a very misguided. Toyota’s attitude to problems, even small ones, are not isolated, but almost always is part of the bigger picture, window on the system as a whole.
An American executive reported on his first presentation to the Toyota senior management where he presented his excellent work. The Toyota executive stopped him and said “Jim-san. We all know you are a good manager. Otherwise, we would not have hired you. But please talk to us about your problems so we can work on them together.”
Organizational complexity, the curse of any organization of size, makes spotting problems particularly difficult. Perhaps the best known catastrophic consequence of organizational complexity was the 9/11 terrorist attack. The U.S. had a labyrinth of agencies responsible for combatting terrorism against the country. As the Congressional Report revealed, all the warning signs were there, adequate information has been obtained, but the right information never made it into the right hands at the right time.
To identify problems, leaders need to behave like an anthropologist who learn about groups through the observes groups of people in natural settings.
Do not simply listen to what people say; watch what they do—
Many executives spend time talking with their current customers, employees, and suppliers.
How many speak on occasion with their noncustomers, nonemployees, and nonsuppliers—those who are currently not engaged with their organization in some fashion?
Effective problem-finders become especially adept at observing the unexpected without allowing preconceptions to cloud what they are seeing.
Sometimes, leaders need to walk outside without an umbrella and feel the raindrops on their skin.

“You can observe a lot just by watching.” —Yogi Berra
David Neeleman, the founder of JetBlue.
it also scored very highly on the airline quality rankings (AQR)—a scoring system that measures everything from on-time arrivals to mishandled baggage and customer complaints.
from to , JetBlue ranked number one or number two each year on the AQR,
He never allowed himself to become too distant from the basic process of helping customers enjoy their flights.
Neeleman would introduce himself to the passengers over the intercom. Then he would join his flight attendants in providing drink and snack service,
his “snack and schmooze drill.”
he also interacted closely with his pilots and flight attendants.
Mead
immersed herself in the Samoan society for five months in the s, and from her systematic observations, she wrote a groundbreaking book about how culture impacts the socioemotional development of young people.
Third, the most effective problem-finders become adept at searching for and identifying patterns.
Reflect on and refine your individual and collective pattern-recognition capability.
Fourth, you must refine your ability to “connect the dots” among seemingly disparate pieces of information.
Accident investigators in fields such as commercial aviation, the military, and medicine have shown that a chain of events and errors typically leads to a particular disaster.
Dismissing Intuition
Data rule the day; without a wealth of statistics and information, one does not persuade others to adopt his or her proposals. Those first early warning signs do not come from a large dataset, but rather from an individual’s gut.
you will become better at distinguishing the signals from the noise.
we heard that highly experienced nurses spotted trouble before the patient’s vital signs became abnormal.
novices often did not notice a problem until the quantitative measures moved outside the acceptable range.
“something just did not feel right.”
“I’ve been a nurse for twenty-two years. You develop instincts about patient behavior and appearance.
Did this mean that novices could not become superb problem-finders until they had accumulated decades of experience?
Fifth, effective problem-finders learn how to encourage people to take risks and learn from their mistakes.
You must distinguish between excusable and inexcusable mistakes,
the best problem-finders recognize that false alarms can be remarkable learning opportunities.
experience proves to be a great teacher.
“Bad news isn’t wine. It doesn’t improve with age.” —General Colin Powell
Sixth, you must refine your own and your organization’s communication skills.
You have to train people how to speak up more effectively and teach leaders at all levels how to respond appropriately to someone who surfaces a concern, points out a problem, or challenges the conventional wisdom.
Seventh, the best problem-finders become like great coaches who watch film of past performances and glean important lessons about their team’s problems as well as those of their principal rivals.
leaders must remember that problem-finding abilities tend to improve over time.
the processes of problem-finding and continuous improvement are inextricably linked.
Three Dimensions of a New MindsSET
We have provided an in-depth description of the seven critical skills and capabilities required to ensure that problems do not remain hidden in your organization.
Intellectual Curiosity
Problem-finding requires a certain amount of intellectual curiosity.
must have a restless mind,
never satisfied with its understanding of a topic—no matter how much expertise
EMBRACE SYSTEMIC THINKING.
small problems often do not occur due to the negligence or misconduct of an individual.
Instead, small errors frequently serve as indicators of broader systemic issues in the organization.
Retired Brigadier General Duane Deal
has studied a number of catastrophic failures.
most complex failures do not have a single cause.
Many small errors and mistakes often converge to create a catastrophe.
we must resist the temptation to stop when we have spotted the most visible problem that may be causing trouble for the organization.
What’s behind that obvious problem?
Healthy Paranoia
Andy Grove, former Chairman and CEO of Intel, once wrote a book titled Only the Paranoid Survive.
Effective problem-finders acknowledge that every organization, no matter how successful, has plenty of problems.
often lie beneath the surface, hidden from view.
They do not wait for problems to come to them.

CONCLUSIONS
Great leaders do not simply know how to solve problems. They know how to find them.
detect smoke, rather than simply trying to fight raging fires. leader does not necessarily have to consume an extraordinary amount of resources to surface and examine potential problems.
problems are not the enemy; hidden problems are. Lack of Training
Novartis senior executive Larry Allgaier
“I worry the most about what my people are not telling me.”
Readability Light ---+- Serious
Insights High +---- Low
Practical High +----Low

*Ian Mann of Gateways consults internationally on leadership and strategy and is the author of
Strategy that Works.