I had an interesting conversation earlier this week where an observation was made that the job market is flooded with very competent doers but what we really need is more thinkers. That got me thinking about what mind-set and behaviours a person needs to bring to the table and, equally as important, how projects and activities should be set up in the first place.
I am constantly hearing stories of situations where project drivers are not clear and where ownership is confused. I have encountered a fair few myself. Commonly, there is an imperative to ‘just get it done’ with only scant attention paid to the measures of success and the level of enablement provided by the operating environment. In situations like these there is often a premature expectation regarding the solution based on recycling some approach that has ‘kinda worked’ before but which might not be applicable this time around. Deprived of any real opportunity to influence the direction, people are put to work executing the mechanics of the game without really having much skin or belief in it. This is clearly not a recipe for success.