Lisa (Peplinski) Jaster, PMP

The biggest failure with regards to leadership and strategic thinking is that often business owners and C-suite staff believe that someone who is good at the tactical level will be good at the operational level and then will be good at the strategic level. More often than not, big thinkers are always big thinkers and detailed personnel will always excel at looking at the small steps required to accomplish a task. If you are building a team to solve a strategic issue or influence a large corporate shift, include the people who understand the overarching concepts and consult your tactical and operational thinkers. Do no think that business development and growth can be treated like a bottom-up estimate.

PM tools are phenomenal IF the manager and/or planner updates them regularly and communicates progress in a consistent way with his/her team. Too many Project Managers think that having a plan in a tool is enough, but task completion, deadlines, overruns, dependent tasks, etc must be advertised in a way that the team leads or section chiefs understand. The plan plus the "so what" drive activity.

Diversity and inclusion in the business-world is often misread as visual diversity. We look at someone and decide because they LOOK different, they must THINK differently. If business leaders truly want to improve decision making skills, they have to allow for cognitive diversity....from the mild to the wild. A mild example - have people sitting in the same room draw the same statue. Their vantage point, artistic ability, and personal perspective will all impact that drawing. Now take three individuals with different ways of thinking (analytical, artistic, abstract) and repeat the exercise. My favorite metaphor about this topic is how hammers only see nails. Let's bring our whole toolbox into the mix...including power tools (wild)!

Part of facilitating large group discussions or giving speeches is understanding that you are in fact the subject after expert. If you've done everything listed above and still find yourself irrationally anxious, ask yourself why. Is it comfort with content, fear to male mistakes, historical errors coming back to haunt you, etc? Analyzing the WHY will allow you to attack your anxiety with surgical precision.

In the military, we call this step the After Action Review, AAR. Most of us believe it is the most important step. When analyzing what happened its critical to look for areas of improvement as well as searching for what you must sustain. When dealing specifically with conflict, I focus my initial efforts on how the discussion or event began. More often than not, changing the setting or tone of the discussion can impact individuals reaction to it. Of course AARs are excellent, but if you don't retain and implement the lessons learned, you can't improve. So the final step in the AAR process is figuring out a way to adjust your behaviors and better manage future scenarios.

This is the most important tool to presenting well. I try, whenever possible, to hang out in the back of a room for lunch, breakfast, or coffee breaks (when speaking at a convention) in order to get a feel for the human side of the event. You can gain a lot of insight from hearing what keeps employees up at night with regards to work load and office culture.