LeadershipHQ Magazine June 2015 2nd Edition

DESTROY your business today! The best way to work out what to do with your business, your staff and your sales is by working out the best way to do what you don’t want to do. Confused? (I know I am!) Read on. Often when we consider growth options, we brainstorm ways we can improve. We think of great ideas that can grow our business and open new opportunities but 12 months on these ideas are just a memory. As humans, we have cognitive biases, which inhibit our ability to gain perspective, particularly when our own personal success and livelihood are on the line. How can we counter this part of our nature? It’s time for some DESTRUCTION! By ‘destruction’, I am referring to a tool called reverse brainstorming. Instead of brainstorming ideas to accomplish your goals, reverse brainstorming involves thinking ideas to accomplish the opposite. When the target is no longer ‘success’ but instead is ‘destruction’, the cognitive biases that limit our thinking are removed, as there is no longer any personal threat in these concepts. Here are two common business examples: Example 1: Disengage your staff! The start of each year usually involves Human Resource teams coming together and brainstorming ways they can engage their staff. Employee engagement is one of the key drivers in business productivity and a lack of engagement can lead to increased workplace incidents, increased attrition, increased unplanned leave and poor performance. HR teams everywhere ask themselves “How can we improve our employee engagement?” and they get answers like this: • Start a loyalty program that rewards employees for staying with the company • Organise a monthly ‘team building’ event or excursion • Create a new intranet for staff to communicate with each other While these answers might generate engagement, they will likely involve significant resource investment and may not address underlying adverse factors affecting employee engagement. There is a cognitive bias telling us that current employee engagement is already maximised so improving engagement must require 14 | © LeadershipHQ 2015 additional programs. Ironically, these extra programs can end up putting more strain on staff and can even lead to less engagement as a result! Conversely, we could reverse brainstorm along this question: “How we can disengage our staff so that they will leave?” This might get answers like: • Pay them incorrectly or not at all • Increase their work hours • Encourage their line manager to bully them • Put them on a project for a week and then cancel the project • Constantly move the ‘goalposts’ • Make them clean the toilets every day • Put them in performance management While responses could be considered ‘extreme’ or ‘silly’, these answers are actually more useful at developing a comprehensive strategy to improve engagement. The lack of cognitive bias shows the many facets that affect employee engagement day to day and this is what needs to be managed, often with a much lower requirement for resources.

LeadershipHQ Magazine June 2015 2nd Edition | Page 14