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Shawn Stratton works with organizations to strengthen leadership skills that translate into powerful teams. Founder of the LiveMore Group, an organization that helps people maximize their potential and productivity, Shawn has designed presentations and retreats for both small businesses and large corporations, offering teams of all sizes the inspiration and tools to flourish in this unpredictable, exciting economic environment.
On the Move!
I know most of you read my weekly posts to gain valuable leadership insights but there are also those who check it out to see what its going on in Shawn’s world. This post is a short update on the big move my family is about to embark on and what you can expect from the blog over the summer. Several years ago, when living with a Maasai tribe in Serengeti in Kenya, a Kenyan friend mentioned to me that these people could move from their huts with everything they need and all their worldly possessions on the back of one mule. Wow, I thought, partly in jealousy and partly in sadness. I have been thinking of my Maasai friends this week as I attempt to pack up my house. Moving to Oxford, England, For One Year Moving a young family of 4 overseas, to another continent, is no easy task for anyone. To make matters more challenging for us is that we don’t know where we will be heading after we leave England in a year. As daunting as the task of dealing with all our stuff is, I am starting to realize the hardest element of a move is the mental strain it places on you. The biggest challenge is that we are trying to only move our family with what we can take on the plane. When you live in a 4-bedroom house with kids and a home office, it means there are a lot of decisions to make about your stuff. The good thing is that it’s all only STUFF. One thing I have learned...
5 Ways to Change Organizations from the Middle
I was recently speaking with a participant at a conference I was presenting at and he was telling me about the loss of productivity because of their use of an older, slow piece of software. Many times, when people are underperforming, it is because of the individuals’ behaviors but often the cause is lack of resources or the system. When the equipment or system is causing poor performance in a department, it is the manager’s role to do everything possible to influence the senior leadership to provide adequate equipment and / or alter the system. We have heard the organizational change has to come from the top down. Yes, this may be true, but what about if you are in a middle management leadership position. Your employees are looking to you for leadership and to create any changes needed to support them in their roles. Too often senior leaders are making decisions for the organization without direct knowledge of what is really needed and the impact it will have. In the LEAN LEADERSHIP model that Toyota made famous, organizations seek to bring their decision making to the bottom of the leadership hierarchy as often as possible. Tapping into the knowledge of frontline workers by asking them what they need to perform their jobs faster and better, organizations can save an enormous about of time and money. As a workplace leader, your responsibility is to make it easier for your team to do their job. That’s not saying you need to make the job easy for them. You need to prevent or remove obstacles obstructing them in the process...
Near Miss or Good Catch – There’s A Lot to Learn!
Last week, I presented at a project management conference on leading a safety culture, a culture where near misses are seen as a significant learning opportunity and not as potential disasters that are swept under the rug for fear of reprisal or job loss. A near miss is an unplanned event that did not result in injury, illness, or damage – but had the potential to do so. It is safe to say that of the dozens of the minor and major incidents I was involved in over 15 years of leading expeditions, most, if not all, were successfully resolved due to past learning from documented near miss situations, everything from arranging and paying for an Indian military helicopter to perform a dramatic rescue at 12000 feet in the Himalayas, to managing challenging river crossings in the Yukon to encountering grizzly bears deep in the back country of Alaska. Fortunately, most organizations I worked with had progressive cultures around documenting and learning from near misses. Unfortunately, not all organizations are like this. Recently, I have been speaking with some project managers who work in a culture of fear of disciplinary action for being involved with a near miss incident. This fear has caused them to not want to report near misses and minor incidents. Alternatively, I know of several organizations that have rephrased the term ‘near miss’ to ‘good catch’. I know it is only semantics but in an area that usually conjures up fear, semantics can be important. One company not only expected to report ‘good catches’ on potentially dangerous situations but also have their employees report “good catches’ of...
Shawn Stratton, Leadership Motivational Speaker and Consultant
“His use of story telling, humor and photography delivered a powerful message on the importance of finding our true passion as an indicator of success. ” -Ian Shortall read more
