This week, I visited with my manager before leaving on a trip.  He passed me Monday Morning Leadership: 8 Mentoring Sessions You Can’t Afford to Miss, by David Cottrell. He said this is what his boss recommended.  Here are the notes I took while reading it:

• Focus on the objectives not on distractions
• Always ask “What will you change to make this week better?”
• What’s the main thing?  That goes for you and for your organization.
• People quit people, not companies.
• Recognize “Super Star” behavior.
• Fix the problem.  Don’t continue to live with it.
• Protect your integrity.
• Develop an action plan before a crisis.
• Your time is your responsibility.  Make better decisions about how to spend your time.
• Use the right tool the right way.
• Set aside “planning time.”
• Touch paper once (this applies to email too).
• Eliminate time wasters.
• Clump activities together.
• Give feedback that is: Sincere, Specific, Timely and aligned with values of receiver.
• Set goals

I also had an original idea that grew from reading the book…  It is good to be a life long learner, but as you learn and grow, it benefits everyone if you share and produce content, as well.  Just being a consumer of content is not enough.  Synthesizing and sharing benefits everyone.

Threats are those things that we don’t have control over.  These can be environmental, operational, and more; that’s weather, traffic, mechanical problems…

 Errors are just that – things we do wrong.  We can make procedural errors, judgement errors, and more.

 I’m being purposefully vague in my terms because I really think there is a cross-over into other businesses.  Here’s what I mean.  Every business should survey the landscape for possible threats and have a plan for those threats when they do occur.  The business should have a method to identify those threats when they do appear.  Similarly, identification is the key to internal errors.  You have to identify them before you can take action to correct them.

It’s said quite often in the aviation business that no one single item caused an accident, but rather a chain of events.   If any link in the chain could have been broken, the accident could have been prevented.  

So, the take away:  Do you have systems to identify the external threats and the internal errors in your business?  Do you have processes to mitigate the potential threats and errors?