What are you naming, facing and resolving?

Leaders name, face and resolve the problems that exist in their organizations.  ~Bill Hybels, 2011 Global Leadership Summit

In 1995 the Willow Creek Association (founded by Bill Hybels) launched the first Global Leadership Summit.  Today, well over 100,000 leaders attend the annual event at over 185 locations and in more than 70 countries.  As is custom, Bill Hybels opened this year’s event that took place last week with a thoughtful, insightful and practical presentation of Five Critical Questions a leader must ask.

The quote for this week is one of the five critical questions Bill posed to the massive audience of leaders.  “Are you naming, facing and resolving the problems that exist in your organization”?

Bill included in his presentation a lifecycle diagram to help identify, or “name” the problems in our organizations.  Below is my attempt to recreate the diagram so please forgive my crude drawing, but the concept is what matters.  Bill told us to go through all of our products/programs/services, etc. and place them on the diagram.  Are they accelerating, booming, decelerating or are they tanking?  When something begins to decelerate it’s getting tired, new ideas need to be infused to move it back to accelerating and avoid tanking.  In other words, address the problem.

I would add one possibility that Bill did not mention so I’m inserting my own opinion here.  I don’t think everything that begins to decelerate should be moved back to being accelerated.  Sometimes ideas, programs, products, services, etc. have truly served their purpose and it may be time to end it before more time and resources are invested while it’s tanking.

Most important, naming and facing problems is the first step to resolution.  All organizations have an elephant or two in the room.  Are we ready to name them and face them?