Are you a Gourmet Cook? 

Americans spent millions every year on gourmet cookbooks written by those famous TV chefs. Then you buy their expensive pans and cooking gear and you fill your spice racks with hard to pronounce exotic spices.  You collect those interesting recipes that lay out the path toward culinary excellence.  So does this make you a better cook?  Is it easier to prepare meals? Are you eating better?

Why chase the eloquent solution? 

• Who wants to be ordinary?  You want to make a good impression.  "Getting back to the basics” speak to 
  common, everyday stuff.  So you value anything unique
  and different.  
• Keep searching.  The Internet and media represent a
  limitless source of new ideas and techniques.  So you 
  look for "new and better" recipe.
• Focus on celebrity status.  You read about those 
  remarkable people with unique experiences and talents.  So the person causes you to fall in love with the idea.     
• Pretty trumps functional. If others see your fancy kitchen, maybe they’ll think of you as an advanced expert worthy of their respect.  So you chase style over substance.   

How does this affect you?

• Can cause indecision--your freeze over too many choices.
• Diminish ability to do things yourself--eloquent solutions call for special helpers. 
• Slows things down--you need to follow the detailed recipe.
• You won't finish things--you keeping tweaking things to chase perfection.   
•  Puts more dependency on you--complexity always needs a micro-manager. 
• Puts the spotlight on you--it can become "all about you."

Choose simple ways

Life is not simple, but you can pursue simple ways.  You take an ownership position when you develop a practical and pragmatic approach.  It's difficult to master something that is eloquent, and you can't own things where you must depend on others.

This is how you put yourself in the driver's seat.  Use more hands-on cooking techniques that you can accomplish without fanfare, guidance, or special equipment. Use what’s already in your kitchen--the cook top, microwave, fry pan and wok.  Use the ingredients and spices that you're familiar with.  Avoid those out-of-the-box recipes that are difficult to execute and reproduce. And less reliance on others to get things done.   

Simply Managing

You should make the same transition at work in your managing role.  Realize that the familiar push to become sizzling, dynamic, personality-driven leaders actually distracts from the core skills.        

You should build mastery over simple, hands-on skills and abilities.  Let's check our thinking...here are a few examples of everyday managing.  Do these come natural and unrehearsed for you...can you perform these without fanfare and outside help...are these areas that you can own? 

• How to run an interview.
• Planning and organizing a work project, start to finish.
• Giving feedback without seeing it turn into a crisis.
• How to run an effective performance appraisal.
• Leading a group meeting.
• Firing someone.

Here is a real-work example 

At a technology company I worked with an experienced IT Manager, James, who was anxious to fill jobs on his team.  He was quick to express his disappointment with HR on recruiting.  I thought: you should learn do-it-yourself interviewing skills, and you should run your own hiring process as you would any other key business process. Essentially he was outsourcing hiring to a staff function, and he was never happy with the result.

I handed him a stack of screened resumes and suggested that he could do a few phone interviews himself.  He balked.  It’s not his job, he didn’t have time, and he felt that was the role of HR.  I could sense his fear and I had a hunch he had lacked basic interviewing skills.   

How about some simple show and tell?  I suggested that we call a couple of candidates right now, together.  I started dialing and put the phone on speaker.  He was hesitant, and he fidgeted in his chair as I reached the first candidate.  He observed as I ran the 15 minute phone interview. 

When the phone call was completed I walked James through what I had just done, and shared a few simple strategies for phone interviewing.  I told him how to stay in control and gave him 3 or 4 simple questions he could use.  I then asked James what his top three hiring criteria—his “must haves” were for this job, and then we both agreed that this candidate was a no-go. 

We did another short phone interview, and this time James asked a few questions of the candidate on the phone.  After the call ended he was quick to decide that we should pass on this candidate as well. 

The third call I gave to him, and he smoothly introduced himself, said the purpose of the call, and he asked the 3-4 questions.  After the 20 minute phone interview—his first successful do-it-yourself phone interview—he was exciting to say that we should invite this candidate for an on-site interview.  James left my office with a stack of resumes and a new feeling of empowerment and engagement as a manager.  “No one has ever shown me how to do this.  It’s seems simple”.  

Becoming a Simply Manager.  

Maybe your employees are having difficulty following you, because it’s difficult to follow someone who does not know where they are going and how they'll get there.  Are you making things up as you go?  Are people waiting to see what you do next?  Is this a work in progress to the extent that you and your employees spend more time correcting and resetting things and dickering over what everyone is doing? 

Simply Managing speaks to you, the manager who has responsibility for directing a group of employees.  The Story Board gives you everything you need to manage people, on a 2-page road map.  It's a different approach: simplified, do-it-yourself, and only what you can own yourself. 

Become that Best Manager everyone wants to work for. 
Start today.