How can you solve your challenges so they never return? So we spoke recently about how your success as a company is proportion to your ability to solve challenges at the heart of the challenge. We also spoke about why companies generally suck at doing this. Here, I want to share a little bit on how you can up your game with this mother of all skills. First, you’ve got to commit to getting together with your leadership team or other team or group or functional area every single week in order to tackle your biggest challenges.

This means it’s like hygiene, like brushing or flossing, it’s not an issue. Because if it becomes an issue and a question of “should I attend this week?” you ain’t going to attend. There will be some fire to fight, some emergency, some big client meeting, it’s got to be a non-issue.

Second thing you can do – second thing you must do is ask, when you bring up a particular challenge, “is this really the heart of the challenge?” So, consider a scenario with a building developer that’s got a client who discovers asbestos in one of their buildings due to an oversight by the contractor of the building developer. Now, you’ve got two parallel universes okay? Universe one; building developer comes together with their team to solve this challenge and they say the heart of the challenge is finding a better contractor with asbestos to replace that – that bum contractor for that one client of ours.

Universe two; leadership team of the building developer comes together and they say “you know, the heart of the challenge is, we’ve got to evaluate every single contractor we work with and not just now, but on a regular basis”. Now which of these companies is going to grow a bigger better business? Neither of them is right or wrong, but universe two, they’re getting to the heart of the challenge a heck of a lot better.

Thing three; you’ve got to commit to making your priority solving your challenge more than protecting your ego. See, as a leader, you’ve got a choice, there basically two models. Model one says you as leader, say you know, I want my company to grow, I don’t really personally want to grow so much. I mean, I may say I’m open to feedback here and there but I’m not really open to feedback, you better watch your back. Give me some of that criticism but – all right, that company is going to pretty much stay status quo, right?

Model two; here’s where you welcome constructive criticism. It ain’t easy, it does not come naturally, it hurts. To get there, you probably got to plumb the depths of your soul. Dig into the recesses of your mind, go somewhere and access something pretty deep because when you get some real criticism, piece of you is dying but you know that something better is going to emerge in its wake. Now, if you want your team to subscribe to model two, it ain’t happening unless you subscribe to model two and lead by example.

Alright, if you’re going to do that, that means you’re going to be making any taboo issues, any undiscussables discussable. But if you want that transparency, I’m going to give you a – something you can do here, two simple steps to help bring that about. First step; think of three instances in your past when you got constructive criticism and share them with your team. In my case, growing up, I tend to be a little bit of an over talker, surprise surprise I know. My dad would say “josh, you’ve exceeded your quota of words for the day”. My mom was a little bit simpler and more direct, she said “josh, ai ya yai, shut up”. I share a few examples with my team.

Step two; let your team know that you want to attack these challenges. You want to get to the heart of them and make them go away. You want to be a better leader. So you ask them “what could I do to become a better leader?” right now when I ask my team, good news is, they had plenty of ideas. I did not need to ask them twice. One of them said “josh you know, sometimes you digress a bit”. It reminds me a little bit of my dog. He’d see a squirrel and he’d just go running after that squirrel. My team liked this story. Now when I talk a little bit too much, my team reminds me of this story and they say “squirrel”.

You will get plenty of ideas if you genuinely want criticism in order to grow. Ultimately, between you and where you can get, between your company and where your company can get is a whole series of challenges and the big question is, how good are you guys going to be? How good are you as a leader going to be in getting to the heart of those challenges and solving them there?

I’m Josh Klenoff, founder of The Helm. My team and I exist to help entrepreneurs like you break through the ceiling and get to the next level. I invite you to click on the link you see or come visit us at helm.ceo, set up a consultation free with my team members or me. We exist to help you get to that next level.

I look forward to seeing you soon my friend.