Written by Does your company serve "hot potatoes"? Not the delicious ones you get in the canteen, but the ones that are regularly served to you - similar to a well-known lunch dish. And they usually taste a little less appetizing each time they are served.
This metaphor of the "hot potato" stands for unpleasant topics that nobody really wants to tackle, usually too hot to touch. For fear of burning their fingers, the unloved tuber vegetable is happily passed on until - like an unwelcome déjà vu - it is served up again.
Picking despite the risk of burns?
The solution does not lie in continuing this game. What we need are managers who act decisively despite the heat and provide clarity. No more back and forth, no more political games and no more weak decision-making. Better to move towards a culture of accountability and courage.
Just like in a good restaurant, the same applies here: Nothing is eaten as hot as it is cooked. Management teams that courageously tackle the hot topics not only make their organization more efficient, but also more satisfied.
A simple recipe
We have developed a pragmatic approach for one of my clients: All employees who discover a hot potato in their day-to-day work can name it and feed it into MS Teams using a simple MS Forms template. This then ends up on a Kanban board that the management team goes through at the start of the week.
The goal? To discover and boil "hot potatoes" as early as possible - in other words, to make a decision on how to deal with them (who does what and by when) - some hot potatoes simply end up in the organic waste.
Transparency and effectiveness
This procedure means that there is full transparency about the status of things. Everyone who places a "hot potato" there is actively and promptly informed of the decision made.
Effective #leadership starts where the back and forth stops. So, what are you waiting for? Let's get to the potatoes: what's on your leadership menu this week?