For anyone who saw the Back to the Future series of movies or any number of other time machine stories, you know that time machines can be both problem-causing and can be the solution.

With a time machine, you never have to be late to the party again!

The biggest challenge with time machines seems to be keeping them functioning and not losing track of them, especially at a key moment.

With a Leadership Time Machine, your problems can be as if they never happened.

“But wait!” I hear you say. “There is no such thing as a Time Machine. It is just a contrivance of science fiction”.

Yes, in part this is true. There is no such thing as a machine to travel back in time to allow us to fix our mistakes.

However, we do have a time machine. We ourselves are time machines. Normally running at a ratio of 1 minute to every 60 seconds. Sometimes it may feel much faster or slower. Technically, those orbiting the planet in space, time is fractionally slower due to the effects of relativity – but on the order of millionths of a second.

With our time machine running forward at a regular rate, we have a few choices on how we approach our lives and our leadership.

The concept of the Leadership Time Machine has you keep in mind these key facts:

1. Plan for contingencies
2. Make choices based on the future
3. Repair mistakes

Plan for Contingencies

If you map out how a number of key timelines could go depending on choices and random events, you will be more prepared to deal with the challenges when they happen.

This is like having a time machine, in that you prepare and plan for a number of contingencies.

By being prepared for activities and events going a number of different ways, and being flexible in how you handle these conditions, allows you to handle more things not going perfectly.

In truth, nothing goes perfectly. And nothing should go perfectly. It is important to have a certain amount of randomness and challenges, to keep things interesting, innovative and dynamic. These will give you better solutions and better interactions with your teams.

Make Choices Based On the Future

Always keep a forward-looking, leading up perspective to your choices. When you are faced with challenges, it is important to always present in the future – what you would like to see happen, a direction to guide others.

A key part of being a successful leader is a positive vision. That vision comes into play not only for the big picture, but when dealing with smaller, more immediate challenges.

When you have staff person who is not meeting your expectations, you have some choices on how you can approach it.

You can try to control the person and create limitations, which is likely to cause a negative working environment, or you can recognize the pieces that are positive and useful and phrase corrections in terms of what you would like to see better for the future.

Repair Mistakes

We do not have a machine to go back and completely undo when we have done something wrong. However, we do have a machine that can in effect go back and reduce the impact of the mistake. In fact, this can sometimes be the best encouragement from leaders: those who admit and try to make up for their mistakes.

The time machine we do have is based on some factors:

1. People will have memories, especially for things that they feel were done wrong to them
2. People will hold a grudge and this can impact how they work for time going forward
3. We can share in the memory of an activity that holds negative feelings

By going to a person or group to talk about a mistake you made in the past, admitting to it, and invoking some form of amends, correction and/or vision of a future-state, you can travel back in time and help correct the past.

The biggest challenge is losing or breaking your time machine. If you do are not willing to admit mistakes are revisit how you could have done better, you are refusing to travel in time.

By showing you are willing to travel in time, you are showing that you can make mistakes, and you model how you will correct mistakes. This gives your team a better feel for being willing to try and be willing to go some extra steps. This can lead to positive teams, innovation and success.

Invoking your vision with a Leadership Time Machine will lead to success with your team through your leadership