Business Leaders, what has helped you through so far?
Free webinars on Leadership? Retired generals sharing their war stories with their crisis management templates? Exhortations to show up, to communicate. Brilliant McKinsey, Bain, Deloitte, PWC articles on leadership? But what have you actually used?
If we combine all these messages and distil them, I have concluded there are four key STRATEGIC steps that every business leader, but especially those who run private mid sized companies, should follow. McKinsey had 6 but as always I believe in a simpler and, well, a more joined-up approach!
Step 1 - Ensure a Clear Mindset
Develop a mindset that
Maintains Belief,
Confronts Reality and
Challenges every assumption
Described beautifully by Jim Collins as the Stockdale Paradox, leaders experiencing the second wave of lockdowns will recognise this mindset. Based on the story of Admiral James Stockdale, who was a prisoner of war for seven years, Stockdale always believed he would be freed. He experienced torture and uncertainty for most of those seven years. The “brutal facts” were always confronted
You must never confuse faith that you will prevail in the end — which you can never afford to lose — with the discipline to confront the most brutal facts of your current reality, whatever they might be.
Admiral James Stockdale
The parallels to this in the COVID-19 crisis is becoming increasingly evident. Stockdale said those who didn’t survive were the optimists - those who thought they would be “out by Christmas”. Short term fixes by a vaccine or “a miracle” create false hopes in politicians and business people alike.
But the belief of recovery is justified on the basis of current government track records on stimuli. Roger Martin-Fagg, the British Behavioural economist, who spoke to us recently in Joined-Up Conversations, described the wave of money which we have been unable to spend yet. But the brutal facts are not only a very nasty virus but an inconsistent and varied approach to opening up; not just country by country and state by state but often parish by parish and department by department.
The other mindset is to accept that we are going through the overused term “unprecedented times”. I’d like to acknowledge several of my US Vistage Chair colleagues for leading me to the Mark Twain quote (apocryphal no doubt). Leaders have to question the assumptions behind every decision they make.
Step 2 - Establish a Vision for the whole Sector
Develop a Vision for the whole Sector or Industry you are in, not the business you currently run.
Most business strategy discussions start with a question along the lines of “What’s your Vision for the Company?” For most that’s a hard question to answer. Why? Because more often than not it is a subjective, often egotistical, guess. Because of that, it is difficult to have a healthy and Joined-Up discussion of whether this makes sense.
Instead, look at the whole industry you are in first and from this much more commonality of view will occur. The technological, demographic and even regulatory trends are usually overpoweringly consistent, perhaps with a question of timing being the only major uncertainty. Ensuring Step 2 is covered first gives a much better insight into who the likely and emerging competitors will be and the likely alliances that will form. You are then in a much better position to move to:
Step 3 - identify the role your company will play
As part of the vision for the industry, ask “what opportunities are there for our organisation and what could we become?”
Jim Collins in Good To Great uses two powerful concepts which allow to match your organisation to the Vision of the Industry.
The Hedgehog. Jim’s study of leaders of organisations that became truly great companies was that they tended to be like a hedgehog rolling up in a ball - when the going gets tough they focused on a core and stuck to it. What is your organisation truly passionate about? What really matters ? Secondly - and this is a great question for Community Service organisations (usually “for purpose”) ask “What can we be the best in the world at?”
How does your flywheel turn? Jim Collins in 2019 published a follow on Monograph to Good to Great exploring how individual businesses could scale up faster and faster - using the analogy of a flywheel. Define the flywheel using the insights of the vision for your industry and this potentially can massively change your view of the opportunities ‘
Matt Tice, TEC speaker and Author of “Insurgence, How Established Incumbents Can Operate Like Nimble Insurgents in Fast Changing and Volatile Markets” has emphasised that now (i.e. Mid 2020) is there will never be better time for Smart businesses.
Matt argues that to do that we have to engage even more with our customers and re-imagine with them their future. He has long argued that true business innovation is even more profound around innovation of the business model than of the company’s products and technology.
Step 4 - Create a truly Agile decision making organisation
Timing is everything. But we are living in an increasing VUCA (Volatile, Uncertain, Complex and Ambiguous) world. As Matt put it: “if its faster you need to be prepared; and if its slower you need to be prepared”
Agile as a business term is now overused. But Agility / Nimbleness / Flexibility is everything. This means you need to achieve Leadership flow, where you talk about the right things, at the right time with the right people taking ownership. Being Joined-Up.
Use the Phoney War period to refine your decision making and accountability model to truly empower your organisation, freeing you and your executive team up to adapt and flex as circumstances change.
Watch the amazing starlings video to to see the epitome of an agile organisation.
Great materials are available to help you from a number of sources - Patrick Lencioni’s great book The Advantage and his supporting materials at his website
Concepts such as OKR (Objectives and Key Results) and OGSM (objectives, Goals, Strategies and Measures) are moving businesses away from that very top heavy “KPI” to a shared and accountable process which can then be cascaded down through the organisation.
Agile as a concept has historically been considered a Project management tool or an IT development process, but has become mainstream over the last few years through adapting from some of the narrow interpretations. It is now an increasingly essential approach for top teams, innovation teams and sales.
Brad Jeavons, in his recent book Agile Sales, brings home the use of agile to ensure customer centricity - focusing on huddles, visual management and real time information tools. He currently emphasises that customer engagement processes that lead to new sales have had to adapt. This approach bridges the buying journey of business to business processes from prospecting, lead generation and then to more conventional sales processes.
Grant Leboff - Sticky Marketing - One the UK’s leading experts on Marketing and Lead generation
On the basis of this priority, I have invited Grant Leboff, One the UK’s leading experts in Marketing and Lead generation and a very vocal champion of the importance of marketing right now to join me for a Joined-Up Conversation.
We will work with business leaders and marketing professionals in a zoom based face to face workshop on Thursday 1st October. Attendees will have the opportunity to join the “Sticky Marketing Club” – a leading edge marketing resource.
If you are interested in joining us just click on the button to link to the relevant webpage.
