How do leaders position an organization successfully for the future? - part #2

Positioning an organization successfully for the future comes down to three solutions.

First, one needs to remember Packard’s Law. Recognizing that big does not equal great, Packard’s Law states that “no company can consistently grow revenues faster than its ability to get enough of the right people to implement that growth with excellence.” I first found this in Jim Collins’ book, How The Mighty Fall and Why Some Companies Never Give In, HarperCollins, 2009. 

What we as leaders need to recognize is that we need different networks of people to be successful with different kinds of work. Herminia Ibarra in her book, Act Like A Leader, Think Like A Leader, Harvard Business Review Press, 2015, recommends we build three kinds of networks for different kinds of perspectives. The first is an operational network which helps us manage our current internal responsibilities. The second is a personal network which boosts our personal development. The last is a strategic network which focuses on new business directions and the stakeholders you must get on board to pursue these directions. As she explains, “… your strategic network is made up of relationships that help you to envision the future, sell your ideas, and get the information and resources you need to exploit these ideas…. A good strategic network gives you connective advantage: the ability to marshal information, support, or other resources from one of your networks to obtain results in another.”

With the right people in place and leaders with the right networks, I am reminded of the research by Nitin Nohria, William Joyce and Bruce Robertson in their July 2003 Harvard Business Review article called “What Really Works”. This group published a five year study that they called “The Evergreen Project”, which “examined more than 200 well-established management practices as they were employed over a ten-year period by 160 companies.” This research enabled the authors to distill which management practices truly produced superior results. Their conclusion is that without exception, companies that outperformed their industry peers excelled at four primary management practices:

- strategy: devise and maintain a clearly stated, focused strategy.

- execution: develop and maintain flawless operation execution.

- culture: develop and maintain a performance-oriented culture.

- structure: build and maintain a fast, flexible, flat organization.

The Evergreen Project concluded that these companies also embraced two of four secondary practices: talent development, innovation, leadership, and mergers and acquisitions.

The second solution is to create clarity around the five most important questions. First captured by Peter Drucker, they are the following:

- What is our mission?

- Who is our customer?

- What does the customer value?

- What are our results?

- What is our plan?

Too many times during the last year, I have encountered leaders and organizations that do not have a clarity when it comes to answering the above questions.

The third solution is to achieve consistent, forward progress. As we all know, consistent forward progress, i.e. growth, makes a profound difference. Typically, the performance markers or KPIs signal this is or is not happening. However, the first step is a commitment to the proposed strategy that will create the consistent progress. In order to check whether or not this is in place, ask your management team if they can successfully answer the following question: What are we committed to achieving during the next 10-15 years whether or not the world is turbulent or not turbulent? Clarity and commitment are interrelated.

This week, remember Packard’s Law, answer the five most important questions and check to see if you have strategic commitment and clarity within your core team. 

Geery Howe, M.A. Consultant, Executive Coach, Trainer in Leadership, Strategic Planning and Organizational Change Morning Star Associates 319 - 643 - 2257

Building A Foundation of Connections

Some days we go fast and then we go faster. Other days, it is just full warp speed through meeting after meeting with everything just being a blur. Whether you are in the fast lane or the warp speed lane, most days we as leaders struggle to keep up with the pace.

At times like this, we must focus on maintaining our clarity and holding on to our confidence. But, we also have to build and maintain healthy connections with others. These connections, be there personal, operational or strategic, are critical to surviving as a leader.

Hermania Ibarra in her book, Act Like A Leader, Think Like A Leader. Harvard Business Review Press, 2015, writes about the important of creating healthy networks. As she explains, leaders use networks as an essential leadership tool for sensing trends and seeing opportunities, building ties to opinion leaders and talent in diverse areas, working collaboratively across boundaries to create more value, avoiding groupthink, generating breakthrough ideas, and obtaining career opportunities.

This week, ask yourself the following question: “Am I building a healthy network of connections?” If yes, keep doing it. If not, then it is time to begin. The world will not get any slower if you live and work in the land of leadership.

Geery Howe, M.A. Consultant, Executive Coach, Trainer in Leadership, Strategic Planning and Organizational Change Morning Star Associates 319 - 643 - 2257

A New Book on Leadership

I read all the time. Whether it is articles on the web, the latest issue of Fast Company magazine or the Harvard Business Review, I am always on the hunt for new insights or perspectives to help me better understand the fascinating and complex world of leadership and organizational change. 

Over the decades, I have found that certain authors are good sources of new insights. For example, Stephen Covey, Tom Peters, and Ken Blanchard in the 80’s and 90’s always provided solid research and ideas. More recently, one can always count on Jim Collins, Rosabeth Moss Kanter, Patrick Lencioni, Margaret Wheatley, and Marcus Buckingham to present thought-provoking ideas and new perspectives.

However, over the last few years when reading the Harvard Business Review, a new author, Herminia Ibarra, has started appearing on my radar screen. Her research and ideas are intriguing and helpful. They have caused me to pause, reflect deeply, and rethink some things. Thus, I was delighted to see that she just published a new book  last month called Act Like A Leader, Think Like A Leader, Harvard Business Review Press, 2015. Now having read it twice, I think she offers some good, new ways of thinking about the world of leadership. 

The foundation of her new book can be summarized by the following quote by Richard Pascale: “Adults are more likely to act their way into a new way of thinking than to think their way into a new way of acting.” As she explains, “you can only learn what you need to know about your job and your self by doing it - not by just thinking about it…. we only increase self-knowledge in the process of making changes.” As she continues, “This cycle of acting like a leader and then thinking like a leader - of change from the outside in - creates what I call outsight.” 

In the book, she notes that “Contrary to public opinion, too much introspection anchors us in the past and amplifies our blinders, shielding us from discovering our leadership potential and leaving us unprepared for fundamental shifts in the situations around us.” Outsight comes from actions that revolve around redefining your job as a leader, redefining your network and redefining yourself. “As psychologists remind us, knowing what we should be doing and actually doing it are two very different things.”

Her case for a change in thinking how we approach leadership is solid and well thought through. Each chapter of the book contains excellent summaries of the material explored. For example, in the Chapter 1 Summary, she points out that “Outsight comes from a “tripod” of sources: new ways of doing your work (your job), new relationships (your network), and new ways of connecting to and engaging people (yourself)…. Sustainable change in your leadership capacity requires shifts on all three legs of the tripod.”

I was particularly impressed with her notion in Chapter 2 that effective leaders need to be a hub and/or a bridge. As she explains, leaders who are hubs do the following: set goals for the team, assign roles to their people, assign tasks, monitor progress toward goals, manage team member performance, conduct performance evaluations, hold meetings to coordinate work, and create good climate inside the team. On the other hand, leaders who are bridge builders do the following: align team goals with organizational priorities, funnel critical information and resources into the team to ensure progress toward goals, get the support of key allies outside the team, enhance the external visibility and reputation of the team, and give recognition for good performances and then place team members in great next assignments. Understanding when you are a hub and when you are a bridge builder is a good step in learning to be a better leader. 

I also was delighted to read about the role of operational, personal and strategic networks in Chapter 3 of this new book. “The first helps you manage current internal responsibilities, the second boosts personal development, and the third focuses on new business directions and the stakeholders you must get on board to pursue these directions.” I enjoyed how she framed up strategic networks as a one “made up of relationships that help you to envision the future, sell your ideas, and get the information and resources you need to exploit these ideas….A good strategic network gives you connective advantage: the ability to marshal information, support, or other resources from one of your networks to obtain results in another.” I completely agree with her when she further explained “You need operational, personal, and strategic networks to get things done, to develop personally and professionally, and to step up to leadership. Although most good managers have good operational networks, their personal networks are disconnected from their leadership work, and their strategic networks are nonexistent or underutilized.”

Overall, Act Like a Leader, Think Like a Leader is a good new addition to the lexicon of well written books about this subject. I enjoyed reading it, and recommend it to others. I also look forward to her on-going work in this area.

Geery Howe, M.A. Consultant, Executive Coach, Trainer in Leadership, Strategic Planning and Organizational Change Morning Star Associates 319 - 643 - 2257