How do effective leaders plan when the future is so wildly unpredictable? - part #3

Given all the strategic meetings I have been involved with during the last six months before COVID-19 hit us like a tsunami, I want to share two more insights I have gleaned from the experience. First, I have come to the same conclusion as John Paul Lederach in his book, The Moral Imagination: The Art and Soul of Building Peace (Oxford University Press, 2005) that “The past lies before us.” Since we can not see or know to any degree of certainty the future what we know the most about is the past. In essence, as Lederach explains “we walk backwards into the future.”

From my vantage point, as a leader or an executive team initiates change, we begin walking on a sigmoid curve, a normal pattern of organizational change. This curve is driven by four things:

- Remembered history, i.e. the stories we learned from others, and the selective way we remember history.

- Lived history, i.e. the experiences we personally lived through.

- Shared history, i.e. the experiences we personally lived through with others.

- Current and/or recent events, i.e. the experiences that are happening now.

All four of the above can create the narrative we tell ourselves and others about what is happening now and the why is it happening in a particular manner.  

In particular, I think the challenge is that most leaders want to answer the WHY question and talk about mission and/or purpose. However, many are not very good at it. Sometimes, their answers are simplistic at best. This happens because they do not understand the history of the organization. To be very specific, they have not created the space to develop a shared history, a shared sense of clarity and a shared understanding. As a result, the narrative is incomplete or not helpful to those who are trying to make change happen. 

As John Paul Lederach points out, “We have the capacity to remember the past, but we have no capacity to fully predict much less control it. Not even God can change the past…. We have the capacity to imagine a different future, but we have no capacity to fully predict much less control it. Try as we might nobody controls the future…. The web of life is juxtaposed between these realities of time, between memory and potentiality. This is the place of narrative, the art of re-storying.”

This reminds me of something Jim Mattis wrote in his book, Call Sign Chaos: Learning To Lead (Random House, 2019): “I was out to win their coequal “ownership” of the mission…”. For me this happens, when we develop a shared understanding and collective set of experiences which strengthen who we are, what we believe in and how we work together.

My second recent insight related to strategic planning is that relationship building is a big part of strategic planning. While most people focus on goal setting and document creation, I think we undervalue the relationship building part of the process. The keys to planning in widely unpredictable times, notes Ron Heifetz and Marty Linsky in their book Leadership On The Line: Staying Alive through the Dangers of Leading (Harvard Business School Press, 2002), is to “commit to the importance of relationship building and community building.” When we find new partners and maintain old partnerships, we understand that these “partners provide protection, and create alliances with factions other than your own”.

Furthermore, I believe we need to respect complexity, rediscover emergence, and understand that there are times when a bridge plan is the best plan to purse. At the same time, we need to provide safe space for the creative thinking and action to occur, have the willingness to talk about risks and risk management, and be willing to accept pain (physical, spiritual, financial, mental) so others with less can do better.

Nevertheless, the challenge right now for so many leaders is organizational “amnesia”. We have forgotten our history. We have forgotten our roots. We have forgotten our story up until this moment and we have forgotten our past strategic choices. All of this results in weak, non authentic relationships and ultimately weak communities. This “land of forgetfulness” creates relationships which do not have the capacity to trust, deal with risks, or generate creative responses to extraordinary and complex challenges, notes John Paul Lederach.

Given the above in mind, adaptive leadership and adaptive planning involves four key activities say Heifetz, Grashow, and Linsky. They are as follows:

- observing events and patterns around you which involves collecting data and translating it into useful information.

- interpreting what you are observing with the assistance of others so your interpretation is not a guess.

- designing interventions based on observations and interpretations to address the adaptive challenges you have identified.

- implementing what you have designed.

Just remember that in the realm of adaptive leadership, such as what we are experiencing right now with COVID-19, you have to believe that your intervention is absolutely the right things to do at the moment you commit to it. But at the same time, you need to remain open to the possibility that you are dead wrong.

In short, we need to engage above and below the neck, i.e. head and heart, and  remember that people prefer status quo to doing things differently. We also need to remember that the lone warrior myth of leadership is a sure route to heroic suicide. We need partners.

For those of you who like to read, I suggest you explore the following two books on this subject:

- Heifetz, Ronald, A., and Marty Linsky. Leadership On The Line: Staying Alive through the Dangers of Leading, Harvard Business School Press, 2002.

- Heifetz, Ronald, Alexander Grashow, and Marty Linsky. The Practice of Adaptive Leadership: Tools and Tactics for Changing Your Organization and the World, Harvard Business Press, 2009.

Both of them are full of good food for thought and reflection.

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

What You Feed, Grows

It was a hot summer day as the senior team and I gathered for another meeting in the strategic planning process. As we walked into the corporate board room, the CEO took me aside and said, “I’d liked to make some opening remarks. You don’t mind do you?”

My response was “No. This is your team and your planning process. Feel free to set the tone for the meeting.”

Once we all were seated, the CEO started the meeting with a passionate call to arms. As he explained, “We are getting sucked into operations, systems and problems at the micro level. We are so focused on fixing everything that we have forgotten the customer. We are not concerned about their service experience as much as we are concerned about our own welfare. We need to stop focusing so much on fixing everything and instead ask ourselves the most important question of all, namely ‘What kind of organization do we want to become in 2-3 years?’  If we do not answer this question, then we will have everything fixed but, alas, have no customers. It is time to stop letting the tactics trump the strategic.”

I smiled as his words came pouring out. I agreed 100% with his analysis. In this organization, operational leadership was trumping strategic leadership. Furthermore, an operational focus at the senior team level was trumping strategic thinking and action by the top people. They were, in essence suffering from strategic blindness.

This has become a common problem in many organizations recently. Complexity is creating strategic blindness, i.e. the leaders within the organization do not see their strategy as a whole organization. They see bits and pieces of the strategy as it relates to them, but they do not comprehend it as whole. 

Furthermore, another problem continues to take place. Some leaders think that having a strategy is the same as executing a strategic plan. When people in leadership positions look at the parts and do not see “the whole”, the result is fragmentation and a general disorientation amongst all employees. When leaders think having a strategy is executing a strategy, there is a complete break down within the organization’s ability to synchronize it’s action and deliver a unified course of action.

When I encounter these kinds of problems, I always ask The Core Four Questions, namely “Who will lead?”, “Where is the vision and who has it?”, “What pace do you want to go?”, and “What should not be lost during the journey?”. The answers to these questions will point out whether or not the organization is caught in a pattern of institutional decline as described in Jim Collins’ book, How The Mighty Fall and Why Some Companies Never Give In, HarperCollins, 2009. They also will determine the path to recovery.

Once I have explored The Core Four Questions, I often have to instruct or coach those involved to utilize The Core Four Actions.  They are as follows:

- What you feed, grows.

- What you envision, guides.

- What you steward, endures.

- What you provide, activates and energizes.

The first of The Core Four Actions is “What you feed, grows.”  Based on my early adventures when I first moved to Iowa many decades ago, this phrase is a popular one amongst those I have worked with over the years. The challenge is that many people focus on the word “grow” but do not comprehend the key word “feed”.  When we turn to the dictionary for clarity, we learn that the word “feed” is defined by the following definitions: to give food to, to give as food, to furnish something essential to the development, sustenance, maintenance, or operation of, and to become nourished. 

When we take these definitions and think of them as leaders, we learn some important information. The first definition states “to give food to.” Here, executives need to build capacity, collaboration and commitment. They can do this by re-recruiting their best people and recruiting new people who are already in alignment with the new strategy and have a track record of implementing successful organizational change. 

In a time period where worry abounds, anxiety rises, and instability reigns, people are more divided than united. Employees everywhere are looking for clarity, order and direction. Clear and consistent information about what is happening and where we are going is vital. The key for leaders who are planning for change is to communicate more to their people rather than less.

Second, when we follow the “What you feed, grows” line of action, then we need to give as food things that build awareness and understanding. At this time period, we need to over-communicate a tremendous amount of historical perspective so people understand what is happening now, but also why it is happening. The present is a complete reflection of strategic choices made five to seven years ago. In essence, we are who we are by the choices we make and the path we have chosen to get to those choices.

At the same time, the best leaders understand that exceptional companies do not loose touch with the customer and their shareholders. When we provide constant support and a well defined and executable strategy, we have the potential to shape cultural values and standards, align culture and strategy, and define what is and what is not important within the organization. We also define what needs to be monitored and understood outside the organization. In short, when confronted with complexity, we need to not loose focus on the whole.

This week, sit down by yourself and ask the most important question: “What am I feeding in my organization? Fear or clarity? Focus or control? Second, sit down with your team and help them regain perspective and see the whole picture.  Review with them what has happened in the past that has lead you and the organization to this point. Then, help them see how your current strategy is positioning the company for the future. If we seek to overcome strategic blindness, then we must feed strategic clarity. Growth is then the outcome.

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