How do we create a more resilient organization during this transition from a global pandemic to a post pandemic world? - part #3

A second pathway to resilience is to analyze and strengthen the health of your networks. Herminia Ibarra in her book, Act Like A Leader, Think Like A Leader (Harvard Business Review Press, 2015) writes that there are three kinds of networks. The first is an operational network which helps you manage current internal responsibilities. The second is your personal network which boosts your personal development. The third is your strategic network which focuses on new business directions and the stakeholders you must get on board to pursue these directions. This 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. As she explains, “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.” And when we step back and look at all three networks, we realize they all are social networks.

Now before we proceed any further, we need to use some common language around this subject. In simple terms, a network is an interconnected group, system, or an association of people. A network is made up of a variety of nodes or points of connection where two things or people within a network intersect. A network is not a singular node or a singular point of connection, and a node is not a network. For example, in a communications or computer network, a node is a connection point that can receive, create, store or send data along distributed network routes. Nodes connect different devices to a network.

Whenever I teach about networks, it reminds me about some of the key information I teach people about coaching. Barry Oshry in his book, Seeing Systems: Unlocking the Mysteries of Organizational Life (Berrett-Koehler, 1995) says that many people suffer from spatial blindness, namely we see parts of a system but often do not see the whole system. With this in mind, I believe many leaders suffer from network blindness, namely we see parts of our networks, but we do not see the whole network. Furthermore, when we dive more deeply into this concept, we realize that many leaders see some of the nodes or connections within a network, but we do not see the whole network of interdependencies. When we do not see our interdependencies, we are missing some key information.

The skill in perceiving and analyzing the world in terms of social connections are not innate to humans. They must be learned. I believe we are blind to our connections and sometimes our networks. This is because we do not perceive ourselves in relationship to people who are connected to other people. Often, we are totally unaware of what is happening elsewhere in our social networks that can directly or indirectly but powerfully affect our lives. Routinely, we mistake our one to one relationship as the whole network. And thus, we lose perspective and miss the context within the social network in which seemingly isolated events or decisions occur. 

Our challenge as leaders right now is understand the social geography within our networks. Most leaders do this by building and maintaining relationships. However, I found that they often get caught in the narcissistic principle of network development and node creation, i.e. the tendency to prefer interacting with people who are similar to ourselves and only tell us what we want to hear, not what we need to hear.

The best leaders I meet approach networks from a very different angle, namely how they change our time. To explain this insight, I need to dive into a concept called Shifting Baseline Syndrome which was discovered two decades ago in the fisheries industry. Over time, knowledge is lost about the state of the natural world, because people don’t perceive changes that are actually taking place within it. This is perpetuated when each new generation perceives the environmental conditions in which they grew up as “normal.” It also describes how people’s standards for acceptable environmental conditions are steadily declining.

When we translate Shifting Baseline Syndrome to the business world, the best leaders understand that each new generation defines normal by what it experiences while not knowing what normal once was. This is further perpetuated when each new generation perceives the work environment in which they “grew up in as normal.” It also describes how people’s standards for acceptable work conditions are steadily declining or changing over time. This is an incremental lowering of standards or redefining of standards which results in each new generation lacking the knowledge of the history or previous conditions within which people worked.

In order to prevent Shifting Baseline Syndrome from happening in your organization, I encourage you to understand the strategic history of your company. In particular, recognize that past historical contexts or environments have significantly influenced past strategic choices. And these choices have created current operational relationships, systems and networks. Next, understand the health and history of relationships and networks within the company. And finally, understand the current context and current strategy which will influence relationships, systems and networks for the next 3-5 years.

This week, analyze and strengthen the health of your networks. It will make a major difference during the rest of this calendar year and help position the company for recovery and growth in 2022. 

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

How do we create a more resilient organization during this transition from a global pandemic to a post pandemic world? - part #2

One of the first pathways to resilience is to develop an in-depth understanding of what creates and drives business success in your organization. This begins by doing your own homework. From years of coaching many leaders, I have learned that personal clarity should always precede team and organizational clarity. Thus, ask yourself the following two questions.

- how do we make a profit and maintain being mission-driven?

- what is the current definition of success within our company?

Once you have these answers, check to see if the two of them are connected. 

Next, review Drucker’s Five Most Important Questions:

1. What is our mission?

2. Who is our customer?

3. What does the customer value?

4. What are our results?

5. What is our plan?

Most of the time, we like to talk about the answers to questions #1, #2 and #5. However, we are not focusing enough on questions #3 and #4. If we are going to understand what the customer values, we must amplify the VOC, i.e. the voice of the customer. This is going to require us to proactively engage with them in a variety of contexts.

In order to understand what the customer values and to amplify their voice, a leader or manager must understand that in every company, there are two operating systems happening at the same time. The first is the daily management operating system. This is focused on day to day business and makes sure “the trains run on time.” It is very hierarchy oriented and is driven by policies, rules and procedures. As an operating system, it lets people do what they know how to do exceptionally well.

On the other hand, the strategic operating system is focused on the design, communication and implementation of strategy. It is designed to capitalize on big opportunities or dodge threats. With this system, one often does the following: innovation, productivity improvement, integration of acquisitions or global operations, any sort of key strategic changes or cultural change. It is focused on profitable growth.

However, the strategic operating system is often stalled by a limited number of change leaders, silo parochialism, rules and procedures, pressures to make quarterly numbers, or complacency combined with insufficient buy-in. This system works best when many people are driving the desired changes. Therefore it is more like a network rather than a management driven hierarchy

The key is to understand where we are amplifying the voice of the customer. At the daily management operating system level, this happens in the areas of changing systems, policies, rules or procedures. At the strategic operating system level, this could happen in product innovation, system innovation or cultural change.

This week reflect on the above questions and then determine if you are amplifying the VOC at the daily management operating system level or the strategic operating system level. If it is both, then be very careful to understand how each system operates and act accordingly.

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

How do we create a more resilient organization during this transition from a global pandemic to a post pandemic world? - part #1

Some days, I think we forget that all leaders are producers of strategy and consumers of strategy. Some days, I also think we forget that complexity makes execution more difficult.

There are two patterns of change and there are two kinds of market conditions. They fall into the categories of complicated and complex. For example, a car engine is a complicated machine. An expert mechanic can take it a part and reassemble it without changing a thing. The car is static, and the whole is the sum of its parts. 

On the other hand, a rainforest is complex. The rainforest is in constant flux, and the weather patterns change regularly. Animal species change or go extinct. Local agriculture impacts its water. The whole is far more than the sum of its parts. Most of what we understand about the rainforest, we understand in retrospect.

If we step back from the daily operational problems, we realize that we are dealing with more and more complex organizational changes and complex market conditions.

When it comes to dealing with complexity, I like to use the metaphor of routes and destinations. When thinking and planning strategically within a complex environment, are you asking your people to:

- take an old route to an old destination?

- take an old route to a new destination ?

- take a new route to an old destination?

- take a new route to a new destination?

Answering the above questions will help people think through how to proceed through complexity.

At the Winter 2021 Roundtable, I shared that resiliency is the new efficiency. This is is based on two important points. First, the unpredictability of complexity is not going away. 

Second, efficiency focuses on systems and systems make everyone do things the same way each time.“The problem with systems is that they depersonalize and standardize everything And people do not, on one level, like to be standardized,” notes Karl E. Weick and Kathleen M. Sutcliffe in their book, Managing The Unexpected: Resilient Performance in an Age of Uncertainty, John Wiley & Sons, Inc, 2007. As they explain, “The essence of resilience is therefore the intrinsic ability of an organization (or system) to maintain or regain a dynamically stable state, which allows it to continue operations after a major mishap and/or in the presence of a continuous stress.” 

As they also point out, the hallmark of a resilient organization is not that it is error-free but that errors don’t disable it. Resilience is a combination of keeping errors small and of improving workarounds that allow the system to keep functioning.

This week, think about the differences between complicated and complex. I also encourage you to ponder how to make your organization more resilient.

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

Always Be Prepared For Multiple Possibilities

One of my late father’s favorite phrases was “be prepared.” Whether we were heading out on a hike, a camping trip or to the grocery store, I can still hear him say “be prepared.” He wanted us to always be thinking ahead and ready for anything.

As we enter another spring, leaders are beginning to do some strategic thinking before starting their actual strategic planning cycles. And as their executive coach, I am continually reminding them to be prepared for multiple possibilities. Some think of this exercise as preparing for numerous worst case scenarios. And this can be helpful to a degree. But I also encourage them to focus on what are the emerging trends in their industry and in society. 

Therefore, now is the time to ask ourselves two important questions: 

- What is going to impact our business three to five years from now? 

- And how will these trends impact our company’s ability to plan for the future? 

There are no easy and fast answers to these questions. Nevertheless, they are important to consider. Furthermore, by regularly creating time to think forward, we are creating a powerful habit which can generate resilience and capacity.

This week, I encourage all of us to be better prepared for the future. I will be here sooner than we think.

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

Another Paradigm Shift

Last week, I canceled the phone number to my fax machine and then unplugged the machine. After only getting 3 faxes in the last year, it was time. Nowadays, everything comes via e-mail and as a PDF. Still, for me, it was the end of an era.

I am old enough to remember running a business before there were fax machines. We mailed everything to everyone or just called them on the phone. Time and expectations around communication were different back then.

Then one day about a year or two ago, I realized I was behind the times. I was talking with a client and I said to them, “Just fax it over to me when you are done.” 

There was a long pause, and then the person responded by saying, “I don’t know if we have a fax machine and I don’t know how to use it if we do. I’ve never sent a fax before.”

I just smiled and thought “my how time flies when we are having fun.”

From the perspective of doing business for 35 years, I remember when the fax machine was cutting edge technology. As Don Peppers and Martha Rogers, Ph.D wrote in their book, The One to One Future: Building Relationships One Customer at a Time (Currency Doubleday, 1993): “In late 1991, the telegraph industry's life was taken suddenly and brutally, by the facsimile machine. For more than 150 years, the telegram stood for immediacy and importance. It was an icon for urgency. But now, Western Union has closed down its telegraph service around the world. The fax was a new technology the telegram could not survive. The shift from teletype and telegram to facsimile represents one aspect of what business consultants term a "paradigm shift" - a discontinuity in the otherwise steady march of business progress.”

My first fax machine was the kind that used thermal paper on a big roll. Plain paper faxes were very expensive so most of us got the one with the large roll of thermal paper. Once we received a fax, we needed to cut the paper into pages. If it was something really important, then we would make a copy of it because over time the thermal paper would fade.

For many years, having a fax machine and a dedicated fax line was standard business practice. On one level, it revolutionized communication with clients. Things speeded up and so much information could be communicated quickly and efficiently.

Now there are new ways of doing things and new frontiers for communicating with people. However, after many decades, it is not the loss of a fax line and a machine that concerns me. Instead, it is the worry that people who are communicating in new ways may loose perspective about two important things. 

First, they may forget that the goal of communication is to build and maintain a relationship, not just push data and information faster and faster to people. And, second, upon receiving the desired information that all involved reach a greater depth of understanding rather than simply a degree of awareness that the message has been received. 

As Margaret Wheatley wrote in her book, Who Do We Choose to Be? Facing Reality, Claiming Leadership, Restoring Sanity (Berrett-Koehler, 2017): “We may be in contact, but we’re not connecting.” The goal is connecting whether that is by phone, fax, e-mail or text message.

For now, I will focus on making better and better connections during the coming weeks, months and years. I will miss my old fax machine and I will donate it to a place to be recycled. But, when it comes to having a big picture perspective, I will continue to focus on creating new and better connections, because I know we all have important work to do as we slowly transition from a global pandemic to a time of recovery and reintegration. 

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

Thinking Strategically Is Still Important

As we enter the second year of this global pandemic, we have all learned an important lesson, namely that thinking strategically is still important. Our first and correct response to the arrival of COVID-19 was to make sure our day to day operations could continue being operational. We did a lot of work around this and had to modify many systems to adapt to the new ways of doing things.

Yet, by the middle of April, some of the best leaders I worked with realized that their organizations were drifting strategically. In their rush to solve operational problems, they had stopped trying to understand the long term implications of the global pandemic and how to create an effective and adjustable business model. In simple terms, they got the trains to run on-time during the pandemic, but had stoped asking the important questions related to whether or not anyone was waiting at the station or actually riding the trains.

As this depth of clarity surfaced, the best leaders I know paused and created time for some important work. They realized that they needed to slow down and think deeply. By creating adequate space for mental stillness, they were better able to see what was happening now and understand the impact of it all during the next 12 - 18 months. Once they had achieved perspective within the midst of their busy days, they choose new and better pathways to move forward individually and collectively. At the same time, they avoided what was very common last spring and during parts of last summer, namely analysis paralysis. 

This spring, we need to again create time for slowing down and thinking deeply. We now have a sense of what could happen during the next 6 - 9 months. Our goal is to be well prepared and well positioned for the future. Therefore, we should not rush to action given we are in the beginning of the end of a global pandemic. Instead, we should continue on a thoughtful and disciplined step by step process of delivering operational excellence in combination with strategic clarity and commitment.

This week, schedule some uninterrupted time for big picture reflection and thinking. It will make a world of difference during the busy days and months ahead.

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

Being Respectful Is Powerful

The other day while listening to a very complicated situation related to executing a plan, the person who had been sharing it all with me asked what they should do next. 

My response was straight forward and direct: “Being respectful is a powerful first step.”

There was a long pause on the phone before the person responded: “That’s all?”

“Yes”, I replied. “You could become angry. You could choose to be cynical. You could even become aggressive in your demands. None of these things will achieve a great outcome in the end.”

As I continued, “Being respectful starts by recognizing that all involved were doing their best with the limited knowledge they had. When you respect them as people and affirm their dignity, they will receive your feedback and be open to new perspectives and solutions. Kindness and respect are the building blocks of trust. And trust is the foundation of teamwork. If we are wanting people to work as one team, then we must start with being respectful in the way we treat others and communicate with others.”

After another thoughtful pause, the person I was visiting shared, “That makes sense. I guess I hadn’t looked at it from that angle.”

“That’s why we visit,” I responded. “My goal is to help you reach your full potential as a leader. And respect is a good beginning.”

This week, choose respect. It is the foundation for successful results.

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