Agility
Agility – the ability to move fast, change fast, respond to customer needs and expectations – fast has become the price of admission for most businesses. Every leader I talk with in every fast growing company is moving fast and needs the team to move fast. I don't believe the current international economic situation changes that and it may well make agility even more essential. Here are a few tips for the times.
Stop driving with the brakes on
Lack of trust is one of the most common anchors that slow businesses down. Trust is also one of those uncomfortable words that conjure up soft-squishy-feel-good with stupid consultant tricks and old lame exercises like falling backwards into a coworker, leader, and manager's arms. That exercise is not real business. Everyone participates rather than risk the non- team player label yet that same person who caught you at the resort in front of others may well toss you under the bus come Monday. Lack of trust slows us down. Information gets withheld. Valuable time is wasted playing the game of deception, checking up on people, validating information, adjusting to missed commitments. The wrong things get measured. The culture motivates self-preservation over business growth. Lack of trust defaults an organization to compliance over commitment. Want a high performance organization? Be a trustworthy leader. Persistently demonstrate behavior that builds trust and demand the same of your peers and those you lead. Want more detail? I'll send you a tool that will help if you e-mail a request for the Trust Model to .
Consort with radicals
There is much ado this election cycle about the potential bad mojo of consorting with radicals. Not a good idea if you want to be President of the USA. If, on the other hand, you happen to be in charge of a business or a unit within a business, I suggest you consort. There can be significant hidden value in the "don't give a damn for status-quo" attitude of a smart radical (Note: This is a different person than the self-appointed devil's advocate). For obvious reasons these folks are rare in companies. Yes, give me the creative, innovative thinking of a smart man or woman who challenges the status-quo as long as they don't challenge the sacred cows that are important to me. The small incremental improvements of ten percent here and fifteen percent there are important and they should be consistent from the team. Fast and transformational change and growth, however, probably requires ideas with exponential potential. The 100X idea is a transformational idea and it may not come from a homogenized leadership team. Remember, in the early 70's GM's CEO said, "Toyota can have the small car market, it will never be profitable anyway."
Use time well
In every fast growing company that I know, good and smart people are doing more with less. Resources are constrained. Hours are long. Responsibilities are big and entail what in earlier times may have been the role of two or three people. I get e-mails from leaders that are sent in the wee hours of the morning. I have phone discussions and meetings with leaders on the weekends. Most of the leaders I know are stretched real thin. In this reality we still seem to perpetuate the cultural dysfunctions of miserable meetings that don't accomplish anything. Busy people sit in team meetings that don't engage the team. The same discussions happen over and over without decision, action and accountability. Leaders talk and don't listen. Participants go off track and never return. An endless parade of PowerPoint pushes us to the point of distraction. A good tool seriously misused as it all too often is aggrandizes the work of the presenter over communicating essential knowledge crisply to the audience in a way that drives action. When I think of bad business meetings I am reminded of my joy as 10 year old boy watching a firecracker ignite inside the plastic model of a 1949 Ford Business Coupe or the sound of the occasional M-80 inside the neighbor's mailbox. If meetings in your business need a similar shake-up, some radical thinking may be in order. Do you need incremental 10% to 15% improvement or the 100x transformation? There's the simple stuff that any number of business books will tell you are essential to effective meetings. Simply following those guidelines would be an improvement for many businesses and in such cases will get you the 10% to 15% incremental improvements and maybe more. If you want transformational change and comparable value I suggest that the questions the radical thinker will pose and ponder are bigger, different and deeper questions than "How can we improve the effectiveness of meetings?"
The need to do things well and fast persists whether you have to take your business to the mattresses or not. The need to have people fully engaged to drive business results also persists. The business leaders I know have a dream. They have a team helping to make the dream a reality. There is a business strategy that is being executed. Leaders will define the risks and take actions to mitigate but overall will stay on course. So of the three key points herein, which one provides an opportunity for greatest value to your business? Which would your executive team choose? Which would your employees suggest?
"...We found that the most exciting environments, that treated people very well, are also tough as nails. There is no bureaucratic mumbo-jumbo... excellent companies provide two things simultaneously: tough environments and very supportive environments."
Tom Peters |
