Unleashing Energy and Mobilizing for Growth: The Essentials
Imagine this: You and your team have defined an exciting vision for the organization and a strategy to take you there. It’s bigger than anything you’ve done before and while you’re excited about creating this future, getting there and delivering will require changing mindsets and behaviors.
Easy to say, hard to do.
The larger the organization, the deeper the attachments to current ways of working. To succeed in delivering a new future, ways of working need to change. And people in organizations don’t tend to do that on their own.
Leaders often believe the biggest challenges involve shaping the future vision and strategy, and then defining a roadmap for success. However, the ability to materially change your organization to execute can be the toughest part of a growth journey.
There are four keys to unlocking organizational energy and mobilizing for growth:
No-kidding alignment at the top
A clear picture of the future that everyone in the organization sees themselves in
A roadmap that senior leaders own and drive together
Organizational competency in high performance practices that lead to the right conversations
We’ve crafted a solution that puts leaders and their teams in the drivers’ seats – keys in hand – to deliver the results the strategy promises. Here’s why this solution works:
Leaders lead the learning. Employees care about what their leaders think and the actions they take.
Learning new mindsets and behaviors requires learning while doing real work. Theory is nice, reality is nicer. So, when we help leaders learn new mindsets and behaviors, we do so by having them work on real world issues that are in the way of organizational success.
Real change in organizations seeking to achieve a big result requires cross-functional collaboration – something most organizations are not adept at. This process purposefully assembles the right cross-functional groups to address enterprise issues and solve them quickly and decisively.
Built in accountability. What leaders work on through this process will be reported on to the senior executive team. Accountability to deliver is built into the process, so there is a real opportunity to win or lose. This heightens buy in to developing the new skills, using the new tools, and making the desired changes.
Action learning focuses on real issues in the way of strategic success, as defined by the senior team. They’re backed by data on the organization’s current performance. It’s taken years to refine the process, but we’ve found the following to be some tried and true successful approaches to creating these meaningful experiences for senior teams.
Leading Change. Important for any senior leadership team is the knowledge that everyone in the organization understands the vision and strategy and is engaged in leading the change required to deliver. The senior team must allow time for review and discussion of the vision and mission, and each member of the team must understand their role in leading the required change, and how to craft a new path for achieving it.
Delivering Results. During a working-session the team co-creates a future-based roadmap to generate a clear path, and then continues to refine it with their key stakeholders outside the room. In doing so, it’s important to consider the behaviors that are necessary to activate action.
Leading for Performance. Honing the skills necessary to manage conflict is imperative to having difficult conversations in a productive way. We often center our working sessions based on surveys that provide insight into each person’s coaching and conflict resolution styles. Leaders learn how to enhance their own natural styles while adding additional options to their repertoire.
Action Leaning Lab. The final step is taking what’s been learned and applying it to a real project within the organization. This serves the purpose of practice, skill reinforcement and the experience of delivering real outcomes. Through the action lab, a peer coaching network is also established.
Recognizing the challenges ahead
Mobilizing for growth will require shifting mindsets and ways of working. It can be daunting, or it can be enlightening. How do you know if your organization is ready to take on this adaptive growth challenge? Consider these questions:
Do your employees clearly understand and have confidence in the company vision and strategy?
Are there trusting relationships between management and staff and laterally across organizational functions?
Do your teams work with speed and agility, based on effective governance, collaboration, and clarity of accountabilities?
How adept is your team to rapidly and continuously sensing and responding to the needs of its markets and customers ahead of its competitors?
Do your managers control and execute or generate and engage?
Setting a vision and strategy does not guarantee delivery of results. Purposeful engagement of the organization in changing mindsets and behaviors in order to become the organization necessary to deliver the strategy is what makes the difference.