The intersection of volatility in the global marketplace, the blurring of technologies, and an unprecedented rate of change is a perfect storm that threatens to impact large and mid-size companies, as well as fast-growing small businesses. This creates the demand for something different from senior executives:
The ability to rapidly align leadership teams to respond to emergent challenges or game-changer opportunities with sound strategy and flawless execution.
Without the ability to rapidly align teams, challenges suck bandwidth and derail progress. Game-changer opportunities slip by, seen only in hindsight. This article focuses on the starting point: rapidly aligning teams in ways that increase trust.
An Unprecedented Volatility and Rate of Change
The Eurasia Group report on geopolitical risk states that the complexity and volatility of today’s environment is “at least as important to global markets as the economic recession of 2008.” Humankind is experiencing what the World Economic Forum calls the Fourth Industrial Revolution: an astounding rate of change with the fusion and blurring of lines between the physical, digital, and biological. Think of a world connected, autonomous cars, nanotechnology, and quantum computing.
All this is in addition to planned change.
According to Mercer 2017 Global Talent Trends Study, a whopping 90% of C-suite executives plan to redesign their organizations this year. Meanwhile, companies continue to face changing regulations, talent wars, and generational divides. It’s an order of magnitude in complexity that is changing how companies and leaders shape their futures.
Five Hacks for Overcoming Mistakes When You Need to Rapidly Align Teams
Faced with the challenges of unprecedented volatility and rapid change, senior leaders must be aware of and overcome the mistakes most commonly made when trying to rapidly align teams, strategy and execution. Here are five common mistakes and power hacks to avoid them:
1. Oh Snap! Mind the Gap
When a challenge or opportunity arises and you pull your team together initially, you think the problem to solve for, or the vision, is crystal clear. It is— to you.
Imagine you’re the lead climber on a mountain climbing expedition. Your view from the top is quite different from the rest of your team, those who are mid-climb or at the base of the mountain.
When our team conducts stakeholder interviews and we ask about the corporate vision or purpose, the variations we hear from different stakeholders can be surprising and not in a way that supports business impact or results.
Solution: Define the problem or the vision. Create a shared understanding with your team.
You or your team should create a draft statement of the problem to solve or the vision. Then, working as a group, come to a shared understanding. Keep it simple and clear.
Be sure to state who the vision is in service of. This taps into the extraordinary power source of meaning and contribution - your “why.” Helping your team connect with the “why” is a vital part of finding meaning today’s workplace.
Millennials have led the way, insisting on work that has meaning—what’s been described as “purpose over paycheck.” They are not alone; this is a global shift. Nicholas Kristof, two-time Pulitzer Prize winning journalist, reports on the brutality in the world—genocide and human rights violations, in a profoundly hopeful The New York Times article, he notes:
We have made “stunning progress in human decency…” and “our remarkable capacity for compassion and moral growth.”
Here’s an example from one of our clients of a clearly defined vision that states who the vision is in service of and provides the “why.” We love it for its clarity, simplicity and the impact it had aligning an entire organization:
A community of healthy, safe, and economically secure children and families.
2. Silos of Silence
You may have thought or said in frustration, “Just communicate, people!” when people aren’t communicating regularly (or at all) across departments, divisions, teams, groups, or with you. It’s as if communication is compartmentalized within a storage silo accessible only to those within it.
There are easily identifiable reasons why they aren’t.
Sometimes it’s busyness—“crazy busy” as one of our clients, an IT executive in the defense industry, calls it. Sometimes it’s related to the gap between you, in your leadership role, and your team, or with managers and frontline employees. Other times your organizational processes or practices haven’t created a way for them to effectively communicate.
Solution: Make space for everyone to speak.
It may seem like low hanging fruit, but the simplest solution is a “go around”—take time to hear from each person or group in your initial alignment sessions and when you reconvene to follow through. Listen to what the person or group accountable for a task has accomplished, revisit the vision, and identify any barriers to overcome or resources needed. Finally, identify the next task to be accomplished before the next meeting.
Create organizational practices that allow for more effective communication. We are fans of including other stakeholders—middle management, front-line employees, representatives from other business units to break down silos—both vertical and the horizontal bands, and gain valuable, new perspectives.
3. No Ruby Slippers aka No “ONE Thing”
Executives, teams and employees are besieged by distractions. There are environmental distractions—phone calls, emails, meeting-happy cultures. There are behavioral distractions—inability to delegate, poor time management, etc., and strategic distractions—too many strategic objectives. You can eliminate the problem of too many strategic objectives with this next power hack.
Solution: Pick ONE thing. One thing only.
Remember Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz? She had one wish: to get back to Kansas. You may not have ruby slippers, but this possibility-focused question from Keller Williams CEO Gary Keller comes pretty close:
“What's the ONE Thing you can do such that by doing it everything else will be easier or unnecessary?”
This question keeps people continually scanning for “how we can” versus “how we can’t.” Once you get to the ONE Thing, establish one to three objectives for addressing your challenge or game-changer initiative. Winnowing it to three can be brutally hard work, but research shows having more than three objectives dramatically reduces the chance you will accomplish any of them.
4. Kitchen Sink Sessions
When you and your team have follow-through sessions, you try to cover too much territory that is unrelated to the challenge or opportunity in front of you—you try to tackle everything but the kitchen sink.
Solution: Schedule follow-up sessions with a specific focus on the strategic.
After your initial alignment sessions, have regular follow-through/re-alignment sessions focused solely on strategy, execution and accountability. The world changes, priorities change, and teams evolve as they learn and work together. By focusing on what’s most important regularly, and generating incremental actions to accomplish the objectives, we minimize distractions and maximize impact and results.
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Executive Retreats or Off-Sites Provide Maximum ROI If you’ve ever felt like your executive retreat or off-site promised more than it delivered at the off-site or post-retreat, one of these five mistakes is likely at play.
Before anyone ever books a plane flight or blocks time on their calendar, we are rigorous about helping clients set the stage for alignment, post-retreat accountability and follow-through. It pays off. The CEO of an award winning, fast-growing small business, told us the biggest benefit from a retreat we facilitated was “no longer being in the day-to-day or pulled into the tactical. I’m only focused on the strategic.”
Not having off-sites or retreats? You may be making a costly mistake. Harriet Lamb, then-CEO of Fairtrade International now CEO International Alert, the largest European peace-making organization, has facilitated discussions with the most radical non-profits, global brands and everyone up and down a massive value chain. When working across cultures, Lamb says bringing people together in-person is essential. It builds trust. We’d add that’s true whether crossing country cultures, the “culture” of regional offices and headquarters, or functions.
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5. Low Trust
“…success in business requires two things: a winning competitive strategy, and superb organizational execution. Distrust is the enemy of both. … while high trust won't necessarily rescue a poor strategy, low trust will almost always derail a good one.” ― Stephen M.R. Covey, Author “The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People”
Leaders can make the mistake of assuming trust is present and, if there is internal conflict or if the culture isn’t one where trust thrives, they can be slow to address it. That’s understandable; Lou Gerstner, the CEO who turned IBM around in the 90s, likened changing culture to teaching an elephant to dance.
Solution: Develop team operating guidelines.
When convening to address an emergent challenge or opportunity, have your team or group develop a shortlist of “operating guidelines.” These are guidelines the group agrees on for how everyone (you included) wants to work together.
“We are candid with each other, communicating openly and honestly” and “we have a culture of accountability” are two good examples. But, you’ve got to take it one step further and come to a shared understanding of the day-to-day behaviors that demonstrate “good communication,” “accountability” and other guidelines you decide on. What good communication looks like to you and to me may vary—sometimes widely.
We find that teams already have implicit guidelines that contribute to outstanding performance. It’s a hidden asset that goes untapped and has the potential to transform your team and company.
The World is Calling
We live and work in a rapidly evolving, complex world that demands executives be able to rapidly align teams to respond to emergent challenges and game-changer opportunities. These five power hacks help executives avoid mistakes while aligning teams, strategy and execution. All aid in increasing trust—essential for mission-driven leaders and company cultures that value people and performance while making a contribution to the world. The world is calling— we want your teams to be able to respond at their best.