I came across the article below in the course of looking for materials for this week's post and felt like sharing it with you, if you are a CEO, employee, HR Manager or just plain enthusiast this is a must read for you. This article is credited to
ARUOSA OSEMWEGIE. Enjoy
Introduction
Where are we now? We are in a transition. We are
probably in the only time on earth when having a strategy and not having a
strategy is a good thing. Call it organised chaos! But if you are looking for
‘a method out of the madness’ it is still better to have the semblance of a
strategy than otherwise. But where are we coming from?
We were coming from the realization that
strategy, on its own, was not enough. Just before the economic crisis that
toppled a lot of local and international economic theories, the world had come
to realise that having a strategy wasn’t good enough all by itself, rather, the
ability to execute was the deal breaker.
In pursuit of excellence in strategy execution,
many organisations sought to develop SMARTER strategies, employed better
skilled people and also grew operational efficiencies. And where are we headed?
I feel the next frontier wouldn’t be the strategy-skill-operations confluence
but the strategy-skill-spirit confluence. For us to elicit magical results or
era-defining impact would require more than the consciousness of the mind that
creates strategies, works operations and imbues skills.
We would require the magic of the human spirit
to:
1) envision vistas unknown;
2) lock our hands tenaciously around uncertain
futures; and
3) gain the palpitation of heart that is only
felt by the brave who surprisingly conquer even though they had been ‘foolish’
enough to get into the ring with a foe that they knew nothing about.
Making
Sense of Strategy
Tony Manning, in his book – Making Sense of
Strategy - unties the knot around this issue so well that I have taken the
liberty to quote copiously from it. According to Tony, “Every company needs a
strategy. But in a world of constant surprises, competitive advantage often
depends less on the choices (strategy) you make, than on what you do about
them”
How you act can make the difference between
winning and losing – between life and death? Often, you have to move before all
the facts are in, or before you can think through things as thoroughly as you’d
like. Effective execution is most likely when your goals, action steps and
methods are clear. These come from strategy. But there’s another factor that’s increasingly
important in these hyper-competitive times – the human spirit.
Where
does the Spirit fit with Strategy?
If your company is to be a winner, your people
must be alert to possibilities. They must also be passionate about what they do
and enthusiastically invent their way into the future. It’s your job as leader
to focus them on the right “hill,” but it is then up to them to apply their
imagination and spirit to race up the value path and down the cost path. A lot
is expected of them.
They must not only be ready and able to change at
a moment’s notice, they must also apply great energy to making it happen. They
must overcome all sorts of obstacles, cope with disappointment and failure,
press on in the face of adversity and disappointment and find new ways to
deliver value and cut costs in the face of rising customer demands, relentless
pressure and shrinking deadlines. Work, in other words, is not all a breeze.
Much of it is a chore and a bore”.
The
Spirit as Receptacle for Ideas
In a “time of extraordinary complexity,
opportunity, and risk”, everything rises on our ability to bring forth and
execute game-changing ideas. But bringing forth ideas is an emotional and
spiritual thing. You cannot force employees (successfully) to birth these types
of ideas. At this point I am wondering how the idea of the ipod or the ipad
could have been forced out of any employee. Or the idea of the
Amazon’s
Kindle series – because I wonder how a former online book retailer turned
online general merchandise retailer was able to develop a best-selling
e-reader/tablet. Pastor Sam Adeyemi asserts that “ideas rule the world”.
There is no time when this statement is as true
as this time. Ideas are that specie of light that ignites upon our spirits
causing the sprouting of sometimes illogical thoughts or notions. Or how do you
explain the young man who got the idea to connect all our faces and called it
Facebook and now is the 35
th richest man in the world? Or the idea
of electricity or the telephone or of having roads under water or of having
trains that run at 217miles per hour (faster than a helicopter) and the list
goes on?
If ideas aren’t most times illogical, ABC-TV
wouldn’t have turned down the offer of
The Cosby Show, which then started on NBC and
went on to become the third-longest running U.S. comedy show with a
predominantly black cast. How about this one? The boss of American toy giant
Parker Bros wasn’t impressed when the inventor of
the game
Monopoly tried to sell him his new idea in the 30s. He
claimed the game had “52 fundamental playing errors” which made it unplayable.
Undeterred, Clarence Darrow, an unemployed Philadelphia heating engineer who
devised the game, went into production himself. As a result,
Parker Bros
was forced to spend a fortune buying back the idea (
ref. The internet)
The
need for Spirit – Strategy Connection
If ideas are the competitive frontiers for today
and the future, then our default approach would be to: 1) get more of it out of
our employees and also 2) engage their spirits in its implementation. Let’s go
back to Tony Manning again, “competitiveness demands both a clear strategy and
a winning spirit. You should naturally strive for a strategy that’s superior to
anything your competitors may dream up.
But even the best strategy in the world will have
a short shelf life if it’s not driven by extraordinary human spirit. If your
people aren’t passionate about your corporate quest, you’re unlikely to either
get ahead or stay there. You can’t force people to perform [exponentially and
consistently].
The best you can do is create a context in which
they will apply their minds and their effort as volunteers, rather than
conscripts;, in a context in which they want the same things as badly as you do
and will bust a gut to get them. This is partly a matter of organizational
culture (“the way things feel around here. It is even more a matter of climate
(“the way things feel around here – and the way I feel about being here). As
the following matrix from Tony Manning’s Making Sense of Strategy
shows, companies need to balance strategy and spirit. Too much or too little of
one or the other will hurt results.
Which kind of company is yours?
- NO-HOPERS
have no strategy, or it’s a lousy one, and their spirit is weak.
- NERDS
apply their minds to creating strategy that is precise and detailed. But
they don’t have the spirit to drive it, so it doesn’t deliver the results
they want.
- PARTYGOERS
are hugely spirited but lack strategy. They are busy, busy, busy, but
because they’re directionless, they flap around and go nowhere.
- PITBULLS
are clear about where they’re headed and ferocious about getting there.
They don’t mess around, call for more research or another meeting, or talk
endlessly in the hope that they’ll get consensus; they just fix on a
target and go for it;
Missing
the impact of Spirit on Strategy
It is possible to gloss over the impact of the
human spirit on strategy. After you have heard of the virtues of strategic
planning and you have gone ahead to create a strategy that’s precise and
detailed, it is possible to miss out on the game-changing involvement of the
human spirit. This is because there is a way that the strategy planning process
imbues us with the feeling of invulnerability – a ‘we- are- already- there’ kind
of feeling. We feel the next thing to do is to just share the work amongst
everybody and then begin to monitor the implementation. Only to add the
contribution of people (just like process) as just one of the prods for making
the strategy happen.
Whereas what we should do is to ask ourselves,
within the strategy-crafting process, how we can engage the spirits of all
stakeholders, chief being our customers and employees. But for this treatise,
my focus is on the employee. Have you ever wondered why one of the companies
touted with one of the most robust strategy definition and execution
capabilities in man’s recent history is also the one that has been dubbed, for
the highest number of times, the Most Admired Company in the World?
I speak of none other than General Electric. Or
beat this! The only other company that has held that title in more recent times
and has held it for the most consecutive straight five years is also the one
that has dazzled us in this century with a continuous flow of
innovative industry, business and category redefining products and services
– no other than Apple Inc. It would seem that these organisations understand
that to achieve sustainable game-changing growth would require organisations to
lock the spirits of their employees unto strategy. Just engaging their minds
wouldn’t do.
All we would get from that is people who just do
(at best) only what is required of them. In essence, the engagement of the
hearts of your employees and thus their performance levels can make or break any
organization’s strategy or business model – even if it isn’t immediately
noticeable.
Locking
Spirit unto Strategy
Clearly, our task is to integrate strategy and
employee spirit into the development and implementation of corporate strategy.
Anything less would cut short our ability to deliver on the opportunities that
lie around us today. Tony Manning says “it’s tempting to see strategy and
spirit as two separate issues. The one, after all, is about analysis and
choices, the other about attitude. The first is a task (and as such can be
delegated), while the second is a mindset that belongs to individuals and can
be neither delegated nor commanded. But wait a minute; what if strategy were a
widely shared responsibility? What if it were “everybody’s business,” and of
concern to more than a select few? What if more of your people understood your
motivations and intentions?
Strategy and spirit are two sides of the same
coin – yin and yang. When people are involved in making strategy – when it’s
“theirs” – they have a vested interest in its execution. If things change, they
understand the background to the strategy and the nitty-gritty details, so they
are able and likely to quickly adapt. What’s more, the very fact that they were
included in such a vital exercise is sure to motivate them. So strategy lights
up their spirit! The matrix shown illustrates why so many companies invest so
much time, energy, and money in their strategies and get such dismal results.
It also suggests that it’s time for a new perspective on creating and holding
competitive advantage”.
How
then do we lock our employees’ spirits unto corporate strategy?
1. PROVIDE INSPIRATIONAL LEADERSHIP FROM
THE CEO DOWN
And please this goes beyond being charismatic.
This starts with a mindset that recognises that a connection must be made with
people. I think it was John C. Maxwell who said that “leaders touch a heart
before they ask for a hand” – what he refers to as The Law of Connection in his
book The 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership. Tony Manning puts it this
way: “The purpose of a leader is to create a context in which people will
perform to their potential. This ‘mental space’ is where they discover and test
themselves and where they reveal (or conceal) their magic.”
The Law of Connection continues: You can’t move
people to action [sustainably] unless you first move them with emotion. You
develop credibility with people when you connect with them and show that you genuinely
care and want to help them. And as a result, they usually respond in kind and
want to help you. Other things you can do are to:
- Communicate with openness and sincerity – people can smell a
phony a mile away. Authentic leaders connect.
- Know your audience – when you work with individuals, knowing
your audience means learning people’s names, finding out their histories,
asking about their dreams.
- Live your message and no double standards – practice what you
preach. That’s where credibility comes from. Use the same standards with
everyone – even if you have favorites, don’t show it. Be consistent.
- Go to where they are – remove as many barriers to communication
as possible. Try to be attuned to their culture, background, education,
and so on. Adapt to others; don’t expect them to adapt to you.
- Focus on them, not yourself – focus on others, not yourself.
That is the number one problem of inexperienced speakers and ineffective
leaders.
- Believe in them – it’s one thing to communicate to people
because you believe you have something of value to say. It’s another to
communicate with people because you believe they have value. People’s
opinions of us have less to do with what they see in us than with what we
can help them see in themselves.
- Give them hope – French general, Napoleon Bonaparte said,
“Leaders are dealers in hope.” When you give people hope, you give them a
future.
2. MIX INSPIRING VALUES WITHIN
ORGANISATION CULTURE
A period where people spend most of their time at
work and our personalities are influenced so much by our workplaces, are also
the time when people are in search of more meaning and purpose in their lives.,
It behoves on organisational leaders to create a culture that is built on
inspiring values. So what are the shared and upheld values in your
organisation? Do these values bear on a respect for people? Is it about making
a difference? Is it about leaving a legacy? Is it about preserving the earth?
Or is it just about making more money?
3. SELL A “WE” AS AGAINST A “THEM”
CULTURE
However you do it, whether by shaking a magic
wand or whatever, organisational leadership must give a sense that “we” are all
in this together. Even though organisations have their strata by way of work
relationships, it is imperative that we disallow the sense of the existence of
a dichotomy to fester. Sure, there are many ways to do this, and a few are:
involve employees early in the strategy articulation process; trust them to do
the job; give people more control over their own portion of the work; have largely
understood and fair rewards; present a listening posture, etc. A listening
posture not only listens but also gives the impression that he/she wants to
listen. That posture says, “You and whatever you have to say matters”.
4. COMMUNICATE, COMMUNICATE,
COMMUNICATE
The first task of a leader is to provide a clear
point of view – “There’s the hill we’re aiming at… these are the results we
want … this is how we should conduct ourselves … here are our priorities … this
is what we’ll do to get where we want to go. This is the context in which
people work. The ongoing task is to focus and inspire them. We all know that
“what gets measured gets managed.” But we conveniently forget that it’s only
what is spoken about – constantly, passionately, consistently – that will be
either measured or managed. Talk about the right issues in the right way to the
right people, and extraordinary things happen; but get the conversation wrong,
and you’re sunk.
5. WE ARE CHANGING THE WORLD
We must show people that they are building
castles and not sand dunes. That they are not just building a computer program
called Windows but that they are helping to change the way the world does
business. We need to show how mobile banking isn’t just another bank product
but a way to give people freedom to do and be whatever they want to be. We need
to sell a larger than life vision. We need to show them how their work is
making Africa a more productive continent. We need to make a connection between
their work and the salvation of the earth. Just remember that managers can’t
engage people by making announcements. You cannot enforce passion. Neither can
you legislate commitment. The key is to create a context in which individuals
will volunteer their imagination and spirit.
KUYE OLUSEGUN JAMES
TALENT MANAGERS
