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Leading An Organization That’s Focused On Results:
Finally, taking control of your destiny involves creating an organization that is capable of using your ideas to generate results. This requires savvy that must extend beyond the boss’s office to the members of the organization who are smart about the broad marketplace. It has to include an organization whose members are skilled at thinking together. The work force, as a whole, must see that a part of its role is to be thoughtful about their work. It’s not enough to show up and do your job. The workforce needs to have the information to think intelligently about the business environment, if they are to collaborate with you to fulfill the brand’s promise. You must ensure exceptional execution. Your job here will provide better results if you do the following:
Second, workers need to have a clear frame of reference against which to balance conflicting demands and changing priorities. A clear compelling purpose is a fundamental element in any High-Performance organization. Instead of making decisions from their own point of view, workers need a clear understanding of the business idea, expressed through the brand promise, which can serve as their guiding star. It is the company’s purpose that provides the template necessary for workers to turn data into information and information into knowledge. A third requirement for an empowered workforce is the expectation of ongoing conversations about the work. When processes become overly rigid, innovation dries up. When the way it has been becomes the way it must be, people have no need to talk about the work. In a continuously changing environment, workers must be expected to talk about their perceptions and their observations. Decisions need to be made and then aligned at every level within the framework of the business idea. You have to make sure that it happens. Simply expecting that it will occur doesn’t cut it. Finally, people need to operate within a culture of trust (see Ciancutti and Steding, 2000). This doesn’t mean holding hands and singing Kumbaya around a campfire. Yet, it has to be safe to think, to talk, and to act in good faith. (If it isn’t safe people will not do it, and that will be to your detriment.) It is in these ways that true thought partnerships are sustained throughout the enterprise. It is these thought partnerships that serve as the foundation for the ongoing collaboration critical to the organization's capability to repeatedly deliver that, which is promised. Action Steps: Here’s a summary of what you’ll find in this sub-section’s recommendations:
There is no single method for structuring people in organizations to act in a focused fashion. The answer lies in the definition of the organization’s day-to-day collaboration across boundaries to fulfill its promises. These collaborative patterns are unique to your enterprise, and referenced against your company’s strategic intent. This level of collaboration, or synchronized performance, cannot occur unless people at every level in the organization demonstrate individual leadership capability. For example, the line leaders hold routine conversations that maintain a focus on the way the work is delivered. This is not to say that the workforce is constantly sitting in meetings, wrangling about who does what or who’s to blame. That is not part of a formula for High-Performance. Rather, it is a mindset of collaboration and the option for informal conversations that are recommended. Everywhere where there are handoffs---of work products or the products of experienced thinking---from one person or group to another---there must be an openness and flexibility to discuss collaboration. Outside facilitation can be helpful in teaching line leaders how to be socially innovative and to lead others in acting to innovate. Many organizations are fostering informal communities of practice to encourage people with shared purpose or shared passion to communicate across boundaries and silos. They are using their Intranets to facilitate these conversations. Cohen and Prusak (2001), talk about the importance of creating and then using social capital--- a fancy term to describe the relationships and connections that enable people to think together---in an effort to create value. The central idea here is that thought partnerships are multidimensional. They don’t just operate downward---with the workforce being expected to “get” the boss’s idea. People don’t work that way. It must also include opportunities for workers to connect with other workers, for workers to connect with customers and even for worker ideas to actually excite and ignite thinking on executive row. Whatever the form that thought partnerships take or the infrastructure designed to nourish and support them, the fact of a thoughtful, focused and coordinated workforce all concentrating upon delivering your brand’s promise is a necessary ingredient for tending the value of your brand.
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