Evolving Strategy, Systems and Skills

 

You’ve heard it all before. To get ahead and sustain momentum requires an “edge” – an advantage over the ordinary, over the competition. In my opinion, to really get ahead and stay there requires an additional evolutionary phase. A process whereby an initial edge is rounded out by at least a couple more critical core strengths.

If you are a Jim Collins (Good to Great) fan, you will be familiar with the concept of a well-balanced flywheel that, after an initial amount of force applied to it, will run on its own. What he doesn’t say is that no amount of initial force will create the conditions for ongoing momentum if it is a lop-sided wheel.

The same is true for business. The business “wheel” is a system held together by multiple spokes, with three of them being primary and absolutely critical. If these aren’t strong enough to stand the test of time, it will either begin to slow down and falter or will need additional force to keep it cycling at maximum speed.

 

The three business spokes are: strategy, systems and skills or, purpose, processes and people. Time and time again I see one or two of these critical components stressed to the point of a near-snap. And guess what? The weakest link is almost always the people component. Odd, since you and I today would both be hard pressed to find a CEO and/or leadership team that doesn’t believe that their most critical asset is their people. In many cases, “people” also represent the largest cost item on the operational expenses sheet. Unfortunately, the people expense is often bigger than it need be, but that’s another article.

 

I have a couple of clients that are in the manufacturing business. In both cases, they are good at what they do and have lean manufacturing down to a science. Their overall strategy is good, as are there systems where producing and managing widgets are concerned. What isn’t in alignment – yet – is their people strategy and systems. One of my jobs is to help them notice this misalignment, and to see that the majority of their issues and time consumers involve people not showing up and performing as expected. How about you - have you noticed
this in your world?

If you have, you need to have a conversation that involves working on the business rather than about working in the business. One that stretches strategy and envisions the mix of skills, knowledge and values needed to turn the CEO’s vision and organizational strategy into reality. One that is about “Now that our flywheel is running on its own, what do we need to do to keep it well oiled and resourced?” And, of course, alongside that, ever more keeping an eye on the technology that is evolving to either aid or replace the flywheel. It is in thism conversation that the real power lies to create and sustain an organization’s future.

There are two ways to build your overall strategy, systems and skills wheel. One is to start by clearly defining your strategy and then intentionally recruiting the key people and skills to deliver on the strategy – including creating the systems and processes to support these new people. This is the approach that most organizations take, albeit not with as much intention and knowledge as would produce better results.

The second approach is to spend less time defining vision and strategy and more time picking, developing and supporting teams. This approach assumes that if you recruit top performers and ensure that they have the resources and systems needed to create superior results, they will figure out how best to get from A to B (strategy). Jim Collins’ says that a leader’s most important role is to make sure that he or she has the right people, in the right seats on “the bus” and then to count on them to effectively drive the bus to where it needs to get. Either approach requires a thorough understanding of what each job requires in terms of skills, behaviours and values. So, if the job could talk, what would it be telling us was needed? The answers come in the form of a tool called “job benchmarking” – this will give you the top seven personal skills, top 3 behaviours and top 3 interests that best define the job and consequently, the person who should be in it. The more you, or your organization, follow this approach, the more likely you are to experience the following outcomes:

• Less turnover, better retention
• More productivity, revenue and profits, along with lower costs by reducing unnecessary conflict, turnover and time-consuming meetings
• Higher employee engagement scores
• Happier employees who are passionate about what they do and how they contribute
• More internal referrals (a critical recruiting strategy)
• Less difficulty recruiting top performers (because great people want to bewith great people)

No longer can decision-makers afford to squander the potential to achieve these outcomes. Yet they do so – everyday. Why? Because they either don’t know where to start or don’t know what more is possible. It all sounds and feels like too much work. They don’t have the time to research alternative systems and processes and in not doing so, they miss an opportunity to affect positive change.

Change that will generate the same sizable returns that result from perfecting ‘lean’ systems. If your organization could benefit by maximizing your ability to create the above outcomes, let an expert help you build the team, tools and processes that will get you there. If I can help you accomplish this, give me a call (780-701-8178) or pop me an email (cwright@wright-group.ca).