Hope.
The hardship of recent disruptions - notably COVID - to the status quo has created a collective burn-out and fatigue within organisations. As leaders wrestle with the reality that the New Norm world is volatile, unpredictable, complex and ambiguous, new work is needed to be more creative and inspirational on how teams are given hope that ‘the future will be better’. Leaders must manage their posture and purpose, to ignite in team members hope, necessary to sustain well being and motivation, meaningful work and energy.
Anti-fragile Transformation.
When applied by organizations, an antifragile transformation system enhances both the definition and scope of what it means to execute transformation, beyond short-term solutions for critical corporate problems, towards building organic future-proofing capabilities that make organizations less fragile to ever-increasing levels of known and unknown risk, and entropic degradation of value. The antifragile transformation methodology facilitates an evolution towards addressing problems not yet understood, through a culture of empowerment, experimentation and entrepreneurism, and constructs a new language and mindset, that produces more doers than critics, and more action than ideas.
Successful Transformation focuses less on implementing hard technical solutions and more on executing behavioral and organizational change – i.e. the tacit ways we do business.
In essence, antifragile transformation creates the potential to disrupt and surprise.
The Higher Why podcast#1 with Major-General Patrick Marriott: 11 tips for executive leaders in Covid-19 Crisis and New Norm.
Top Tips:
1. Step back from current battle and focus further out
2. Delegate current operational battle to a small team of trusted colleagues
3. Establish a new future planning team
4. Identify and plan future end-states and adapt to new scenarios
5. Do not micro-manage – move on from current metrics (KPIs) and recognise new context
6. Be straight with people, even admit mistakes or hardships, or you will become stuck and erode trust in you
7. Be careful not to undermine workforce confidence or morale, protect them
8. Create a set operational rhythm for when you will communicate with people, it creates order out of chaos
9. Use digital communications to broaden participation in your planning and operations meetings
10. Take this opportunity to redesign cost base and build resilience into the business – e.g. change carbon footprint – without forgetting the value of real-world interaction
11. Actively capture lessons-learned at every level, at every stage; don’t just do it at the end
The Higher Why podcast#2 with Professor Dennis Tourish on leadership in Covid-19 crisis, leading positive change + meaningfulness of work.
Pod wisdom:
1. Ongoing assumed “progress” is a fallacy, we knew crisis was coming
2. Leaders tend to think they always need to know answers - this is wrong
3. Speak truth to power – direct feedback is vital, yet hard for leaders to receive
4. Expertise is vital - belief & wishful thinking are not enough – use experts to inform right decisions
5. Crisis presents opportunity to change the world for good
6. Leaders must not treat the New Norm as ‘business as usual’, that old business models remain intact
7. Leaders must show empathy for people & generate wide ranging debate & options – appear not as “desiccated calculating machines” or risk losing authority in eyes of people & partners
8. don’t sugar-coat challenges - honesty & clarity mobilises peoples’ energies to solve crisis together
9. Rushing anti-people management practices will damage leaders & reputation of organisations
10. Leaders should reprioritize their lives - what is core purpose & “meaningful work”.
The Higher Why podcast#3 with Professor Keith Grint on how leaders solve problems they face – Wicked, Tame and Critical - and how to think differently about them.
Top Insights:
1- If you're 100% sure of the problem/solution, command the implemented solution. Don’t waste time
2- If the solution to a problem is ‘out there’ – someone knows – organize to draw in their advice/effort to solve the problem
3- If you don't understand problem/solution, an empowering moment is when the leader says “I don’t know how to solve this” - only then can the problem be solved
4- “Positive deviance” – look for person(s) who are making better progress towards solving wicked problem, and learn/experiment ‘along their lines’ - focus on decentralized small-scale pilots
5- Be prepared to accept, learn and promote failure! Be prepared to experiment in “DIY” (Do-It-Yourself) mode
6- Trust is key to solving complex problems
7- New language is key - initiate a new vocabulary; talk about problems in different ways
8- Destructive consent is worse than constructive dissent: the former produces static ignorance, the latter is potential source of creativity and innovation. Destructive consent ends up in Prozac Leadership