LEADERS NEED TO REFRAME THEIR APPROACH
What is the future you seek? Who do you want to be when you get there?
Despite challenging economic times, business leaders have said that risk taking and the ability to infuse non-traditional approaches into their organizations has been the key to their success.
We believe that all leaders must strive to align their people to the organization's strategy, and do so as efficiently and rapidly as possible. Leaders who attempt to manage change by simply applying 'common sense' principles typically misdirect energy, miss the mark and experience frustrating, unintended consequences.
But leaders who create a community of people within their organization are able to inspire tipping points of communication, and transformation takes less time, less money and less effort. If you leverage the power of community, the change you seek is accelerated and realized with greater impact. This means that leaders need to trust in the power of their people to move the organization forward.
3 Critical Questions leaders should ask:
1. How do I build this community within my organization?
2. How do I leverage this community to build lasting impact at the employee and organizational level?
3. How do I create experiences that matter?
STRATEGIC LEADERSHIP
Immersion - Immerse your teams in new information so they stay fresh and up to speed with new trends, technologies and innovations. Whether designing for an ‘on-site’ or ‘off-site’ experience, an immersive approach is effective because people remember what they experience.
Alignment - Maintain alignment on the strategy and execution plans to achieve your business objectives. People need to be reminded and reassured in a sustainable manner. Our approach is based on the ‘right message,’ to the ‘right people’ at the “right time.”
Planning - Strategic planning to identify new areas of investment, brainstorm potential opportunities in the marketplace and get ahead of the trends. Planning cycles that are treated with a design approach become more than just planning--but opportunities for creative thinking that can lead to the unexpected.
OPERATIONAL LEADERSHIP
Budgeting - Annual budgeting processes when treated with a design approach can become opportunities to create insights and new ways of thinking about spend.
Investments - Jump start investment opportunities by identifying when, where and how to invest appropriately. Like strategic planning, there is room for creative thinking within this process where critical decisions can surface.
Townhalls and Roadshows - Re-designing your ‘on-site’ meetings and ‘off-site’ experiences to maximize the time investment of your people. Why settle for traditional meeting approaches when you can re-design them from the ground up? Using a design process can effectively eradicate the ‘wasted time’ syndrome that plagues most business meetings.
ORGANIZATIONAL LEADERSHIP
Build a new organizational identity. It’s not enough to do things different once. You must create a sustainable, ongoing approach to the enterprise that signals a shift in paradigm. This includes how strategic, operational and organizational tiers function across the company from a leadership perspective.
Platforms - Create a platform to drive accountability and ownership of outcomes through co-creation. Create an identity or campaign of messaging for your platform to effectively get the word out in a way that has impact. Think of this offering as you would think of a political candidate ‘hitting the campaign trail’ to get their message out on a specific topics at the appropriate times.
Continuously communicate to the organization - annual plans, quarterly/monthly progress and on-demand communication is always going to be necessary and will always require a budget to execute. Why not spend those dollars well? Build a template of innovative communication components that can be used over time and distributed in faster more mobile friendly ways. Set up a mechanism to receive feedback so you know how people feel about the communication they are receiving.
"Leading from the Front" - Industry Thought Leadership
