“If you’re not interested in getting better, it’s time for you to stop leading.”

- Patrick Lencioni

Taking responsibility for your businesses, its performance and the team that delivers it, is at the heart of your role as an owner, partner or senior executive. While we are all assailed by a constant stream of messages that we must change to survive, transform digitally, operate in the cloud, be more agile, adaptive, experimental, people centric… we must do this alongside running the business, day to day. In this environment it’s not surprising that strategy can sometimes take a back seat.

Our external operating environments - markets, customers, competition, legislation etc - are changing rapidly under these influences. Our ability to evolve our strategy to meet these external pressures is often constrained by our internal operating environment – both in the way we are organised and the capability and capacity of our people to engage with, understand and address the issues themselves.

It shouldn’t surprise us that research by the McKinsey Global Institute (2018) shows organisations will require a 55% rise in Technological Skills by 2030. What may come as a surprise is that the next highest requirement (a 24% rise) will be in Social and Emotional skills, particularly in leadership and management, as well as interpersonal and entrepreneurial skills. McKinsey found that almost 1 in 3 firms are concerned that lack of skills will hurt their financial performance and many firms are also concerned that they lack sufficient knowledge in their executive teams to lead the transformations needed. How do you measure up in this respect? Does your current strategy account for these future challenges?

Some organisations are showing what’s possible. They have taken bold steps to secure their future in this volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous world we all live and do business in now. The evidence is there in the business news feeds:

‘No unnecessary meetings. Zero office politics. Is this professional-services nirvana?’ was published on Clic.co.uk in March 2019. “Keystone Law is the happiest law firm in the world”. said James Knight, Founder & CEO. “This is happiness by design. It’s a complete restructure of the traditional professional services firm. Everyone has the same job title. Everyone is on the same deal. There are no office politics. We don’t own our people. Everyone could leave tomorrow if they wanted to. But they don’t… and we’re growing faster now than ever before.”

From Love Business East Midlands January 2019, we learned that the accountants Cooper Parry were named best company to work for in Europe. CEO Ade Cheatham, said: “We’re tearing up the rulebook when it comes to culture. …our unique culture and philosophy on engaging our teams keep getting us recognised. And importantly, our growth, client advocacy scores and regular testimonials show it’s working for clients.”

Can you re-imagine your internal operating environment and organisational mindset to secure your future? Key characteristics of the new models of operation show them to be more evolutionary, involving smaller step changes in response to challenges, owned and driven by the wider workforce. To stay competitive a much greater emphasis on collaboration and teamwork will be needed. Greater input from specialists both internal and external will be the norm at all levels of the organisation. Leaders will move away from direction and delegation, to facilitating and supporting their teams to perform. Does your strategy already reflect these ideas? How do you imagine your organisation will look in the future?

“Not finance. Not strategy. Not technology. It is teamwork that remains the ultimate competitive advantage, both because it is so powerful and so rare”.

- Patrick Lencioni

If radical re-imagining isn’t on the cards yet, then consider this. Your people are effective when they know what to do AND they act on it. Knowledge alone isn’t enough. The evidence from 50 years of research at the London Business School is that many people do not take personal ownership even when they know what to do. This is called the Knowing-Doing Gap and has 3 key contributors:

1. People don’t invest in change when it doesn’t mean anything to them personally

2. What often looks like resistance to change is actually a lack of clarity

3. An unsupportive organisational environment will defeat any change initiative.

If you are interested in getting better, a good place to start would be on ‘bridging the Gap’ alongside developing teamwork and collaboration. This will contribute to achieving results now and laying the foundations for adopting more significant strategic change in the future.

This article was first published in the September 2019 edition of the East Midlands Chamber Business Network Magazine.

by Steve Hobbs of ABQ Ltd and Dr John Collins of the Professional Coaching Alliance