3 leadership principles to grow your company in difficult times

I was stunned while reading this article about the 3 leadership principles to grow your company in difficult times. Here are some of them:

As rising energy costs and inflation hit supply chains and bottom lines, the current geopolitical and economic challenges have hardly been easy to navigate. That’s because businesses do not have seasoned methods for dealing with such a fast-changing environment.

Once leaders understand that strategy and action are an integral part of a corporate culture, steering the ship towards a vision becomes much clearer, despite the turbulent environment.

The current global challenges should be used as an opportunity to:

·??????Grow?by learning from the best companies thriving in difficult times.

·??????Change?by identifying harmful paradigms and breaking them down with sero tolerance.

·??????Strategise?by making vision and strategy practical every day.

Applied leadership

Graphics company?Brand ID, for example, has been embarking on a journey to develop the will and clarity to succeed in difficult markets. The Finnish company tripled turnover between 2017 and 2022, even in the printing industry, which has been struggling with steadily declining revenues.

Getting a viable system started, however, involves multi-step process to realising an embedded environment that will help organisations thrive.

3 steps to an enabling corporate environment

1. Make strategy your daily business

“It is important to start in the leadership team by creating a common language of cooperation,” says Heljakka. Coordination in the leadership team requires critical thinking, i.e. a way of constantly challenging each other to commit to disruptive goals. This thinking makes it possible to identify what is preventing the business from growing and to let go of old paradigms that caused the original weaknesses.

The key is to combine such breakthrough objectives with daily management practices, supported by meeting routines and leadership standards.

2. Focus on impact and keep deviations visible every day

The next step on Brand ID’s journey was to simplify the strategy process and engage everyone in the organisation to implement it at their level.

The myth to overcome is that people are, in general, hesitant to change. Instead, leaders need to understand that it is part of being human to resist change; it is a protection mechanism. The problem is usually the way change is facilitated, in that it often impacts negatively on people and their work.

Using the X-Matrix helps organisations become better places to work. At Brand ID this is measured in an employee promoter score, leading to an enhanced work environment year on year.

3. Build a countermeasure culture

Culture was the final step for Brand ID to complete their business system.

This culture requires the CEO to switch into a coaching role: not doing the work but leading the teams to find impactful measures, strictly focusing on the process and allowing for “learning-by-doing.”

Once this new way of working has become a standard practice, it empowers a company to succeed and grow regardless of the severity of the storm. All it takes is to make strategy a business’s daily business, focus on creating positive impact, make deviations visible every day and build a countermeasure culture.

Want to know more? Head on over to the full article here for more ideas and perspective. Afterwards, why not drop me an email to share your thoughts at [email protected]; or call me on 0467 749 378.

Thanks,

Robert