The Leadership Framework

I always counsel leaders to be thorough, thoughtful and systematic. This is harder than it seems. Events rush at us, and we tell ourselves we must do something and do it right away. People rush at us - demanding responses, answers, decisions, solutions - and we feel pressed to meet their expectations. Let’s face it: it’s pretty normal to feel harried, frantic, overwhelmed, perhaps even slightly panicked. Maybe you’re one of those people who secretly kind of likes this state of being. Being “slammed” all the time means you’re indispensable, right? Wrong. That’s when we are reactive, not proactive; it’s when we look for quick fixes, not lasting solutions; it’s when we settle for a piecemeal approach when only a holistic plan will achieve progress. It’s when we forget to consider something that comes back to bite us later on. 

Many years ago I realized I needed to build myself a tool to keep on track. I was in that frantic, frenzied, mode way too often. I wasn’t doing my best work or leading as effectively as I knew I needed to. I too often felt overwhelmed by the magnitude of the task in front of me. I failed to pay attention to key aspects of a problem and my results suffered. I needed a framework that would help me think through all the aspects of a situation, design a thorough approach to address the situation, and provide a systematic tool for implementation and assessment. I call this tool the Leadership Framework and I have used it for decades.

Last week I wrote about the importance of developing a clear-eyed, realistic understanding of our Current State so we can effectively apply our energies to achieving our aspirational Future State. As we begin to enter the new, post-Covid “normal,” I’m observing teams and leaders skip this vital step and simply assume that everyone has the same ideas of where they’ve been and where they want to go. I’m writing about the Leadership Framework today for much the same reason. In our collective excitement to “get on with it,” some leaders are starting to become rushed reactors rather than deliberate actors.

The Framework begins with our desired Future State. What are our goals? What are we trying to achieve? Because a leaders’ purpose is to change the order of things for the better and drive positive, productive change, a leader’s job always starts here. This sounds so obvious, but aspiring leaders frequently start somewhere else. A competitor’s move perhaps? A request from the boss or the Board? The crisis du jour? While each of these events must be addressed, they cannot consume a leader. A leader’s attention stays fixed on where they want to go and their goals for the future.

Focused on these goals, a leader next turns their attention to who needs to do what in order to execute. Are their existing structures and processes that should be modified? New reporting relationships or cross-organizational processes that must be put in place? A new task force or team? A requirement for new training? A new hire? A collaboration with a partner or outside party? Rarely are new goals achieved by simply relying on the way things have always been done. At the same time, reorganizations alone are never the answer - especially if they are disconnected from goal achievement.

Leaders understand that change always faces resistance and that people naturally fall back on old habits and the status quo. For this reason, leaders are careful to define - at the outset - the desired results we want to achieve and determine how these results should be measured. Results and metrics are essential to keep attention focused on the right priorities and to keep a team motivated and moving forward in the event of setback. While this may sound simple, in my experience most organizations make two mistakes. Many tend to measure far too many things, resulting in confusion over priorities, diffused attention and ultimately under-performance. Others don’t define desired metrics and results at all. In this case, no one knows if sufficient progress is being made, or people delude themselves into thinking they are achieving success when they’re just treading water. 

The final side of the framework is about what people value and how they behave. Values and behaviors make up the culture of a team and culture is the software of a system. If the software isn’t tuned up to suit the purpose of that system (our goals), or aligned with the hardware of that system (our processes, structures, results and metrics), the system does not accomplish the task at hand. New circumstances and higher goals usually require an emphasis on different or new behavior. More communication? More collaboration? More time for creative thinking? More discussion of problems and less crowing about successes? A simple analogy is we all learned how to Zoom because we had to keep going and we couldn’t be together. The analogy applies in virtually every case. Different circumstances and better results require different behavior. Determine what that different behavior is. Train for it if necessary and then role-model it, encourage it, reward it, require it.

The Leadership Framework focuses a leader’s attention on where they should be spending their own time and energy. It sets the necessary parameters within which the organization operates and achieves desired results. It is an antidote for frenzied activity and a prescription for productive change and higher performance.