The need for structural agility: an oxymoron or not
Christina Charenkova
Organizational Change Advisor / Strategic Change Leadership Coach & Mentor / LinkedIn Learning Instructor to 300,000+ professionals / Ex-Accenture, EY
There’s an on-going debate in my head - and it goes like this: does my need for structure, framework or process sometimes sacrifice the adaptive, creative or dynamic side of things?
And as the conversation in my head continues - my immediate reaction is to say: well it depends. A typical consultant response you may say. But it really does.?
?It is an ongoing consideration. How to balance the conflicting demands of our tactical daily activities with a creative flow and far-reaching vision.
To execute tactical activities, I need practical process steps. I need to map out my?tasks, neatly schedule my calendar. At the same time I recognise that what I do doesn’t just impact me. It impacts my team, my collaborators, my family, my tasks outside of work etc etc. So I need to be driven, deliberate, and to an extent competitive, yet adaptive, collaborative and explorative.?
I use a method to help me achieve this. I talk about it in my latest LinkedIn Learning course: Business Analysis Foundations: Planning. I call it SESI. It stands for:
– Seek inputs
– Expect changes
– Schedule review cycles
– Integrate the improvements
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And although in the abovementioned course I speak about it with respect to Business Analysis activities, I actually use it for my personal use too - wink wink. What good is a method that can only be applied to one scenario, right? When I design a method - I want a far-reaching widely applicable set of rules that can be used in any scenario. Let’s see how that works:
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??Seek inputs: at this point I already have my schedule, or plan or train of thought that I need to discuss. So I simply present that to my collaborators - be it my team, my husband or my kids: and yes, they are stakeholders too if not the most important ones!
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??Expect changes: Uhm a word of caution - there are always changes!! So gear up. My husband likes to challenge my thinking. It’s not a threat or a dismissal. It’s in a “have you thought it through” kinda way. Devil’s advocate if you like. And so do my kids by the way. My team or collaborators less so. But I like challenges! So here’s my advice - just set the expectations that you want them to challenge you. You need improvements. Ah, a key here is that your collaborators, be it husband, kids or your team or your boss, simply cannot say: that won’t work. That’s no use. You want input. Something that builds on your idea, approach or method. Collaborate to jointly come up with a path forward.?
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I can just hear you say - is she for real? I’m afraid so. Otherwise things stagnate. You want the most relevant, dynamic and value driven approach? You have to work for it my friend!
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??Schedule reviews: I’d say this is self explanatory but for the sake of repeating myself, so do it regularly. Daily, Weekly, fortnightly - whatever makes most sense in your scenario. For example my husband and I review our calendars every evening together so that we can plan for the day ahead. And sometimes we do it twice or thrice a day when new events pop up!
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??Integrate the findings: Yes you’ve laid the groundwork thinking in the first place. Now it’s time to integrate it. All of it. There’s no point to this whole process if we don’t adapt the initial thinking. Continuously too. Enable the flow and make it dynamic!?
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Most of the time we think we can figure things out in our own heads, or from our own desks, with not much input.
But trust me on this! Because only when you open up your thinking and plan to input from others, you can ensure it’s structured well, robust and value driven yet adaptive and dynamic with a long focused vision.?
??Thank you for your time and effort to read this!?
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????To further grow your own #changeleadership and #businessanalysis skills, check out all my courses on LinkedIn Learning.
Thanks for sharing so much content with examples. Some super tips here.
I help leaders and organizations ?? to feel their best ?? and perform @ their peak ??| HRDF Accredited Trainer | Industry Advisory Board Nottingham University
2 年Thanks for sharing Christina! I like taking the analogy of the yin and the yang for this [as you can see from my branding-;)). They seem to be opposite but both need to co-exist and interconnect.? It is not one or the other. It is also a reflection of our whole brain (left and right sides of the brain with different types of higher cognitive functions) and our autonomic nervous system separated into 2 parts (parasympathetic and sympathetic)? Would love to have a discussion with you on that topic to exchange ideas!