A Recipe for Transformation

What a wild fall it has been. Between the weather, geopolitics, the economy - nothing seems stagnant, certainly not in the world of cooperatives and fintech. No matter what conversation I am having with leaders, a heavy sigh and head shake fill the space with uncertainty. "If only we had a playbook for this." Maybe it's time to try something different than competitive sports analogies, something that leads to collaboration, which might look more like a recipe book.

Leaders are being tested to take their organizations into new territory whether they choose to transform or not. The days of developing a three to five year strategy are inadequate to manage a never ending parade of new variables. Take a technology disruption or two, combine it with a pandemic, supply chain stress, inflation, add a dose of war and conflict, and baby, you've got yourself stew that's boiling over! It's like every burner is set to high, and there's no time to bring the heat up slowly. If it feels really hot in the proverbial kitchen, you might be whipping up a transformation.

As the temperature rises, the instinct to act more quickly intensifies, like how emerging risks spur reaction. With a lot of stakeholders in the kitchen, the dishes never seem to get to completion. Everyone has collective heartburn. While digesting this reality, transformation can feel like a hopeless race against time and resources. It doesn't have to be this way, but it will take a shift in our thinking and how we do business to tackle the challenges of today; this isn't merely an antacid solution to soothe the upset, but a behaviour change in how we lead people.

Fast paced changes are pushing organizations to react rather than plan and respond to business impacts. Costs, risks, and complexities make it hard for even well resourced organizations to keep up. These new ingredients challenge even the most experienced, but for those seeing success, two elements stand out: an abundant mindset and collaborative leadership.

Abundant thinking is the deep belief that transformation and growth are possible in both the individual and organization. This belief is essential for growth and learning, overlooked aspects of transformation that fuel the people effort. A" growth mindset" doesn't give up when the going gets tough; the adage "fall down seven times, get up eight" aptly describes it. Continuing to learn from our insights, both successes and failures, is how we develop new recipes.

However, without collaborative leaders, none of this will be channeled into transformation. A collaborative leader understands how to harness the strengths of the individuals on the team to more effectively solve problems and deliver excellence. This requires a different set of competencies that can understand how to balance the strengths, resolve conflicts, and create something greater than the sum of its parts. That includes the ability to partner for the skills that may not exist in a team. There's the true transformation - a combination of pressure, time, heat and the building blocks of the recipe. People.

No matter what transformation we experience, the only constant is that there will be change. Leading people to believe that they are capable of not only adapting but creatively thriving by working together is the way forward. It's a recipe for success, even if it's been adapted over time. However, collaboration is not easy to execute and it takes time and patience; something we could use more of an abundance of these days.