Is your Organisation Stuck in Reverse? How to move forward in 5 days !

Imagine a consultant telling you what you're doing right ...

The discipline of management consulting has long been based on a simple recipe: ‘Let’s work together to find out what you are doing wrong. And then we will fix it…’

It’s time for a new approach!

Rather than endlessly trying to ‘manage’ your weaknesses and areas of under-performance, why not focus on the things you are doing right?

Change your focus, Change your business!

It is estimated that, the average executive invests 90% his/her time focused on what is going wrong. Isn’t that like trying to compete in a race driving in reverse? If you spend all your time checking the rear-view mirror to look at where you’ve just come from, you will never get onto the ‘Autobahn’ or motorway of success.

Instead of focusing on what is going wrong, companies can consciously choose to focus more of their time on what is going right. We call this mentality a “Bright Spots” mentality.

Research has shown that companies with bright spot focus are better at building employee engagement, have fewer burn-outs, and—most importantly, and perhaps a bit counter-intuitively are better at fixing problems. With these facts in mind, we created our bright spots program.

Do you want to grow fast and have more fun at work?

3 years ago, we started a research program on what is driving innovation success. One of the most important findings was successful companies spend more time building their business than fixing their business.

• Do you want your business to grow faster?
• Do you want your employees to be more innovative?
• An equally important, do you want to have more fun at work?

If the answer is yes to any of these questions; it is time to get out of reverse!

The road forward is simple…

How do you stop focusing on the negatives start working on bright spots? You can think about it like you are driving to get on the autobahn.

Gear 1 Figure out where you are

Gear 2 Understand how you got there

Gear 3 Decide where you want to go

Gear 4 Move from talk to execution

Gear 5 Keep on doing it!

With each shift to the next gear, you’ll get better and better. Knowing how impatient companies are about getting better faster, we developed a 1-week program. What follows are the general principles and a day by day action plan.

Gear 1: Figure out where you are…

Today it seems everyone is focused on moving faster and faster. But there is a lot of research showing the companies need to slow down before speeding up. A recent study by Economist Intelligence Unit has shown that companies taking a strategic pause tend to perform better. It works as a moment of self-reflection and triggers new growth.

The study highlighted that companies fail to achieve some milestones when in a hurry, whereas the companies taking a pause at strategic moments have 40% higher sales as well as 52% higher profits.

We encourage companies that want to change to start their strategic pause by going back to basics. A good starting point is usually some sort of assessment. Take an honest look at what you are good at and what you are less good at. The natural tendency will be to move into problem-solving mode and start focusing on what you need to improve. We’d encourage you to ask another question… Where does your company really excel and how could you build on this?

 

How we do it: Standardized Assessment Day 1

We have created a standardized assessment of a company in 19 areas. It takes about 30 minutes to complete. Then you will learn your scores in different areas including your strengths and weaknesses. During this time companies learn how their company ranks in the following 19 areas.

Gear 2: Understand how you got there

Why, where you are good, are you so good? Why, where you are not, are you weak? The root causes of organization performance are tough questions… There are seldom simple answers. If you want to really understand you need to take a holistic view of your company. The objective should be to understand the “root causes”. There are many ways to do this; we have found the simplest is usually the 5 whys.

What is “5 Whys”?

A strategy to self-introspect in order to reach the root cause. Sometimes the cause of error is right in front of us, we just can’t see it.

Why “5 Whys”?

Simple answers aren’t the real answers. They are a superficial solution. Look deeper.

To better understand our negatives in order to reach the bright spots, we use the “5-whys” technique.

Example:

Problem: There was a constant growth in an initial stage, which is stationary now

Why? – Ideation done during the last month failed

Why? – Was focusing on plan B in case the Ideation didn’t work

Why? – Safeguarding the project’s goal

Why? – Fear of failure

Why is there a fear of failure?

How we do it: Appreciative Inquiry and Systems Analysis / Day 2 and 3

Using the results of the initial assessment we develop a series of hypotheses to test. Using a wide range of tools we work on identifying root causes.

Day 2 is usually focused on clarification and building understanding.

Day 3 we map out organizational systems to help companies identify the ‘Why’s behind the ‘What’s.

Gear 3: Decide where you want to go

You’re still a long way from the autobahn, but you better understand your organization. Now comes the big question. Empowered with your new self-knowledge, where do you want to go?

The best answer to this question is usually not an objective or a target, but a story. What are the unique strengths of your company? What is the “why” of your organization? Can you tell a story that will get people excited? Can you tell a story people will remember? Can you tell a story so strong that if you were not at the office for 6 months, your employees know what to do? Let’s be honest, few companies have this sense of mission, but it doesn’t mean you can’t develop one!

Chances are, in your organization, your mission won’t determine whether people will live or die. In the military where the mission needs to be 100% clear, the focus is on building commanders’ intent. Let’s play a game for a moment. Let’s pretend we are preparing for a dangerous mission overseas.

There are many great books on how to establish commanders’ intent. At the most basic level, commanders’ intent is about answering these questions

Where are we today + rationale for the plan?

Where do we want to go: Purpose of the task, objectives & constraints.

How: Hints to get started, constraints and other considerations.

You will know you have established commanders’ intent when you will your teams know what to do first now? When things don’t work as planned (as they often don’t) will then know what to do then? For a second think about this question: if you were not at the office for 6 months; your employees know what to do?

 How we do it: Set Commanders Intent + Story Telling + True North Card Day 4

This is the hardest part of our work. Most of our clients like to think in terms of KPI’s and targets. Yes, these are important. But they are not why people are coming to work.

People want to make a dent in the universe; they want to do something important. Your job is to tell them why what they are doing is important.

In our work with companies, we try to get them to focus on 4-6 stories. We have them write them using our True North format. This format is designed to remove the “corporate speak” and force executives to talk simply and clearly.

Using this format, they can explain what they want, why it is important and equally important what they don’t want.

Gear 4: Move from talk to execution

Things happen when there is urgency. Things happen when there are deadlines. If your objectives are really important, you shouldn’t be pushing your people to take the next step. In every organization, we work with there is always a gap between talk and execution.

The biggest barrier is usually people don’t understand “the why”. If this is the case, you need to work more on establishing commander’s intent. Almost as important as the lack of understanding is fear to take action. The best way to remove fear is to address these fears.

There is a simple recipe for tackling both of these issues. We call it “why, why and what”. With your team focus on the following 3 questions:

Why is this project important?

Why would it fail?

What could you do to increase odds of success?

We have been talking about the need to focus on bright spots (what a company does well), but in if you want people to execute you need to look failure straight in the eye. When you ask why would this project fail, people naturally uncover the most important challenges in a project. When they focus on these challenges they can get started taking action now.

How we do it:  A little less talk and a little more action (Day 5)

On our last day at a company, we like to focus on the True North Cards. Are they clear, where are the issues and what can each person do to increase the odds of success.

Gear 5: Keep on doing it!

The biggest weakness in every company is the “flavour of the month”. The only way to convince your team you are serious is to follow-up week by week on your key objectives.

Years ago P&G asked employees to analyse a typical week and classify their work in 4 categories:

Wrong thing, wrong

Wrong thing, right

Right thing, wrong

Right thing, right

They found star performers were not people doing the right thing, right 90% of the time, but people doing the right thing, right more than half of their time

How we do it: Weekly Learning Cycles / Scrum

We encourage our clients to work using weekly learning cycles and scrum.

With a review every week and a focus on action every week, we haven’t found a company that can’t do more in less time.

The goal is not perfection, but consistent progress, focused effort, and ongoing learning.

It is perhaps interesting to note the founder of Scrum is able to document how a scrum methodology can help almost any division in any organization do twice as much in half the time.

Now is the time for action!

As we said earlier… the road forward is simple…

You can get your organization out of reverse and geared for success. But simple doesn’t mean easy.

If you would like help, would like to learn more about out 5 stage program which any company can finish in 1 week; check out www.bright-spots.com.