Monthly archive for May 2020

Taking time to think strategically

From time to time, we all need a reminder to consciously make the time and put in the effort to work on our business instead of allowing ourselves to get caught up working in it.

Did you know that only 2% of employees can name their company’s top business priorities?*

As a business manager or senior management leader your job is to create the why for your business. Your people need a clear vision to align with so that your business can be what we all want our businesses to be – a successful, revenue producing, profitable success! Without vision and a reason for why you’re doing what you’re doing in your business, your people are basically busy, running to the next thing to be even busier and being consumed by ‘busyness’. But what are they so ‘busy’ doing? They may be being productive creating and implementing ‘things’, but without a vision or a reason why, they cannot possibly hope to contribute in a meaningful way to a flourishing business.

When did you last put aside dedicated time and personal commitment to working ‘on’ your business? I mean really did it. With no ‘running’ the business distractions, blocking your diary and having the courage to say ‘no’ to anything else?

When did you last:

• Work on and truly understand your why and your business purpose?
• Develop a genuine level of clarity on your purpose?
• Create a mission?
• Develop transformational business objectives?
• Create a plan to achieve your mission and objectives to align with your purpose?
• Refine your business and marketing plans (because you’re measuring success too – right?)
• Dedicate time to seek the wood through the trees? Look at the big picture? Reflect and rewrite your SWOT (internal and external business environments change! – so should your SWOT and therefore your plans)
• Actually write it all down in a business planning document?
• Communicate your purpose and plan to the rest of your business?
• Talk to your mentor (no matter how experienced you are, a sounding board at least is always a great idea, but developing a relationship with a mentor to guide you through challenges, successes and find key learnings, is even better).
• Let go of the need to do everything yourself because no one can do it as well or efficiently as you?

Hmmmm…that last one’s a whole other realm isn’t it?

But when we’re honest with ourselves, this question has the ability to uncover a lot and help us answer why we never seem to get around to doing the important versus urgent things.

Never had a mentor? We encourage you to seek out and develop a mentoring relationship – you can find tips here. As Lailah Gifty Akita said, “Every great achiever is inspired by a great mentor”. If you need a reason why it’s so important for you to work on your ‘why’ and diarise it for next week right now, take a look at Simon Sinek’s “Golden Circle” theory which explains your clients’ behaviour and thinking around how they engage with you and your business. Tip: it has little to do with your products and services and lots to do with your business’ purpose – your why.

Warning: If you never work on your business (aka organisation, business unit, team, vision), never be so confident to expect your business will ever function to it’s maximum ability. It won’t. It’s that simple.

As business managers and leaders, our staff look to us for the why and the inspiration. And it’s ok for us to look to our staff for inspiration too! Simon Sinek reminds us – “None of us has the strength to do it alone. We need people to encourage and inspire us so we can encourage and inspire others.” Never think you need to do this on your own. Yes, you’re driving the planning process, but who do you have in your team that can provide you with inspiration, ideas, creativity and a little blue sky thinking when you need some “out of the square” ideas to consider? The difference between a connected staff member and a disengaged (or ‘busy’) one could be as simple as moving focus away from their usual day to day ‘working in the business’ protocol and moving toward ‘working on the business’. Including team members in decision making, problem solving and strategy or tactic development, encourages collaboration, helps them feel valued and view their contributions as worthwhile. Especially if you have team members working from home in the current climate, strengthening a remote workforce will be a top priority to reap the benefits of engagement and productivity.

It’s also critical to know what your ‘working on the business’ teams are capable of. Who do you have actually leading and driving your strategic thinking and planning? Occasionally we see managers promote their ‘star performers’ who are highly productive, motivated and engaged into senior positions responsible for driving strategy. Occasionally, there are missing building blocks which enable these star performers to move from productive implementation to strategic development. We assume they simply have the ‘intuition’ to get it done without the necessary experience or explicit training.

So who is doing the designing, planning and refining of your business strategy? Do your driving managers understand what strategy is? Do they understand the difference between strategy, objectives and tactics and how they feed into each other and the business planning process? As leaders, we can sometimes make the assumption that the teams we give responsibility to for planning and refining business plans, understand how to do this effectively, when this isn’t always the case. This is a great place to start reflecting before we hand over the reigns to the driving force of strategic planning.

From a ‘people’ perspective, working ‘on’ the business also encompasses taking a step back and remembering that our people are part of our business. So how do we ‘work on’ our people? I don’t know a manager whose main objectives wouldn’t include; fostering staff engagement, increasing productivity, nourishing staff morale, developing team relationships, nurturing staff wellbeing and developing a positive growth mindset. However, monitoring these elements of wellbeing and culture has become more complex for managers as a result of many businesses’ recent change to remote working. But it remains essential for the health of your employees and the health of your business.

If you’re not sure where to start working on your business, or you want to be a part of a team working on your planning with an expert facilitating the process for you, or you need a sounding board up front, we already have a plan for you. We’ve done it before (lots!) and can take the pain out of the ‘doing’.

Leaders and managers that have engaged in our Organisational Strategy & Development sessions have so far reported and enjoyed an 81% improvement in “the importance of spending time on ‘my team’ by planning and setting goals for our management team and my own area of responsibility”.

Sound great? Unpack more around working on your business by clicking here. You’ll even get to view a short video sneak peak into our Organisational Strategy & Development sessions with our own Managing Director John Smith.

Growth Mindset

Have you been faced with great opportunities or impossible situations?

Try this revealing end of week exercise to find out!

Amidst this new way of being and working, we find ourselves navigating new territory. Our work environment is different (maybe there are less people around or you’re working from home), the way we work is different (you’re dealing with many more emails because instant face to face with the person usually sitting next to you isn’t an option) and how we manage our day is different (you may have children at home while you’re working). There are so many variables and dozens more not listed here – but the sentiment remains true – we find ourselves navigating new territory. And that can be uncomfortable.

Uncomfortable is ok. Resisting it is where we run into problems.

Understanding and acknowledging how uncomfortable this new way of being and working is, is the key to continuing growth and productivity. Acknowledging this for yourself and for the people that work with you is a worthwhile and valuable exercise. All will unfold by the end of this article. For some there will be an ‘a-ha’ moment, and for others there will be a surprising realisation and a calming long breath out.

Reflecting on what you, your business and your people have achieved over the last few weeks, how amazed can you be on your collective ability to evolve? In what we can sometimes consider to be ‘a mess’, Charles Swindoll reminds us:
“We are all faced with a series of great opportunities, brilliantly disguised as impossible situations”

Writing down our thoughts helps us to separate ourselves from the ocean of thoughts swirling around in our minds (what do I need to do next, what am I having for lunch, did I remember to send that email, what time is my Zoom meeting today, I need to get to the end of this article to tick it off my to do list…..) to focusing on one thing. This is the essence of productivity.
In knowing that, you have the permission to take a breath and the next 2 minutes to be productive by getting one important thing done.

Reflect on and understand what you have personally achieved in a short period of time and therefore the capacity you have to continue to move forward. Take a minute now to write down a couple of things you’ve achieved over the last couple of weeks that you’re proud of. If you have writers block, take another breath and ask yourself the question “what have I achieved at work during this transition?”

And wait. An answer will come.

It may be leading people in online collaboration, or something that’s surprised you in a shift in your environment such as developing creativity skills you never knew you had. Also know, you don’t need to list successful ‘outcomes’ to goals you may have had. Remember to acknowledge what you’ve courageously tried and may not have worked, so you applied a different process to achieve the same thing ie. you didn’t ‘give up’.

Over to you – set a timer on your phone for sixty seconds of scribing about your achievements.

Now do the same for the people that work with you. What are you happy with? What are you grateful for? What has surprised you? Take the next 60 seconds to understand what they have achieved in this transitional period. Have they used the initiative to consciously set up a productive work environment at home? Have they shown new capacity to take the lead in collaborating with their team in their new working world? Do you have coaches you didn’t know about helping other employees that are struggling with a new way of working?

Over to you – set a timer on your phone for sixty seconds of scribing about your people’s achievements.

So when we go back to the original question of: “Reflecting on what you, your business and your people have achieved over the last few weeks, how amazed can you be on your collective ability to evolve?”, you’ll now fully understand the power of taking just a couple of minutes to answer that.

Reflection and acknowledgement of what we’ve achieved can give us a relieving sense of control when we feel like the situation is out of control. We understand it’s not out of control, it’s actually just a situation that’s new. And when situations are new, we feel uncomfortable.

Now you have two lists. One that represents what you’ve achieved and feel great about. A second that represents what your people have achieved and you feel grateful for. Don’t stop there or underestimate what you’ve created in the last two minutes. Here are two tips on the next steps to take in building on that captured productivity:

1. Acknowledge it: Put your list somewhere visible to you and acknowledge what you’ve achieved. Give yourself a moment to feel a bit chuffed about it. Do the same with the list you have for the people working with you. Share it with them and acknowledge them. Share a moment with them to be chuffed about it and allow them to understand their contribution is worthwhile.
2. Add to it: Continue to add to both lists to create a process of celebrating (which can be as simple as sharing and acknowledging) achievement.

Once we take the time to notice what we’ve achieved, including the mistakes we made or the obstacles we overcame, no matter how small the step, it’s much easier to continue taking the next step.

Uncomfortable? That’s great! Take the next step – it can be as small as you like.

Our Growth Mindset workshop participants have so far reported and enjoyed a 92% improvement in “gather tips and ideas in dealing with inevitable challenges in developing growth mindset behaviours”. Some of the direct participant feedback we’ve had in our most recent workshop includes:

• “This workshop was so motivating”
• “I’d like another day of training on this to find out even more”

Sound great? Unpack more around developing Growth Mindset behaviours in your team by clicking here to view a short video sneak peak into our Growth Mindset workshop with our expert facilitator and qualified teacher Kaylene Ball.