Somebody’s Gotta Chart the Course!
In chapter four of The 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership, The Law of Navigation, John Maxwell tells us that “anyone can steer the ship, but it takes a leader to chart the course.” When Cindy and I originally developed Building Buy-in Around a Clear Mission and Vision for our Executive Leadership Elite Think Tank group, which we now offer publicly as a complimentary webinar from time to time, we stressed how critical it is for the business owner or CEO to keep the overall mission and vision for the organization front and center for everyone on a routine basis. But that’s a tall order even for the best leaders!
Something I believe only serves to make that task exponentially more difficult is the mess of terms, the buzzwords, the flavors of the month, and latest/greatest things I’ve seen folks in these roles get bombarded with - all claiming to be the magic pill that catapults their organizations to world-class profitability… Have you ever been told that if something sounds too good to be true, it probably is? Yeah, me too!
Interestingly enough, I’ve not only had a heaping helping of many of those flavors of the month, I’ve also seen most of them used as an attempt to address issues they were never intended to be used for. I’ll spare you the painful details of every example, but my favorite (that’s sarcasm, in case you were wondering) was using a tool designed for uncovering large scale quality issues on a parts per million basis for isolated issues that were really tied to behavior; why keep things simple and direct when we can drag them out for months at a time, right…
When we work with business owners and higher level executives to chart their course for the next several years, we challenge them to develop a crystal-clear picture of where they want to be, then we help them back into the action steps they’ll need to take in order to reach their goals. This certainly serves to help them develop a clear course they can steer the ship by, but it can’t just rest with them alone. They’ve got to have leaders around them who can help them share the course that’s been charted with the rest of the team. We’ll dig much deeper into that as we move forward here. First though, I believe it would serve us well to look at a few key phrases that get tossed at leaders routinely so we can define exactly how we can apply the ideas in a way that helps us follow the course we chart; phrases like organizational development and strategic leadership.
Both can easily land on the never-ending pile of buzzwords but they can also serve us really well if we invest the time into understanding exactly how we can use them within our organizations so we’ll start there…
“Improving an Organization’s Capacity”
Someone in every organization needs to take responsibility for charting the course. And while it typically needs to be the business owner or CEO who casts the primary vision, they absolutely need to be able to count on the leaders around them to help them carry that vision and build to it within their respective departments; even the strongest leaders can’t be everything for everyone all the time…
As I opened with those ideas, I also mentioned all the buzzwords and flavors of the months that I’ve seen so many folks in leadership roles get hammered with, each claiming to do all but initiate world peace and solve world hunger. While nearly all of those things that I’ve ever seen implemented do offer some value, the amount of juice that comes from the squeeze really ties back to whether or not we try to force a square peg into a round hole - which seems to happen more often than not…
All that said, there are a few things that may sound like buzzwords but still make a solid impact on how our organizations follow the course we chart. One of those is something I’ve seen tied to more and more degree and certificate programs over the last few years. Quite honestly, I’ve seen it so often that I’ve struggled to take it seriously… That particular buzzword is organizational development. It struck me as a really broad and ambiguous topic that sounded fancy enough to draw attention while being vague enough to not set clear expectations. But that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t include it in how we chart the course for the teams we lead!
So what is organizational development? And how can we include it in the strategic approach we take as we work to lead effectively?
An article from the Association for Talent Development starts with a simple definition by saying that “organizational development is an effort that focuses on improving an organization’s capability through the alignment of strategy, structure, people, rewards, metrics, and management processes.” Being a guy who wants to be able to apply everything I can as quickly as possible and get measurable results in the process, I thought that was where the simplicity in the article ended… While there were a few more pieces that I found helpful, the net they cast was just too broad for me - and I’d guess any business owner or executive who already has more on their plate than they can handle on any given day would feel the same way.
One part that caught my attention was the reference to what they called “Organizational Development Strategy.” The article offered a lengthy description for what I’ve seen as a simple approach to continuous improvement: Try, fail, adjust/improve, re-enter…If we just apply that to each area of our businesses that we need to develop, following the charted course should be a much more manageable task! Then we can begin to shift some of our focus to strategic management and leadership…
Strategic Leadership or Strategic Management?
A while back I heard Carly Fiorina differentiate managing from leading by saying, “Managers produce results within existing constraints and conditions. Leaders change or challenge existing constraints or conditions.” Having just worked through a practical approach we can take to organizational development, let’s set sail for a focus on strategic management and leadership. Before we really dive into that though, let me make something very clear: I’ve never seen a scenario where a business owner or CEO has had the luxury of choosing between managing the details or their organization and leading the overall progress by casting a clear vision. Both are critical if we want to chart the course AND actually ensure the team stays the course…
All that said, strategic management and leadership doesn’t rest solely in the lap of the business owner or CEO. An article I read from Michigan State University said it this way:
“True strategic leadership should not just come from the C-suite. It needs to happen at every level of an organization—at the top, where strategy for a number of business units is formulated over a given time period; in the middle, where top-down strategy is translated into a business unit or regional strategy and goals are created; and at the department level, where the business unit strategy goals are translated into a number of individual objectives which are executed.”
The more engagement we can get in driving toward the organization’s goals, the better our chances will be of actually sticking to the course that’s been charted! While the business owner or CEO is nearly always the one responsible for developing a clear picture of where they see the organization over the next 3, 5, or even 10 years, there’s still a significant need for that vision to be broken down into pieces that apply at every level and in every segment of the business. If we’re not intentional about helping each member of our team understand exactly how their daily tasks tie in with our bigger picture, it can be all too easy for them to just go through the motions - and that rarely achieves best-in-class results! Even then, the folks who hate details as much as I do still need to keep an eye on the details. That same article went on to say that “Strategic leadership provides the scope and direction to help drive success… A major part of this success is derived from effectively managing continuous change through improvements to both people and processes.”
I’ll say it again… When we’re responsible for the results of our organizations - or even a segment of that organization - we don’t have the luxury of choosing between leading (the people) and managing (the processes)! However, the vast majority of folks I’ve seen progress to the highest levels of their organizations have do so because of their expertise in managing processes - which was the primary reason Cindy and I created our Emerging Leader Development course and every other resource we’ve launched since; to provide those same folks with tools to help them become just as effective at leading people as they were with the more technical aspects of their job.
In my next page like this, we’ll start working through some strategic leadership examples we can apply at any level of our organizations. Until then, you might get some value from working through our new Servant Leadership quiz to see what your best next step might be. And by the way, we’ve included a free gift for anyone who finishes the quiz…
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