Bringing the number to life is vital, whether you’re working in sales, managing a project, leading a team or running a production line.
If you understand and internalise the number, it allows you to monitor your progress and your tracking, intuitively know where you are and what you need to do, inform your decisions, understand how you need to react in real time, and see the bigger picture.
Otherwise, it’s just meaningless data to you.
Here, Paul and Rob discuss why many people are looking at the numbers but not really thinking about what they mean. They discuss the importance of bringing the number to life, and how we can do it.
What’s stopping us from bringing our number to life?
There is too much information at our fingertips.
Think of the wealth of reports, dashboards, BI systems and other technology that we can extract data from
It’s too easy.
We can easily look up the number we need at a particular point in time, and therefore we don’t need to retain the information in our head
The desire to measure everything.
You simply can’t retain every single piece of information put before you – which leads you back to relying on dashboards or systems
So, how do we bring the number to life?
Keep it simple.
If you have a wealth of data in front of you, focus on maybe the three or four core measures that really tell you something. Break down the number to give you something tangible about what you need to achieve each week/month
Engage with the data.
Too many people just input numbers into a system or sales platform without recognising the importance of thinking what those numbers mean. The idea of ‘cognitive disfluence’ is key here – the fact that we retain information and learn more if we actually interact with what we’re trying to learn
Start with the goal.
Instead of looking at the data and feeling that we have to do something with it, look instead at what you’re trying to achieve. What numbers do you need to pull out and understand to reach your goal?
Leaders. If you’re a leader, help your people to work with the data and think what the number really means. Give them the raw information they need and ask them to compile a report about some of the core data. You could break it down and ask different people to look at particular bits of the data. Ask them: Help me understand what’s in your figures and what does that tell you? Are you seeing what I’m seeing? Why has this bit changed? What does that mean?
In our work, we usually tell people that having focus is a good thing. But when it comes to sales, just being focused on the sale and nothing else is not so good. Sales is part of getting your service to your customer, but you can’t just be focused on that – you’ve got to have a bigger purpose as an organisation.
In this podcast, Richard and Graham discuss why some salespeople only think about the sale – and how such tunnel vision can impact on your customers and your colleagues.
Sales
people are, of course, very targeted and often very driven by what they need to
achieve. But having such a singular focus can mean you forget about the other important
things that sit around the sale.
If all you’re concerned about is getting that sale – hitting your targets, getting the number – then you disregard the other parts of the sales process that are really important. A company that’s all about sales creates an aggressive culture, with salespeople who are highly motivated and focused just on getting money from the customer. They’re not bothered about the end product that the customer gets, or the quality of service. And colleagues in other departments, particularly customer-facing staff, can often feel like a spare part, tasked with delivering impossible promises made by the salespeople just to win the sale, or sorting out complaints from dissatisfied customers who have been promised one thing and received another
Of
course, if your job is in sales, you need to be concerned with ‘the number’.
But you also need to consider the customer experience, your product, the health
and wellbeing of your colleagues, and your organisation’s culture and ethical
boundaries. Ask yourself: If I make the sale in this way, what does it mean for
the customer and for us as a business, and how might it impact on the other
departments?
Considering
the culture of your organisation is particularly important if you’re the person
setting the targets. Be mindful that the targets you set will drive a certain
kind of behaviour so make sure that the sales process you’re encouraging
reflects the culture of your organisation.
Over the last 15 years I have worked with many senior
leadership teams that are grappling with necessary organisational changes.
These are often to take advantage of market or political trends, consumer
demands, or to gain first mover advantage. Having said that, in one case a
number of years ago, it was because the senior team had been given the feedback
that the vast majority of people in the business were unhappy.
It was around this time that I became interested in the
subject of trust.
It seemed to me that the leadership team mentioned above just
wasn’t trusted anymore. Nobody believed what they said. Since then, I’ve seen
it time and time again. A leadership team that thinks if they make the right
noises for a while, people will get on board.
A lack of trust in all walks of life makes things very hard.
Do you like being around people you don’t trust? Of course not. It brings a
heightened sense of anxiety and caution to everything we do. If you are in this
situation on a daily basis or in your personal relationships, it makes life
unbearable.
My work over the last few years has led me to talk to teams
about the need for them to rebuild trust or ensure they are trusted before
embarking on changes, big or small, in their organisations. As ever around the
subject of change, some people get it but many don’t. Many assume that just putting
a good plan in place and some positional authority behind what they are saying means
that people will just come on the journey with them.
So, as I explored the topic further, I began to develop
something I call the ‘Trust Index’. Although rudimental, it was based on hours
of talking to people in organisations. This simple research helped me identify
three key factors that are needed to build trust:
Competence, honesty and
reliability.
I would then ask people in the organisation three simple
questions based on these factors.
1. On a scale of 1-10 do you think the senior team are
competent as leaders?
2. On a scale of 1-10 do you think they are honest with you?
3. On a scale of 1-10 do they do what they say they will do?
I’d then take all the responses and convert the answer to
each of the questions into an overall percentage. As I said, very rudimental! However,
it did give me a really good guide about how much people trusted their managers
and team leaders.
I then went back to senior teams that were being given a score
of 50% or less by their people, and suggested that they should think twice
before making any changes of significance in their organisations, and instead
wait until they had won back the trust of their people.
Recently, I came across something along the same lines as my
research, although rather less basic! While on a long train journey, I was
flicking through Ted Talks on my laptop when I saw one by Frances Frei, a
professor of technology and operations management at the Harvard Business
School.
She had been working at Uber following their recent problems,
and had noticed three things that were broken in terms of trust within their
culture.
Her talk is funny, informative and a great watch. She puts
things so much better than I had been able to with my simple research. She talks
about the following three things being needed to gain, maintain and rebuild
trust:
Authenticity, logic and
empathy.
Firstly, I was really pleased to see that my own limited research had given results that were similar to those Frances was talking about. However, as only one of us is a Harvard professor, I am more than happy to take and work on her three factors!
We’ve created this diagram below based on what Frances says in her Ted Talk:
So, why not ask yourself the following three questions, either in relation to the people you lead or the people who are leading in your company.
1. Authenticity – Are they seeing the real you?
2. Logic – Does it (whatever it is you are proposing) or do
you make sense?
3. Empathy – Do people see that you care about them?
If any of these three are missing, the whole
thing goes very wobbly and certainly means you don’t have the basis on which to
launch a programme of change.
Assumptions, beliefs and past experiences are going to shape how we think about the sales process and the customer. Added to that, we also have to deal with pressure from targets and our managers.This will all condition how you behave during the sales process.
In our latest podcast, Ricky and Rob first discuss the reasons why we typically talk ourselves OUT of the sale, before looking at ways of talking ourselves INTO it.
Reasons we might use to talk ourselves out of the sale include making assumptions that our competitors are better than we are or that the customer doesn’t want what we are selling. We’ll second-guess how the customer’s going to react and what they’re going to say. We’ll ask ourselves: Why do they want what I’m selling, and why do they want it from me? Am I good enough? Is my product or service good enough?
So, how can you turn that around and to talk yourself INTO a sale?
Firstly,
focus on all the great things you do, the great experiences you’ve had in the past,
and the wins. Play over the narrative that was in your mind when you did well in
that call, sales meeting or sales follow-up.
Get other people involved, if possible. Reflect on a sales meeting with a colleague or sales manager, look at the successful elements that you can draw upon and learn from. For the less successful parts, think what you might do differently next time.
Be self-aware. You will only improve if you can reflect and learn from what you do. Nurture a growth mindset in yourself. Ask: What can I learn from this?
Finally, during that next sale, don’t get caught up in the moment and in the pressure of having to make the sale, or the need to deliver targets or win a new customer. We might wonder if our product or service is good enough, or worry that we don’t understand the product fully. As sales people, we’ll focus our attention on the product’s weaknesses, which we may have to defend, but spend hardly any time on why the product is great. We need to think from the customer’s perspective, not our own, and see the world the other way round – after all, they are buying it for what it can do, and not what it can’t.
What you actually want is to get the right outcome for the customer rather than selling for selling’s sake. Just focus on building a great relationship, understanding your customer and what they need, and then positioning your product for them.
Thinking Focus directors Ricky and Rob had a fantastic evening at the Learning Awards 2019, and were over the moon to pick up a Bronze award in the Start-Up Learning Provider of the Year category!
We are so proud to have been recognised alongside some of the very best L&D practitioners in the UK. Ed Monk, the CEO of the Learning Performance Institute, which runs the awards, said they’d received over 800 entries in total – so just to get to the shortlist means we were in the top 10 per cent!
Well done to all the finalists, and we would particularly like to congratulate VirtualSpeech, who won our category, and LearnBox, who scooped the Silver award.
Before the ceremony
Ricky said: “To have been nominated in such a competitive category is great recognition for what we have achieved in such a short space of time. We have a solid platform on which to build and grow our business in the future, so look out for new products and development soon.
“In less than three years, we have won 50 new clients, worked on assignments in 13 countries and across 28 sectors, and worked with well over 2,000 people. We’ve grown our team, produced a book and created a new L&D resource, the gamified learning product for managers called What Would You Do?, and a step-by-step process blueprint for developing team, department or organisational strategy – known as the ‘Strategy Wall’.”
We invited two of our valued clients to enjoy the ceremony with us
The Learning Awards recognises and celebrates outstanding
examples of high standards, best practice, innovation and excellence in the corporate
L&D sphere. The glittering awards ceremony on February 7th took
place at the prestigious Dorchester Hotel in London’s Park Lane and was
attended by around 400 guests representing organisations from across the world.
Host for the evening, BBC star Claudia Winkleman, introduced
the Start-Up category by saying: “This award is for organisations under three
years old who have already made a significant impact on the sector. So you
truly are amazing to be in this group.”
Ricky said: “Being shortlisted for this award has given us a great start to a year in which we’ll be developing our business further and rolling out What Would You Do? and the Strategy Wall. All of which ultimately leads to what, for us, is the biggest buzz of all: seeing the impact of our work and hearing our clients report fantastic results.”
He added: “Thank you to all those who have helped, inspired and supported us: We couldn’t have done it without you.”
People very rarely like to talk about politics in the workplace. Perhaps we don’t even want to admit that it’s a thing. But the fact is that everyone in your organisation is acting in a political way.
That’s because workplace politics is about how we behave towards each other and our motivations. It’s all about power, authority, and relationships. Power can come from different sources: It could be based on someone’s role, experience, knowledge, professional or personal network, or charisma.
The term ‘office politics’ usually has negative connotations, but is it really always a bad thing?
The answer is no, but it depends on the politics involved. Good politics is about doing things correctly and fairly in the interest of the group and the overall vision, whereas bad politics is about acting out of self-interest. Particularly during the process of change, behaviour needs to be driven by politics—there needs to be somebody who can engage people and take them on a journey. That’s what change leadership is all about.
Awareness is key as a manager of people who will behave according to their own politics. Change leaders often involve people for the wrong reasons. It’s easy to make the mistake of involving someone because of their position or their relationship with you.
Recognising the political motivations of your people will help you assign useful, productive roles to them that utilise their skills and experience and help achieve a goal for the overall good. It’s vital for those times when you need to rely on people who can lead and get things done for the good of the organisation, its people and its goals. So, what political game are your people playing? A useful way of identifying the political style and motivations of your team members is using the model developed by Simon Baddeley and Kim James, as shown in this diagram:
It splits people into one of four categories: sheep, donkeys, owls and foxes. Once you understand which category a person fits into, you’ll know how they will approach things, and what kind of role they should take on a project. It can be particularly helpful when implementing change and thinking about the type of people you can rely on to lead it successfully.
So, what characteristics does each animal show, and what does this mean for their role in the team?
Sheep
are politically naïve but act in the group’s interest, because they think it’s
the right thing for the organisation and the people. They are loyal and
industrious but need to be led.
Donkeys,
like sheep, are politically naïve – but the difference is that they act out of
self-interest.
Owls are politically aware of the situation and the environment, but ask how to do things for the overarching goal and the people. They are loyal to the organisation, possess integrity, and are respected by colleagues.
Foxes are also politically aware but act out of self-interest, putting themselves before others and even before the organisation. But there’s no doubt they can make things happen, even though they do it for their benefit. If you are prepared to manage them closely, there’s nothing wrong with sending a wily fox into a difficult situation. Foxes are useful, but make sure you know their motivation, how they are likely to behave and the opportunities they may want to seize for themselves.
Dealing with these different personalities as a manager can be difficult. Still, the first step is to recognise who fits into each category, understand who should be placed in a key role for a specific project, and who needs to be carefully managed. Owls are clearly prime candidates, although they may as well be unicorns as they are so hard to find! Perhaps you may like or require the ambition and drive of foxes.
The
role of a leader is not to get lost in politics or to turn a fox into an owl.
It’s about recognising which political ‘animals’ are in your team, and being
aware of how best to manage them.
Baddeley, S. and James, K., 1987. Owl, fox, donkey or sheep: Political skills for managers. Management Education and Development, 18(1), pp.3-19.
Your Practical Toolkit for Navigating Workplace Politics
Think about others; look at your key stakeholders: your boss, coworkers, peers, other teams, suppliers, and customers.
How do you see their motivation?
Are they focused on themselves and their own self-interest?
Are they focused on the outcomes of the group?
How politically aware are they?
Are they astute? Do they have a good understanding of what’s going on?
Do they look for cooperation and coalition?
How connected are they to key stakeholders?
This will help you to identify the political behaviour of your stakeholders.
What do you do with a Fox?
Think about the strengths of a Fox, someone who not just knows how to get things done; they actually get it done. Where could you use some focus, attention and single-minded action? But beware of how they play the game and put strategies in place to mitigate their game-playing and self-interest.
What do you do with Owl?
Utilise the owl’s strengths, lean into its wisdom, and leverage its mentorship. Draw from its big-picture understanding and connectedness to help overcome obstacles and advance the collective goals.
How do you handle a Donkey?
Donkeys love attention, but not for the right reasons; they ‘kick off’ without any sense of what is happening or who is around them. So beware, don’t feed that attention-seeking behaviour, and don’t reward their bad behaviour. However, do document what you agree and establish an audit trail to go back on.
How do you handle a Sheep?
The sheep are looking for you to value their contribution. Don’t take them for granted, and definitely avoid sidelining them or assuming they’ll just go along with it—they’ll just come along. They may come along, but if not respected, they will bleat, moan, and drain energy.
Something Practical for you to do – Part 2:
Now think about you: how good a politician are you?
Before you fall for delusionary self-assessment, like everyone else, you will be guilty of seeing yourself as perhaps more astute than you really are. Beware of confirmation bias, where we look to support our view and ignore areas where in our heart of hearts we know we could be better. So, to overcome this, invite two or three people you trust to answer these two questions for you. Pick those who can be objective and will give honest feedback.
How politically aware is [insert your name]?
Is [insert your name] motivated by their own agenda or that of the group?
Where do they see you? A game-playing fox or a wise owl? A troublesome donkey or a compliant sheep waiting to be told?
The reality is that we all could do with sharpening our political skills; here are four things that will help you to level up your political awareness:
Know
Observe & Seek out Trends
What are the issues that get raised again and again?
Create a network with different perspectives in your industry
Speak
Sound more political
Focus on the main points as succinctly as possible
Communicate against overarching topics, not tactical details
Think
Ask the Tough Questions
What does success really look like (now and in the future)? – What are the signs of failure?
How does what I am working on support the broader organisational goals?
Act
Time to Think – Embrace Conflict
Spend more time on the important (and less time on the urgent)
Embrace challenge – Focus on the issue, not the personalities
If I told you that you were only performing at 60% of you, would you want to do something about it?
Once you got past the emotional reaction of feeling criticised (“Who is this guy?”, “Who is he to challenge me?”), it is likely you will feel the need to justify yourself. You’ll probably point out how hard you and your team are working and highlight your performance versus your targets and KPIs.
But this is not about targets and KPIs, this is about potential.
It is not my intent to criticise; I am instead challenging the way you see the world. I see it in every client we work with, and it sits at the heart of our Thinking Focus belief statement:
We believe that people, teams and business units underperform, not because they want to, not because they mean to, but because they can’t get out of their own way!
Every day you and your people face challenges and constraints, either self-imposed, real or perceived. Your people face systems and processes designed with the best intent yet which fail to empower them to deliver greatness, forcing compliance and restricting innovation and creativity, all in the name of consistency. Well, guess what: the only consistency is your people consistently underperforming and not reaching their potential!
In over a decade of working with clients across the world, I and my colleagues at Thinking Focus have noticed the startling reality that, when asked, people in all businesses state that ‘interference’ (the stuff that gets in our way) amounts to an average 40%. Yes, 40%! Which means that, if this is true, people are performing at an average of just 60%!
While I accept that this observation is hardly scientific, the consistency in what more than 200 clients have reported to us over all these years is uncanny. Moreover, a CIPD survey suggested the exact same number, give or take 1%. It would seem that our anecdotal findings are actually supported by an external reference point!
So we know there is a problem, now let’s look at what can you do about it.
Here are three things you can do to get started, and they won’t cost you a penny or a huge amount of time:
1. Quantify the size of your problem or opportunity
The key here is not to get to focused on the number, but instead to look for the opportunity. Dig beneath the surface. One obvious thing to do, which is rarely done, is to ask your people what it is that gets in the way of them doing their best work. So ask them:
What ‘interference’ do they have to deal with every day? Get them to externalise it but don’t justify, defend or seek to fix it at this point. Your goal is to understand the issues
Can you quantify this interference as a percentage? Ask them how much it affects their ability to perform at 100% of their potential
Use this as a rudimentary guide, to size your problem/opportunity
So, for example, if they suggest that the ‘interference’ is at 35%, this means that they are performing at 65% of their potential. Ask them what impact a 1%, 2% or 10% shift would have on their performance. Is it worth fixing? If yes, go to step 2.
2. Review the ‘interference’ list
Invite your people to review the list of ‘interference’ and ask them to focus on just three right now; three that could add the greatest value with least effort. In essence, identify the ‘low hanging fruit’ which will eliminate, improve or mitigate the impact of ‘interference’. Then invite volunteers to pitch up and take on the challenge to fix one.
3. Let them go!
Now, support them, provide time and resources, and let them go unlock some potential for you. This is important as you are empowering them to own the problem and fix it. It also means that any long term solution will be owned by them and will likely lead to wider adoption of their solution than any imposed by management.
There are many benefits from adopting this approach, including:
There is a cathartic release from sharing ‘interference’
We talked about how this interference can be either organisational or self-imposed, and discussed the importance of recognising interference as the first step to improving productivity.
In this blog, we’ll take a look at how important it is not just to identify these barriers, but to understand just how interference affects productivity.
Regardless of whether the constraints to productivity are organisational or self-imposed, all forms of interference have the same effect. Here are just some examples of how interference affects productivity:
It slows down our rate of work, which causes frustration
It causes us to repeat work tasks and processes, leading to inefficiency and wasted effort
It creates mistakes, meaning that valuable resources need to be used to rectify the mistakes
It causes us to avoid doing things, which means that potential deadlines can be missed and work is not completed on time
It creates stress, which can ultimately result in absenteeism
It causes a feeling of isolation and anxiety about doing the right thing, which means that we don’t achieve our best result
It can lead to poor decision-making, lack of clarity and ambiguity, all of which means that we don’t actually complete the work required to the standard that was asked of us
It causes tensions and protective behaviour by individuals within teams, leading to disagreements or arguments, and people avoiding responsibility and not taking ownership
It creates the need for more supervision or management of tasks and people, which means that the amount of management time and resource increases
It can become a talking point among individuals and teams, rapidly turning into moaning, fault finding and finger pointing – during which time less work is actually being done
It can create a perception of unfairness when a person or team doesn’t seem to ‘suffer from’ the same interferences as another person or team, which in turn creates gossip, rumour and a culture of blame
Thinking Focus works with organisations to identify and remove barriers to productivity, helping teams and business units achieve their potential. Read more here about our approach to unlocking productivity.
When your people are not being as productive as they could be, it can be frustrating and sometimes puzzling, both for you and for them. The potential is there but the performance is falling short – and you have no idea why.
At Thinking Focus, we sometimes find it helpful to refer to the things that stop us achieving our potential as interference. In the book ‘The Inner Game of Tennis’ the author Timothy Gallwey proposed that performance (Pe) is equal to potential (Po) minus interference (I), or Pe = Po – I. We use this equation to help individuals and teams to get an idea of just how much interference is getting in the way. As potential is always 100%, if you think you’re only performing at 70% of this, then interference levels equate to 30%.
We believe that removing interference enables people to think and work differently, gives them purpose and helps them enjoy their job. All of which leads to higher productivity, smooth transitions during times of change, and sustainable results.
The first step to removing interference is to recognise it. So, what exactly is it? In the work place, it can fall into one of two categories: organisational or self-imposed.
Organisational interference
This covers any constraints to productivity that come from the organisation itself, and which slow down and sometimes even stop work processes.
Examples of organisational interference are:
Outdated processes, that could be improved or replaced
Legacy IT systems that don’t connect or integrate with each other
Silo working – isolated or non-collaborative work teams
Assumed rules or ways of working
Inconsistent leadership and management
Internal politics, due to hierarchies or individual power-play
Unhelpful competition between departments
Self-imposed interference
This refers to internal constraints that an individual puts on themselves and which prevents them from being as productive as they could be. Each person has different elements of self-imposed interference, and some have more than others.
Examples of self-imposed interference are:
Attitude, belief and mindset
Assumptions about how we work or are expected to work
Waiting for permission to do things
Expecting to be told what to do and how to do it
Lack of confidence, low self-esteem, and self-doubt
Thinking Focus helps teams and business units become more productive by identifying and removing interference. Read more here about our approach to unlocking productivity.
If, like us, you are lucky enough to work with exceptional companies, you cannot help but look behind what makes them the success they are. And you discover that their success is not an accident but is rather down to obsessive execution underpinned with core disciplines.
From our research and observations, Thinking Focus has identified five traits you will find in all the most productive organisations. These guiding principles can be applied by any organisation to enable their people to be productive in the right way. They also form the basis of our 5Cs Results Model, which we use in our work with a range of forward-thinking organisations to help them accelerate business growth, embed change or transform culture.
Purpose and Clarity
The most productive organisations we’ve worked with regularly reinforce purpose and clarity within all their people. A clear and compelling purpose – the ‘why’ we do what we do, aligned to what we do – is consistently shared and communicated, so everyone has a common clarity of vision. This increases effectiveness as people work to their greatest level of contribution in order to help achieve the big picture.
Take note, though, not to confuse being efficient with being effective. We have worked in, and with, organisations where people were highly efficient and executed their tasks promptly and to a high standard. The problem was, they were not working on the right things!
As a leader aiming to help your people be as productive as possible, challenge yourself: Is it efficiency or effectiveness you’re after? You are likely to have efficient people, but do they understand why they are doing what they are doing? If not, revisit your purpose and get them focused on doing those things that will achieve that purpose.
In his book Good to Great, Jim Collins shares the importance of getting the right people on the bus and the wrong people off the bus, which sounds spot on to me. However, he goes on to say that those right people are the ones who buy into your purpose, not your plan. This means that if, as is often the case, the plan needs to change, those right people will remain committed to the vision and the higher purpose that drives everything you do.
Collaboration
In our work, although we shouldn’t be, we are always surprised by how much internal politics, assumptions and egos get in the way of productivity. The cultural environment is set up to be adversarial, which is not conducive to delivering the strategy. So many senior leaders will argue that they achieve the outcome they wanted, but we often wonder at what cost to their teams. What underlying damage has been caused and what is hidden from view that challenges the definition of productivity? Is the focus on the short-term nature of business and the need to deliver results or is it on the long-term performance of the company?
If I refer back to Jim Collins, he shares ‘level 5 leadership’. Level 5 leaders build with the next generation in mind, they are ambitious and focus on the success of the company ahead of themselves. The level 5 leader is obsessed with sustained results and will do whatever it takes to get to great.
In our experience, companies whose leaders collaborate more effectively achieve more significant results, and we have seen those indicators of level 5 leadership where the focus is always on the higher purpose.
Capability
When we talk about capability, most people think of training but it’s actually much more than that as Paul Matthews, author of Capability at Work, explains:
Knowledge – do I (the worker) have the knowledge to do what is required?
Skills – am I (the worker) able to apply myself to do what is required?
Mindset – do I (the worker) believe I can do what is expected of me?
Physiology – am I (the worker) able to do what is required physically?
Environment – have we (the company) provided the right systems, processes, tools, management support and culture for our people to perform effectively?
In our experience, the organisations that develop more productive workforces and the ones who recognise that there is a need for a balanced assessment of capability. The inclusion of ‘environment’ in the list above is significant and its notable that the onus here is on the company. It is no surprise that the elements that make up the environment are key to engagement, and that the link between engagement and productivity is long since proven.
Capacity
The topic of bandwidth is a perennial one. Most teams will argue they are at full capacity whereas most leaders believe there is scope to do more. The reality probably lies somewhere between the two!
However, the most important thing here is to be clear about what we have on the agenda and why. Does the list pass the purpose test, will doing ‘it’ enable us to achieve the higher purpose? If not, it should not be on the list at all.
Warren Buffet invests much time deciding what makes this list and what doesn’t make his list. There is no ‘We will have a go if we get the time’ list or ‘Let’s spend a bit of time on it’ list. It either makes the list, or it doesn’t; there’s no half way house. Leaders are paid to make big decisions, to choose what strategy we should back and why. Indecision leads to a straddled strategy which is trying to be all things to everyone. In our experience, companies who have followed the mantra of ‘If we could only do one thing?’ are more productive and effective.
Commitment
Commitment is a set of tests or questions which should be asked on a regular basis. This provides a navigational check in the context of an organisation’s vision and strategy to see whether the current plan is going to hit the mark.
Is our purpose clear, compelling, and understood by the business?
Are we collaborating in the most effective way?
Have we developed the capability of our people to achieve our goals?
Are we choosing to focus our resources on the right things?
Are we committed to this vision (are the right people on this bus)?
These questions all elicit a deliberate Yes/No answer, with those who adopt level 5 leadership using the ‘No’ answers as opportunities to fix it on their journey to greatness.
It is worth noting that level 5 leaders show humility and are more likely to be cautious in their evaluation, rather than deluded or over-confident.
