Month: April 2016

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The Pivot: Staying at the Top of Your Game

How do the top performing teams in the world stay at the top of their game? Sports teams, racing teams, leading brands, innovative teams, military teams and many others? What do leaders at the top of their game do to stay at the top? What does this mean for business?

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The best teams change before change is needed. They pivot and iterate to stay ahead of the crowd.

Right now things in business are going pretty well. There is uncertainty in the medium and longer term as to what is going to happen in money markets, commodity markets, the Chinese/US or EU economies. There is a lot of technology disruption starting to show up on the fringes of even the least tech savvy industries. Change is coming and whether it is disruption, a softening economy, a total global meltdown or even a major political event we will all need to navigate it.

The RESULTS Group work with good companies and proactive leaders who want to get better at what they do. Our clients tend to be the long term brands that over decades have performed exceptionally well. They are actively seeking to stay at the top of their game.

In the next 5-10 years all of us leading (me included) are going to face more change than the world has seen in the last century. It will be fast, ongoing and relentless and will be an exciting and challenging time to lead. Some commentators say we are in year 2 of a 35 year technology disruption. How true is this and how will it affect our own business is open to interpretation but we are all starting to see the wave of change.

To stay at the top in any professional environment there is a need to develop a culture of continuous learning. If we look at the All Blacks (the most successful global high performance professional sports team/brand with a winning record of 86%, two back to back world cups & recently voted the best team in the world across all codes). In James Kerr’s book “Legacy: What the All Blacks can teach us about the business of life” you will see Chapter 2 is entitled “Adapt”. In essence the commentary is all around “When you are at the top of your game, change your game.” This is about changing consciously before you need to, in order to stay ahead of the competition and to remain the best of the best. To keep an edge or a sustainable point of difference.

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A summary picture of the key chapters & topics of the book “Legacy” by James Kerr.

I like to refer to the term “pivoting”. I saw this in action during some work I recently did at the University of Florida, assessing entrepreneurial engineering teams and the projects they were completing for private business. They were presenting what they had achieved and were seeking feedback so they could iterate and improve their project. They were seeking a “pivot” through good insights and application of ideas.

The best leaders and companies we work with are already pivoting at a time when they are performing well. They know through experience that the good times won’t last. To stay ahead of their competition and to navigate change they must understand what success continues to look like. How do they do this?

Those CEO’s proactively keeping ahead of the crowd prioritise the following;

  • They invest in their own development and leadership skills so they can lead smart innovative people in a collaborative way.
  • They spend time in strategic and operational planning with their teams, senior leadership teams and functional teams. They continuously define the priorities and focus of action.
  • Actively build an aligned plan to execute continuous change and constantly reflect on it, revise it and iterate it to make it better. They empower their people to lead parts for the execution.
  • Focus on execution and getting the important things done.
  • Seek the best advice on technology disruption, the economy, competitors, new entrants and possible substitute products and services.
  • Stay very close to their clients and know what they value, expect and want improved. They build collaborative and close relationships through many channels including social media.
  • Invest in leadership development (and education) and focus on increasing staff engagement to build resilience and an ownership mentality. This aids the change process and brings innovative and collaborative thinking to the fore.
  • Focus on the numbers. What gets measured can be managed.
  • Actively disrupt the companies “business as usual” in a positive way so as to build capacity and capability in a continuous way. This allows the organisation and the team to scale up in a long term sustainable way.
  • Make the tough decisions early.
  • Learn the lessons of previous economic downturns and change projects so as to ensure the same mistakes are not made again, and
  • Recognise success and continue to have fun along the journey.

This all sounds simple (and it is) but it is not easy. It takes focus, good strong proactive leaders committed to ensuring the important things happen and not just the urgent things of modern business. It is about going beyond reactive firefighting and consciously picking & executing the plan for/route to success.

Staying at the top of your game is about changing before you are forced to change. This means having a good team committed to getting incrementally better at what they do.

It is about confidence and momentum.

Just start the journey.

 

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The Power of Leader Reflection

I am lucky enough to work with a number of very effective professional leaders (Chief Executives, Founding/Managing Directors & Board Chairs) as they seek to perform & stay at the top of their game. These people are leading high performance teams and growing influential brands.

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Reflection requires: A journal, a small amount of regular time & to be a priority. This is what I use.

Most leaders find the reality of leading to be a lonely place. Many seek a confidential sounding board that helps and supports their thinking in a supportive coaching environment away from their work place, their work team & their Board of Directors. They are looking to invest in themselves and in doing so the health and well being of those people and organisations they lead.

Whilst specific situations vary there is always a start point of seeking to be better at leading themselves. It kind of stands to reason that if you can’t lead yourself extremely well then there is no way you will lead others at a high level. There has to be be balance. Often while sitting and listening to a CEO articulate an issue, situation or people problem they face they will say “You know what just saying that out loud has given me the clarity I need to make the decision.” The process of reflection is a powerful leadership tool so how do you make it part of what you do?

Reflection is a critical skill for any leader to have and it is always among the first few things that are discussed when leaders seek personal development. In fact there is a considerable body of research that backs this up. This article from HBR: Want to be an Outstanding Leader? Keep a Journal outlines just how powerful this tool is. It has some great suggestions and methodology and online there are many more such articles.

I have personally kept a reflections journal (pictured above) for the last 4 years. It provides insights, clarity and decisions for me as a CEO & consultant;

  • Setting aside regular quiet time to update and reflect on what I am seeing and how I am feeling about my role and the people I lead & influence. I actually tend to use air flights as the time to do this i.e. travelling to or from Auckland etc. On a recent return flight from the USA I wrote 14 pages of reflections, ideas, lessons learnt, observations about people I had met and who had influenced me.
  • I tend to write based against my Purpose and Values. This provides a framework and often as I reflect on situations I challenge whether I am living my Purpose and Values. Often this process alone can provide clarity to difficult decisions or provide the reflection that a decision I have made was the right one.
  • Focussing on the situation and how I am feeling about it allows me to deal with the big issues that tend to keep you awake at night. It allows closure & to reflect on not only my actions but the actions of others.
  • Every 6 months or so I read back over my journey. When you do this you see how far you have come in the way and level you think at,  plus exactly what you have achieved. It serves as a story about your journey.
  • Use clever titles such as “What am I seeing?’, “What lessons did I learn here?”, “What do I need to change?”, “Did I live my Purpose & Values in this situation?”, “Why did this not work?”.
  • I find an actual hard copy journal and hand writing is far more effective than online options I have tried in the past. Use a journal with blank pages.
  • Capturing lessons learnt is vital to ensure the same mistakes are not made time & time again. It means different outcomes occur rather than just those that don’t work.
  • I use this journal when I seek one on one coaching to keep me at the top of my game.

Like all habits it initially takes disciplined focus to carry your notebook and to set aside regular time to reflect. Supporting other leaders to do this also takes time. Some are naturally good at it, whilst others need help to be able to see that bigger picture & what is really going on. Over time this becomes just part of who we are and what we do. Over time these CEO’s use the same skills to help individuals and teams within their organisation to reflect, learn and grow. The best leaders are the best managers, mentors & coaches. The best leaders develop other leaders.

In this space the focus needs to be on behavioural competencies rather than technical ones. CEO’s will always talk about people (developing others, supporting them with change, altering behaviours, dealing with poor performance, developing a great culture, getting others to step up, building a sense of team) and the softer skills rather than the technical skills. This tends to be because we get taught technical skills all through life, education & work but no one teaches us the soft/people skills unless we are lucky enough to have good mentors, teachers or a work environment that invests heavily in leadership development. They are always seeking to develop their skills as a generalist leader rather than those of a technical specialist.

The role of a leader is to disrupt business as usual & to grow the capability and capacity of people and the organisation. Reflection is a critical tool in self development and the leadership & influence of others.

How do you reflect?