In today’s turbulent times, how does building resilience-enabled leadership set the stage for success?
Can you answer a resounding “Yes!” to each of the following questions?
· Do you overcome or are you troubled by today’s changing financial and political environment?
· Does your leadership have effectively measurable ways to adjust more easily to the changing environment?
· Are you consistently more agile catching up with or being ahead of the competition?
· Is your leadership able to enhance capacity for learning and adaptation to what seems to be a shrinking or more discerning customer base?
· Does your leadership have the confidence to know you will handle what the future may bring?
· And, does your leadership have the integrated power to persist when things don’t work out as was planned?
If the answer to each and every one of these questions is yes, then you have a resilience–enabled state of mind. Also, your company probably has a culture that encourages continuing development allowing its employees to thrive in the turbulent environment. In other words, you and your company have an attitude of resilience-enabled leadership.
If you are not confident that you have a resilient organization, and you would like to experience the benefits of capitalizing on the changing business environment, then read on to establish what your company can do. Here you will learn an approach on how to address today’s challenges and benefit from building resilience-enabled people, processes, principles, standards, technology and leadership.
As such, the purpose of this document is to stimulate your thinking and encourage you to transform into action a resilience-enabled motivation within your leadership structure. As the following diagram suggests, by invoking a resilience-enabled leadership infrastructure, quality of life for you, your staff and your company can be improved.
We believe that a person and or a company with resilience-enabled leadership embodies and fully embraces the following definition of resilience:
· “An ability to adjust more easily to a changing environment”;
· “An ability to enhance our capacity for learning and adaptation”;
· “The confidence to know we can handle whatever may come our way”;
· “The integrated power to persist when things don’t work out as planned”;
· “A state of mind that encourages us to continue our personal and organizational development and allow ourselves to thrive in this changing environment”.
However, does a particular leader have the skills, abilities, attitudes and knowledge to be a Resilience-Enabled Leader? If so, what are these qualities and how would an interested observer recognize them? To answer this question, we need to explore each of the domains where Resilience-Enabled Leadership is very important. Observing your leaders in action within each of the domains will determine if a company has the thought processes in place to support their resilience-enabled leaders. The following is an exploration of six defined domains within the corporate world:
Image/Profile:
This defines your domain of business presence. In other words, as a company, who are you? In terms of each of the resilience definition components above, a variety of questions should be addressed such as:
· What does our organization stand for?
· What are the values of our organization?
· What principles guide our employees' actions in the form of standards?
· How do others see you?
· How do you want others to see you?
In this domain, a resilience-enabled leader uses awareness questions such as:
· Am I in control of the image or profile?
· How likely is it that our image or profile could be tarnished or viewed as false?
· Do I need to be in better control of how our image or profile is perceived?
· Do our people have the ability to adjust more easily to a changing environment?
And then, for each of these questions, as appropriate, resilience-enabled leaders put in place quality metrics and customer focused feedback to ensure the right questions are getting the right answers. As you perhaps can anticipate, the subject is not as simple as putting in place some basic metrics. The principles you define to operate by and the standards you put in place to support those principles are a cornerstone of how your customers will “see you”. The processes and technology, to keep your good intensions on track will give you the data necessary to adjust your approach as appropriate towards what you define as success.
Operations & Business Processes:
This domain represents your effectiveness and efficiencies of getting the right things done correctly. In this domain you define the way in which what work gets done in what manner to deliver your products and services. In terms of each of the resilience definition components above, a variety of questions should be addressed such as:
· Do our people have that innate ability to enhance capacity for learning and adaptation?
· Are our processes documented and thereby providing consistent quality output?
· Are there up to date process maps used in planning future organization changes to better handle new or changing products and their delivery mechanisms?
· Are your detailed procedures documented and followed by the staff responsible to carry out their intended actions in line with the quality specified?
In this domain, a resilience-enabled leader would also use awareness enhancing questions such as:
· How can the operational processes go wrong or off track?
· Do we educate our staff in operation of these processes and, if so, do they understand how to operate them effectively and efficiently?
· How effectively do these operational processes support our vision and goals?
· How important are these processes to me and to the successful delivery of a product of the quality required?
With the analysis in place, the processes and technology, to keep your good intensions on track will give you the data necessary to adjust your approach as appropriate towards what you define as success.
Corporate Culture:
This is observed in the attitudes and behaviours of the employees and their customer interactions. In terms of each of the resilience definition components above, a variety of questions should be addressed such as:
· Do our people have the confidence to know we will handle what may come our way?
· What is the way in which the people in the organization behave towards each other?
· How do their authority figures, their suppliers, and their clients behave in a variety of situations?
· How should they behave?
In the domain of corporate culture, a resilience-enabled leader uses awareness questions such as:
· Is the environment a source of stress for me, the people around me and/or for our customers?
· Does the environment defining the culture support my personal vision and goals?
There is no quick answer to put in place adjustments to the culture. A start to this, however, is to have or strive for answers to the question “What culture themes should be demonstrated in the behaviours?” And then put in place management and leadership initiatives to encourage and seek out the preferred behaviours. We believe that in today’s hard times, customers are open to some “soft” and empathetic yet pragmatic ways of dealing with the tough issues. Following that line of reason, the processes and technology, to keep your good intensions on track will give you the data necessary to adjust your approach as appropriate towards what you define as success.
Performance/Value/Viability:
This domain represents the output dollar efficiency of your operation. This valuation embodies the measurement of the actual against the desired outcomes of the business products & services. Metrics in terms of cost, quality & timeliness in the eyes of the clients inside the organization and by your paying customers is a key ingredient. In terms of each of the resilience definition components above, a resilience-enabled leader uses a variety of awareness generating questions such as:
· Do we have the ability to adjust more easily to the changing environment?
· Does the balance of dollar output to value for the customer support our corporate and my personal vision and goals?
· Can the balance go wrong or off track given the current processes and procedures and enabling technology?
· Am I in control of the value mechanisms and/or do I need to be in better control of them?
Keeping production performance aligned with value, the processes and technology, to keep your good intensions on track will give you the data necessary to adjust your approach as appropriate towards what you define as success.
Jobs/Skills/Org Structure:
In this domain we find the representation of the work people undertake in theorganization. In terms of each of the resilience definition components above, the resilience-enabled leader raises a variety of awareness heightening questions such as:
· Have we defined in our job structure the flexibility to recognize and reward the ability to adjust what we do to more easily adapt to a changing environment?
· Do we reward this?
· Do our people have the integrated power, the “let’s get it done” teamwork attitude to persist when things don’t work out as planned? Remember the stories of the resilience of the Knights Templar who, after each failure and catastrophe of the Crusades for 200 years from 1129, dusted themselves off and returned to the fray. Not that it should take that long, but you, hopefully, get the point. Resilience and resilient–enabled leaders press on in the face of challenges and are given the management support and the opportunity to fail, learn from that failure and move forward until they succeed.
· Have we an innate ability to enhance our capacity for learning and adaptation in the face of change?
· Have we the right skills in place and/or are we constantly redefining what skills are necessary to meet today’s challenges not yesterdays challenges?
· Are we learning from our failures as well as our successes and rewarding that awareness publicly as an example of the behaviours being encouraged?
· Do the people systems effectively match up the skills of the workforce with the tasks necessary to efficiently deliver the products and services in our portfolio?
Given the processes and technology are in place to keep your good intensions on track, you should have the data necessary to adjust your approach as appropriate towards what you define as success.
Management Systems:
This domain includes the characteristics and qualities of both Leadership and Management. In terms of each of the resilience definition components above, the resilience-enabled leader raises a variety of awareness heightening questions such as:
· What are the accountability vehicles for the leadership and/or the management to use?
· Are your management and your leadership ensuring all the wheels are going around at the right pace allowing them to meet defined expectations?
· Is there a viable succession plan in place IE: the baby boom impact is already underway?
· Are the definitions of resilience being aligned with performance targets?
· Is there consistent communication around the requirements for resilience?
· Are we learning from our failures as well as our successes and rewarding that awareness publicly as an example of the behaviours being encouraged?
· Are the appropriate quality metrics in place to evaluate the challenge of the changing economic climate?
· Are the products and services offered in alignment with the challenge of the changing economic climate?
Enabling Technology:
This domain represents the use of existing technology or development of new technology to supplement, support and enable all of the above. These technologies could be the use of the telephone, cell-phone, fax, e-mail, work queues, automated process functionality, data bases, computer applications, and any of a myriad of personal productivity and/or communications devices, etc. In terms of each of the resilience definition components above, a variety of questions should be addressed to ensure that the supporting technology is truely supporting what is important.
In other words, while being aware of what is important, a resilience-enabled leader uses a variety of awareness generating questions in each and every of the above mentioned domains to support the definition of resilience tabled above. In a resilience-enabled leadership environment, for each domain and definition of resilience, questions such as the following are consistently tabled and addressed:
· How can this go wrong or off track?
· Is this a source of stress for me or others?
· Does this support my personal and/or the corporate vision and goals?
· How important is this to me and to the success of the company?
· How would this affect me if this were lost or broken?
· Am I in control of this?
· How likely is it that this could be lost or broken?
· Do I need to be in better control of this?
“Resilience-enabled leadership” is, therefore, a state of thinking and resultant behaviour for a person and also collectively for a company that embodies and aligns a variety of awareness generating questions within each of the domainsin concert with the resilience definition components:
· “An ability to adjust more easily to a changing environment”;
· “An ability to enhance our capacity for learning and adaptation”;
· “The confidence to know we can handle whatever may come our way”;
· “The integrated power to persist when things don’t work out as planned”;
· “A state of mind that encourages us to continue our personal and organizational development and allow ourselves to thrive in this changing environment”.
A study is currently underway to evaluate a select group of companies to determine their level of Resilience-Enabled Leadership. In terms of the resilience definition and the concept of a resilience-enabled leader, they are identifying what the resilience-enabled leadership are doing to make a difference. Results will be shared as they become available and sharable. In the mean time, how well do you and your company measure up to resilience-enabled leadership?
Comments, questions, queries and constructive feedback is welcome via E-Mail to Michael.Groves31@gmail.com
Sincerely, Michael Groves: Copyright (C) 2009 Retirement & Transition Resilience Enterprises
Providing personal and multi-levels of corporate leadership Transition Resilience workshops and programs such as:
· Resilience-Enabled Leadership
· Strategy Focused Goal Alignment
· Resilient Retirement
· One-on-one, group or team developmental coaching
· Coaching Skills for Managers course including practical application practice labs