My consulting colleague, Gaye Clemson, and I are continually refining a leadership and strategy execution model for Transformational Change based on our collective client experiences. We propose that this model reflects the reality of addressing specific organizational and the emergent challenges that leaders and their enterprises face in the second decade of this 21st Century. Rather than reiterating what leaders already know regarding the impact of accelerating technology advancement, globalization and other industry specific realities, let us default to the nimble character of the model we suggest by getting to the point: time. Time represents a precious variable that both leaders and their organizations simply don’t have enough of when addressing their organizational challenges and this applies to transformations, too. Any progressive change approach which truly resonates with clients must be designed to address this fact – the zeitgeist of current organizational reality. Unfortunately, most of the models I see emerging from academia in my area of applied psychology and related business publishing are not emphasizing time as a critical variable.
Executive Summary
- Time is a highly precious commodity for both leaders and employees in today’s organizations
- Current transformational change programs are generally not meeting expectations through internally resourced strategies or external management consulting.
- We propose that the application of integrated Agile Strategy Execution and Attentive Leadership practices provides on-time scalability for Transformational Change initiatives.
- Agile Strategy Execution is a comprehensible and dynamic set of principles and techniques advanced from existing Agile management practices (Figure A).
- Attentive Leadership is defined as the practice of progressive, validated and reliable, leadership behaviors applied under the umbrella of Transformational change (Figure B). In our model it includes an extensible, on-time learning framework (Figure C)
- When integrated, Agile Strategy Execution and the practice of Attentive Leadership provides leaders and their stakeholders with the tools that allow the organization to plan, adapt and learn while maximizing productivity and time.
The Details
What has become abundantly clear is that our clients no longer have the luxury, nor appetite, for “heavy” time intensive leadership and organizational transformation interventions. Their experiences with extended leadership development sessions preparing for change often felt good at the time of delivery, however, any learning was often dismissed to old habits upon their return to the actual dynamics of their offices. In other words, organizational culture and its unconscious norms wins – period. The same applies to their investment in expensive transformational consulting engagements. Some clients have even candidly shared their perspective on the time and related expense of project creep when working with our own management consulting industry. In exploring this, the root of these issues appears to be the often unspoken, perhaps unconscious, conflict of interest consultants have in serving their client’s best interest versus meeting their firm’s aggressive revenue objectives through extending billable hours.
The challenges of managing these old change paradigms and the politically charged outcomes that often result when transformational success is not achieved are becoming unacceptable. The leaders we have had the privilege to work with have too much expected of them in increasingly shorter time frames and are hungry for more effective, transparent, development methods interlinked with the responsibilities of their roles. This was characterized by one client, a Senior Vice President of HR at a Fortune 500 and consistent with sentiment we continually hear: the explicit desire for nimble team approaches that weave in best leadership practices with an agile execution framework. This requirement includes instituting collaborative productivity practices and real-time organizational learning. Our clients instincts tell them they need to move fast, smart, and sustainably.
Emotionally, this all boils down to the very human desire that all stakeholders can participate in a highly productive day which concludes with the personal and organizational satisfaction that significant progress has been achieved towards common goals. Additionally, they want to contribute to a work cycle which also includes space to enjoy their personal time and associated self-care which they recognize results in a renewal of their internal energy. They, like any of us, instinctively know that this is what work should be, so they can sustainably return and bring their best selves and enthusiasm to their organizations and customers.
In the next few paragraphs, Gaye and I provide a brief outline to our model by illustrating the generic elements of Agile Strategy Execution and how it is informed through Attentive Leadership practices. When implemented, these two disciplines are intertwined in real-time and provide tremendous efficiencies in advancing transformational initiatives.
Agile Strategy Execution
Our interest in agile strategy execution resulted from watching traditional five-year strategic planning models run smack into the ‘Agile’ movement and realizing the inherent contradiction of the two. To deal with this conundrum, Gaye and a fellow business strategy expert decided to take the best practices of strategic planning and integrate them with ‘agile concepts’. The end result was an easy to understand set of principles and techniques practically organized in a meaningful and easily deployable Agile Strategy Execution Framework™ (Figure A) as espoused in their 2016 book Agile Strategy Execution Revolutionizing the How!
Figure A: Agile Strategy Execution
At its heart, is the understanding that agility doesn’t happen because of just going fast or iterating a lot, though both can be enabling attributes. Rather, it means leading the execution of strategy such that the organization becomes aligned, accountable and responsive through real-time productivity. Note that the term ‘real-time’ is not used lightly but represents an entirely different mindset and often a culture and governance shift from reactive to proactive decision-making processes based on analysis of quantitative and qualitative data, iterative experimentation, strategy adjustment, plan and capability updates – all informed through learning feedback loops.
Attentive Leadership©
As noted, we have labeled our approach to leadership and its development in this model as “Attentive Leadership”. Rather than spending months, perhaps years, statistically deriving a new leadership style, Attentive Leadership is characterized as a mindset of leveraging progressive, validated and reliable leadership research through its application under the umbrella of Transformational change practices. Additionally, it includes any other context specific, well vetted study or humane leadership practice that will support the agile requirements of a transformation. This has included, though is not limited, to leadership principles drawn from Transactional (a major bridging style to Transformational practices), Adaptive, Transformative, Participative, Authentic, and applicable research from what is now branded Neuroleadership. It is continually enhanced through our real-time learning with clients.
In other words, like our agile strategy execution processes, Attentive Leadership is more about a leadership mindset and capacity, which when exercised, represents an awareness of both the strategic, tactical and emotional (especially one’s own) context of the circumstance. It includes thoughtful behavior shifts which will best serve immediate stakeholders, their teams, and the larger organization while appreciating that the next leadership circumstance might require a very different set of behaviors. Sometimes, this contingency approach requires that shared leadership behaviors need to be collaboratively established in the moment to support the objectives of the transformation.
We recognize that this reads like a tall order, but we are finding that by using a proactive on-boardng process introduced through an appreciative orientation and learning methods statistically preferred by the various audience groups, trust and goodwill are quickly established. More notably, participants in the change movement instinctively begin to see a way of interlocking and realizing business and personal objectives in their work. You may personally recognize that this individual orientation often feels unattainable during significant change initiatives and research suggests is often a primary source of program resistance. Once this positive cycle is established, old techno-structural silos and processes along with associated cultural habits can be honestly examined and quickly replaced with innovative agile behavior which everyone has a voice in creating and advancing.
The Model ©
Our model is illustrated in Figure B and includes five primary components framed within the context of a continuous learning feedback loop. A summary of each component is provided below.
Figure B: Attentive Leadership & Agile Strategy Execution Model©
- Identification of the overall Transformational Objectives, which are often delivered in the form of the presenting strategy and execution challenge by the client upon our entry to their system.
- Data Collection which can include observational, non-intrusive, qualitative, quantitative and always triangulated using agile principles to ascertain the organization’s readiness, ability and sentiment regarding change.
- Transformational Assessment including data analysis and initial feedback to the organization.
- Collaborative Alignment including joint discovery of key themes, tuning of future vision and agreement with stakeholder teams regarding the overall transformational objectives and initial action steps. A shared understanding is established here acknowledging that agile adaptations will occur through program learning and emerging environmental influences, including changes to the competitive landscape.
- Scalable Learning and Initiation of Transformation where learning is established through multiple methods emphasizing on-time delivery and research based role-based preferences. Supporting tools can include short-clip video, collaborative & social methods, ILT recordings, etc. On-boarding is initially centered on the primary change agents, HR/OD, and senior leadership (collectively called “Mentors”) then scales and radiates out to the rest of the system through functional Leadership (“Guides”), program participants (“Advocates”) and other internal and external “System Stakeholders”. Content and modelling of practices is deliberately done in the context of work agendas and integrated into the organization’s HR employee coaching and performance assessment practices – see figure below. Metrics include stakeholder dashboards designed to collect both behavioral and business based leading and lagging indicators.
Figure C: Scalable Learning and Initiation of Transformation
Conclusion
While this model was theoretically derived from our combined experience in industry, it reflects pragmatic trial and error as we have attempted to help our clients get transformational change right through the context of agile strategy and execution. This is always bounded through respect of the client’s resource limitations, most notably, their time. Implementing our model requires a thoughtful systems perspective balanced by a participative dialogic process so clients can effectively identify and eliminate old habits, test new ideas, learn and create – an iterative process which research has consistently shown is critical for sustainable innovation and transformation. Further, it always includes a direct line of sight to our client’s and their customers expressed best interests. When a gap is sensed between the two, we tackle that first. Whenever possible, we encourage direct involvement of both our client’s customers and partners. Together, we all learn from what works, but even more so, from what doesn’t. Rather than finger pointing we deliberately apply this learning and together we all grow through better appreciation of our collective strengths. This all leads to quicker increases in productivity, external performance and customer satisfaction. Ultimately, we strive to make our clients self-sufficient, so they can continue using and enhancing Attentive Leadership and Agile Strategy Execution practices long after we have left the privilege of their company.
Ms. Clemson and Dr. De Nault encourage and welcome your questions and comments. Related writing: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/making-metrics-magical-gaye-i-clemson/
