Category: Organizational Design

When to let go of organizational goals

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markus-winkler-LNzuOK1GxRU-unsplash (1)Photo by Markus Winkler on Unsplash

Goals. They are a cornerstone of organizational and performance management. Searching “goal” in Harvard Business Reviews search bar brings up 24,156 search results (as of Sep 1, 2020).  For leaders managing organizations, goals range from revenue, growth and expense goals to operational and customer goals. For employees, they are important motivators and markers of success. Irrespective – goal setting is a both a time of reflection and anxiety for managers and employees alike.

But what happens when a goal is no longer relevant? What if the purpose for the goal no longer exists or changes so drastically? If there’s ever been a time to rethink goals, it’s now. With markets behaving in unprecedented ways, organizations and their teams should be taking a step back to revisit pre-pandemic aspirations. The elephant in the room when doing so is …. does it still matter?

There has never been a better time to flex those agility and pivot muscles and to rethink your goals and approach to the future. Here are 4 steps on your reset journey.

  1. Clean your mental slate. Assume the goals you have today no longer exist (even if temporarily). In doing this, also clear out assumptions you’ve long held in the past about how markets and people work. This will be the most difficult task and will be one you have to come back to time and again.
  2. Study the market and your customers. It can be hard to lift attention away from your company’s performance and focus on external factors – but this is a critical first step. The world came to a near stop in March 2020 for many industries in North America and while some are recovering. Look beyond your current customer base at adjacent opportunities. Understand the market dynamics of the supply chain and activity beyond your current product offering. Derive insights based on market dynamics and people’s behaviours and habits.
  3. Make new hypotheses that impact your business. With a clean slate and insights, develop new and relevant hypotheses about your business and the role it plays in the market and customers. These hypotheses should form a rich narrative that is conscious of residual assumptions. During this exercise, go back to step one and ensure your hypotheses are grounded in new insight driving to the future vs. past experience only.  Take your time doing this – and continually ask yourself. What is this hypothesis grounded in – the past or the future?  Here’s one: “More people will work from home indefinitely, even after the pandemic, which will impact companies supporting commute travel and core commercial areas”. And another: “Borders are closed so we will have few newcomers to the country”. Both are testable and impact numerous industries.
  4. Stress test goals. Assume the hypotheses you’ve developed turn out to be true – develop new goals to meet your business objectives with these truths in place. Is the customer target you were aiming for last year still believable? Should you continue to pour marketing dollars into a channels that aren’t productive? If the answer is no, then it’s probably time for your organization and team to focus on new goals.

Once you’re clear on letting goal of your goals, there are three hard tasks to follow. The first is developing a set of new aspirational goals for your teams. The second is communicating the pivots and changes effectively to your leadership and their teams. The third is ensuring individual goals line up to these organizational ones. Even with companies that are well oiled machines, this can be a difficult task that can lead to confusion. Ensure that you have an engaging “why” narrative, a concise “what” strategy and a clear “how” plan cascaded at each level.

While these activities are not to be taken lightly – clearing the deck of  goals that are no longer relevant can free you and your teams to focus on what truly matters.

 

Why organizations spin

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In my experience, most people have the best of intentions at work. They see problems at work and want to solve them.  They create strategies, work plans and activities to try to fix the problem within their specific context.  While they get an A for effort, the reality is they may do more harm than good. Why?

  • Organizations are systems. The problem is that most issues are connected to other parts of the mothership. When a process breaks down in one area, trying to fix that area on its own could be a short term solve, but it could break or slow things down in other areas. A classic example is optimization of a single task – say call centre. We want to decrease the time on call at help desk. We may try to fix that by passing them off to another group or by speeding up the solve on the phone. But if we try to fix the system, we create resources so the call doesn’t happen in the first place.
  • People want to feel like they’re making a difference. They hear of an issue and set about trying to fix it without communicating or asking if other people are working on it. They forge ahead but often don’t know what they don’t know. This leads to …
  • Many programs, one goal. The number of projects and programs spun up to tackle and organizational priority can be astounding. It’s so rampant in large companies there are often additional projects to gather the activities so they are aligned. If I had to guess, any one organization has a multitude of innovation, onboarding, data projects, new customer etc. underway trying to solve the same or similar problems.

The result is wasted effort and, more importantly, time that could have been spent driving a new product forward, or on other valuable company projects. So how do we get beyond the spin? Organizations need to:

  • Declare – at the top of the house the strategy, workstreams and how is leading
  • Define – the activities for each workstream and who is leading
  • Drive – move with speed so people see results and don’t spin up more work

Purpose. Clarity. Speed. Seems easy, but we all know it’s not. With a leadership team open to exploring, talent that is keen, smart, creative and passionate and a dose of structure, you’re that much closer to solving the things that are important for your organization.

How to define what’s important to your organization

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In the world of organizational strategy,  brand and employee experience, companies trying to figure out who they are can be an infinite loop. Between strategy, vision, mission, purpose, values, principles, culture, models and many more,  where does a leader even begin? Let’s start with definitions  (Source: adapted from Google).

  • Strategy: a plan of action or policy designed to achieve a major or overall aim
  • Mission: a strongly felt aim, ambition, or calling
  • Vision: the ability to think about or plan the future with imagination or wisdom
  • Purpose: the reason for which something is done, created or for which it exists
  • Principles: a fundamental attribute determining the nature of something; an essence
  • Values: principles or standards of behaviour;  judgment of what is important in life
  • Culture: the customs, arts, social institutions, and achievements of a group
  • Model: a system or thing used as an example to follow or imitate

Looking at this list, a picture of a Venn diagram is beginning to emerge where Purpose overlaps with Mission, Strategy with Vision, Principles with Values (it has the world principles in it for crying out loud). And culture – well culture is just a part of everything so it’s the ultimate container. So – why do organizations feel like they need to check all the boxes and create bodies of work behind each of these? The answer is – they don’t and shouldn’t.

As we define the companies we build and lead, we need focus on what matters – the core and content in how we deliver on how we show up day to day. Let’s get back to the fundamentals of  Why (Purpose / Mission), What (Strategy  / Vision) and How (Culture / Values / Principles). Use whatever label you like,  but keep it to 3 and have each one clearly defined so they can be easily communicated and delivered.

Personally like using Purpose, Strategy and Culture to describe the big O (overall organization) and principles to get to specificity.

Building and momentum

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Yesterday I wrote about the behaviour behind streaks. Today, a similar topic on momentum and positive fly wheels. I’ve been working over the past 9 months on a new initiative. One which requires alignment of many many … did I say many … stakeholders. Over this time, it’s been a roller coaster of highs ( we’re getting somewhere! ) and lows ( we’re just talking in circles without direction ). In the last two weeks alone, there have been multiple cycles and loops.

This week though, something has changed. The energy has shifted and the air smells different. The initiative has carved out a foothold. The right instigations, right time, right place, right context – everyone has gotten on the train.

That’s the power of momentum when building something. You need the small wins to fuel the big wins (we’re not there yet) grounded in the grind. There is so much in the foundational set up for success. We need to align people, align problems, align intentions … and all of that alignment takes time.

I didn’t truly understand the time it takes until literally this moment. But once the ball gets rolling it gathers momentum and continues down it’s path. This is the double edged momentum sword. If it’s not going down the right hill,  the sheer energy it takes to bring it back can be crippling. Once you get it going on the right path – that’s when the magic happens. So what is your the rolling rock you will use build the next game changing product or service.

Leaders as a team

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Often when we talk about teams, we refer to working teams on projects. Groups of people tackling code, or a program or delivery of customer experience. While teaming is important at the execution level, it’s even more important amongst leaders. This may seem obvious but it is not common reality – especially in large organizations where you don’t get to pick your leadership peers.

In the past 9 months of being in one of the worlds largest corporations, I’ve seen and experienced this directly.  It’s rarely a product of intent (unless individuals are highly political and self-serving). Rather, unless there is a deliberate focus on creating a sense of one team – something that happens naturally in a start up where the goal / mission of the organization is more acute. Structures in large organizations cause silos due to defined mandates. Within silos, leaders have responsibilities for their own success, not necessarily success of the portfolio or area.

How do we organize and lead to deliver on bigger mandates? Well – I’ve been experimenting with a few things in the past months:

  • Try to get everyone in a room as much as practical
  • Force conversations out into the open that were previously 1:1 outside rooms
  • Create a trusted forum without fear of speaking up
  • Have no ego (this is a running theme)
  • Have no fear of losing your job
  • Document and action
  • …

As a leader, what are your strategies and tactics for teaming with your peers?

When ego gets in the way

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Today I encountered two instances of ego getting in the way good decisions – one personal and one professional.

For the personal project, I designed a house, engaging a well known and reputable architect. We did all the right things, consultations with the city, discussions with neighbours, thoughtful design. When we submitted to the city, despite support from city staff, neighbours and current planners, one voice in the room (the city’s ex-planner who’s outsized ego and outdated point of view is well known) – chose to oppose it, swaying the group to deny the application. I appealed. This was 4 months ago. Today was the appeal hearing. Typically taking days or weeks with witnesses, expensive lawyers and experts, the tribunal chair took 39 minutes to declare in favour of the project.
One ego caused hours of wasted effort and months of wasted time.

At work, a similar story emerged. Strong personality + ego + impatience + stress = an explosive combination. Cultures build in an environment of openness, not when there are directives and an unwillingness to question. Respectful opposition is seen as undermining when it should be additive. Building a high performing organization is not a straight line but iterates and pivots over time. Ego gets in the way by driving towards the bullet answer. The danger with ego at work is that there are too many other factors – concern for financial security, career and reputation impact.
Ego can throw meaningful work and culture into disarray. 

From my experience, some hallmark signs of ego include:

  1. Unable to let go of a firm belief even when faced with clear evidence to the contrary
  2. The inability to see issues from different perspectives
  3. A lack of listening and a focus on talking “at you”
  4. In the extreme – delusional reality and distorted memory
  5. The clear need to be right (even when no one else cares)
  6. …

What are signs you’ve seen?

How to identify a leader in the making

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Over the past 20 years of my working career, I’ve been amazed at the caliber of young leaders who I’ve had the privilege of working with. While this group of individuals have been exceptionally diverse, they have / had common hallmarks:

  • Depth in 1+ craft(s) – eg analytics, strategy, design etc.
  • Strategic viewpoints and broader business context;
  • Humility grounded in their desire to learn;
  • The ability to hone in on the part of the conversation that matters;
  • Presence and confidence in communication;
  • Kindness balanced with firmness
  • Positive energy

Some memorable examples:

  • The head of finance who went toe-to-toe with the President daily
  • The highly analytical strategist who developed C-Suite strategies
  • The design thinking strategist who could marry consumer insight with organizational context to create highly effective journeys
  • The analytics leader who’s composure and framing were well beyond their years
  • The entrepreneur who runs an enterprise level start up

These young leaders – whether currently in my world or in memory – inspire a higher bar for myself and my teams. Who are the emerging leaders in your world?

Do you need to restructure your org?

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Organizations are entrenched in their habits and routines. When these become sub optimal and structures need to pivot, how do leaders know when, what and how? Too often, restructures don’t result in their intended benefits – masking issues by moving pieces on the board around, without putting the work in to uncover root causes underlying why restructures occur in the first place. But delaying changes can cause high performing teams to lose momentum and languish. Consider the following when planning for restructures.

Key indicators of when.

There’s no signal that lights up that says “Restructure Now!”. The balance in any scenario is to remove the barriers and issues that keep high performing teams from achieving objectives without losing the things that are working well. Some signals that your organization is ready for a restructure include:

  • Existing structure doesn’t optimally support the current context of the organization
  • Deep dive into root causes cannot be addressed in the current structure
  • There is overwhelming consensus across leadership that a restructure is needed

What to restructure.

Many aspects of an organization are involved in a restructure. Organizational processes and structure, grounded in foundations.

  1. Starting with foundations, leadership needs to align to purpose, mission, vision and strategy. Without this core, any restructure will fail as leaders will operate off their own playbook – leading to mixed messages and spin.
  2. Determining the appropriate org structure is critical once there is alignment at the foundational level. How are teams organized to deliver on the strategy? Who are leaders for the teams? What are their roles and responsibilities? Clearly defined decision rights are key to both structure and process.
  3. Building the right processes to deliver within the org structure includes developing the routines of teams, how they communicate and are accountable to the organization and each other. To be successful, processes need to be grounded in the values of the organization and defined by a set of design principles that help to guide, not overly govern behaviour.

How to actually do the damn thing. 

This one is entirely dependent on the context of the organization. Restructures need to be handled with care as they impact at the intersection of human ambition and need for safety and security. Answering key questions when thinking about how will help to inform the how. Consider the following:

PEOPLE

  • How fragile are teams in the current state?
  • Are teams asking for change?

STRUCTURE

  • What is the organization’s readiness for restructure?
  • How severe is the anticipated impact?

 TIMING

  • How urgent is change needed?
  • What is the history of restructures and reactions?

There isn’t just one way to think about changing an organization. What’s important is to have a deep understanding of the rationale, context and ultimately, the people within your organization. Any change will have unintended consequences but the risk of status quo when the organization is calling for change is worse. Leaders need to take great care in not just thinking, but planning a thoughtful approach to changing their organizations. Ultimately, they and their teams will need to live the new world they create.