The three people factors and their patterns when some are missing, but as a leader, it’s important toknow how you can boost the factors.
See Patterns of Clarity, Unity, and Agility
The case study research revealed that leaders who were successful in drivingstrategic speed applied these four practices consistently.
Affirming strategies.
The first step in driving speed is to ensure all people in the organization know wherethey’re going and are motivated to go there. An affirmed strategy is not only a sound strategy, it’s also alive—that is, complete, clear, well communicated, and well understood by all stakeholders.
Leaders frequently spend a lot ofenergy on formulating a strategy and expressing it in a statement, but too often the statement exists in a vacuum.
Driving initiatives.
Driving initiatives is about execution. Without execution, any strategy will slow andeventually die. Senior leaders often assume their job is merely to “sponsor” strategic initiatives. Our research shows theexact opposite. They must get behind the wheel and drive.
Many of the skills that support this leadership practice are project-management skills, unfamiliar territory for manyexecutives, but it’s a territory they need to master. Though we don’t advocate turning senior leaders into projectmanagers, we do know that no initiative is too big to be treated as a project.
Managing climate.
Climate is what it feels like to work in a place. Unlike organizational culture, climate issomething that leaders have a tremendous amount of control over and that can be managed.
Managing climate is amatter of understanding its six dimensions (clarity, standards, commitment, responsibility, recognition, teamwork) andthe specific management tactics that improve it.
If you can change your organization’s climate in positive ways, theresulting changes will boost your employees’ motivation and performance and increase speed.
Cultivating experience.
Like solar, wind, and water power, experience is everywhere; however, it’s rarelycaptured and put to good use.
Most leaders know that smart, skilled, experienced employees are necessary to thesuccess of an organization and that more experienced employees and teams can move faster than those lessexperienced.
Many leaders, however, don’t know how to cultivate the experience of their many employees andcolleagues—how to capture it, make it visible, refine it, and harness it so that it becomes a powerful driver of results.
If you adopt and apply these four leadership practices, strategic speed in your organization or team will increase.
The first two—affirming strategies and driving initiatives—come to the forefront whenthere’s a need for speed in executing on a specific initiative or project. They help reduce the time needed for the initiative to begin creating value for the organization and increase the valueit contributes over time. We call this type of execution “initiative execution.”
The latter two practices—managingclimate and cultivating experience—come to the forefront when there’s a need to increase the speed of theorganization’s ongoing work. They help reduce time needed to begin creating value and increase value over time inall the daily tasks and objectives of the individuals and teams you influence. We call this type of execution “everydayexecution.”
As a leader, you need both of these lenses on strategic speed.
- One focuses on rapid execution of discrete strategies, change initiatives, and projects.
- The other focuses on creating an environment conducive to fast execution of projectsand achievement of objectives large and small: an organizational environment that supports speed every day.
Each practice affects clarity, unity, and agility in different ways, but without them, it is unlikely your organization willcreate the strategic speed it needs to continue to be successful and innovative.
Source: Forum Corporation
