Working smarter as leaders
General Electrics’ iconic leader Jack Welch once said “A leaders job is to look into the future and see the organisation not as it is, but as it should be”. To be a truly adaptive leader you need to ask questions early, try a bit on ‘monotasking’ and understand the influence of confident accurate communication demonstrating your value as a leader.
In our third 2024 Business Leaders Group, we tackled how leaders could identify projects that suit the right people, frame areas of long-term interest and flip wasted effort into best efforts. For some that was defining what agility means in our own organisations, allowing people to make positive mistakes within reason and rather than to ‘do’ lists have to ‘be’ lists.
Recently Christian Stadler (Professor of Strategic Management at Warwick University) wrote about lessons from GE’s success in the 1990’s. A relentless drive towards efficiency, a new culture of informality that got things done. A trusted brand can be leveraged across a wide range of activities and don’t try and turn your business into something it’s not. All remain applicable today.
A well-stocked ‘second’ mind
Michael Burke (Business Strategist) talks of the need to be well read, remain relevant to your clients, but as we now consume 34 gigabytes of data per day, we struggle to remember insights and are often not as strategic as you would like as a leader. “Your mind is for having ideas, not holding them” writes David Allen author of ‘Getting things done’. Leaders need to rework the mental ratio, the quality of everything depends on the quality of thinking.
‘Building a second brain’, an accessible area to capture insights, knowledge and learnings where better structured thoughts can promote unique perspectives that can be sharpened, and the value of quality thinking and ideas realised.
Note to self – “Every time you take a note, ask yourself, how can I make this as useful as possible for my future self” (Tiago Forte – Author, Building a Second Brain).
The science of personal change success
With 48 thoughts per minute, you’re probably not thinking about personal change right this second. Change is continuous and all change is personal. As a leader, the three conditions for successful change are ‘I can, I want, I like’. Make change the default setting, always look for fresh start opportunities and make it fun (or less painful).
Your probability of change success can be influenced by looking at the ‘Force Multiplier’ improving effectiveness of an existing resource. More information isn’t always the key to better decisions, but a complete and accurate understanding multiplies your chances that you will make the best decision. Most change comes top down, focus on collaboration with all colleagues, they often have deeper knowledge and a broader view than you think. As a change leader work side by side with colleagues to show that you are willing to work in ways that will improve the team.
Our Business Leaders Group uses a personal change diagnostic to assess your probability of change success. It focusses across three key areas, change readiness including vision and personal energy, capability – do you have high performance habits and beliefs – do you have a positive mindset.
Our group results highlighted the need for renewed levels of personal energy, adopting more high-performance habits and boosting self-confidence, trust in your own abilities.
Beginning to think about change now?
Simon Cossey is Dafferns’ Business Development Consultant and part of our Strategic Advisory team.
