I was re-reading Jack Stack’s ‘A Stake in the Outcome’ over the last couple of weeks and a comment he made about the nature of the business race we’re running really jumped out at me. Teams would probably associate their long-term goal, or BHAG as Jim Collins calls it, as a marathon; an event of known length. At the opposite end of the spectrum there’s the encouragement to sprint towards near-term goals, often with a Scrum or Agile approach as recommended by Jeff Sutherland.
Category Archives: leadership Development
What is your saying/doing ratio?
Accountability Works Does the team understand where leaders are steering the ship or is the whole thing misaligned? How strong is the level of organisational trust to follow the course? My clients are held to account each quarter for delivery on their highest priorities. We all acknowledge that ‘everything’ won’t get done, but we do need to be accountable for that handful of things that, as a team, we’re committed to doing.
Do you live by rules or conventions?
I recently spent time in the company of Dr Kaihan Krippendorff, an inspiring strategist I had the privilege to meet through the Gazelles Coaching program. Kaihan is a business strategist, keynote speaker, consultant and best-selling author of four books, most recently Outthink the Competition. A former consultant with McKinsey & Company, he now writes one of the most popular blogs on fastcompany.com, ‘Outthinkers’.
Are You a Transformational Leader?
A Key Challenge A key challenge for my clients is that the pursuit of fast growth requires a series of transformations in their business. By definition we can’t dramatically drive up performance without making a number of changes: perhaps some different roles and people, a new strategy, a switch of emphasis in the client/product mix, some new execution disciplines and so on. But this puts an added load on the leaders, so what can we do?