Here are my top five from my organizational consulting work. The paraphrasing is mine, the ownership is shared with my best clients (In fact, I could categorise my clients by the types of questions on the table).
1. How can we mobilize people?
Mobilize is a better term than engage. Engage is too passive. I can engage in a great conversation leading to nothing. Leadership of people inside the company (and outside the tent) is people mobilization. We need to think in these terms. Leading companies are/will be people mobilizing companies. The model is the social movement, not Harvard Business School (have I said this before?).
2.How to (re) shape a company operating system? AKA culture.
Yes, that is what it is. This is different from ‘achieving an X culture’. You never achieve a culture, as you never hold water with your hands. Well, not all. ‘Achieve’ as a destination is old linear stuff. Reality is continuous reshaping and moving forward. So, it’s a journey model [1], not a destination model.
3.How do I scale?
If I want a culture of safety? ownership? accountability? agility? customer-centrism? all of the above?, how can I inject these, at scale?
Many initiatives, good ones, Organizational Development ones, Coaching, team buildings, Leadership Developments, do not scale well. That does not make them useless. Don’t stop them. But things that don’t scale, or scale only by addition (a bit of this plus a bit of that, one team, next team) are weak when trying to shape an entire culture. If you want scale, it’s social movement [2].
4.How to create a behavioural DNA that ensures success and, in particular, strategy execution?
This is the key question. It starts by trying to figure out what that DNA looks like. Not a back of an envelop affair. Values, beliefs, words, need to be translated into behaviours. Once this is done, behaviours will scale via social copying [3], not teaching and presentations (Viral Change™ [4] Mobilizing Platform).
5. How to make change sustainable? (but not too much) I have dealt with this [5] in a little more detail in the past.
These are fundamental questions, category 1! Don’t spare effort.
Many questions occupy airtime. But some are a serious source of restlessness, of the healthy type. These are Top Restlessness potential. If you are very relaxed about them, I am so sorry.
________________________________________________________________________________________________
Feed Forward Webinar Series – the organization now, under new management
Register Here! [6]Next webinar: The Myths of Company Culture on 16th July. Learn how to successfully mobilize your people for a purpose and change culture. Culture is the key to the complex post Covid-19 future in front of us.
To change to ‘the new normal’ we must think and act differently in the management of our organizations. Bring your critical thinking brain, switched on. It’s a serious business. It may also be fun.
_______________________________________________________________________________________________
Don’t miss my new book: The Flipping Point – Deprogramming Management [7] – available now!