What We Do
Clarifying Strategy
Every organization has some sort of strategy – whether explicit or implied – the issue is how clear, intentional, and focused it is – and how widely shared, supported, and understood the strategy is among the executive team. We work with senior executives and their teams to clarify and confirm the key elements of their business strategy. This involves reviewing existing plans and background documentation to tease out elements of their current strategy; conducting surveys and interviews with members of the executive team and other key staff to determine strengths and weaknesses with the current strategy and identify opportunities for improvement; evaluating key external forces and internal capabilities; facilitating conversations to review and confirm existing strategic choices and/or to craft a new direction for the organization; and providing advice and coaching to executives and their teams as they seek to identify and address those few key decisions and courses of action that have the greatest chance of raising the organization’s chances of success.
Aligning Leadership Behaviour
We also work with executives and their teams to identify the behavioural implications of the strategic choices they make. For instance, if an executive team decides that customer focus is going to be a major strategic thrust for the organization, we help them understand what that means for them as individuals and a team in terms of how they need to ’show up’ to support the strategy. In the case of customer focus, this may mean getting out into the field and talking to customers on a regular basis, adopting a service oriented approach when dealing with colleagues and internal departments, sharing stories that exemplify the essence of what is expected of staff when dealing with customers, and backing staff up when they diverge from policy to make a situation right with a customer. Let’s face it, actions speak louder than words. How many organizations have you encountered that state that they are all about satisfying the needs of customers and yet when you call to speak to someone in charge about a concern you learn they are always in meetings and never return your calls? If leaders’ actions and behaviours don’t square with the stated strategy and direction of the organization, is it any wonder staff and customers become cynical and implementation languishes?
Through the use of leading edge assessments and structured dialogue, we then help executives assess the degree of alignment between their current leadership behaviour and chosen business strategy. We in turn provide leaders with insight into ways they can strengthen their behaviours to better align with their chosen strategy. We use a variety of approaches that include:
identifying and applying leadership competencies
improving top management team effectiveness
enhancing executive accountability