Create, Don't Wait
New Strategic Leadership Conversations During the Downturn
By Don Arnoudse and Vince DiBianca
If current trends continue, what is the future you can predict for your organization and yourself? Is this what you want? If not, what is missing and what can you do to create the future you do want?
This thought piece looks at the emergence of a new leadership paradigm that can maximize performance and create a future consistent with what people most care about and what the world most needs.
The unprecedented complexity of the issues we face today calls for a fundamental shift in leadership. As demonstrated with the recent misfortunes of previously successful institutions like GM, Bear Sterns and Fannie Mae, more and more executives around the world have recognized the need for deep-seated change. Our current economic challenges present a unique opportunity to break out of the leadership paradigm that has gotten us this far, but which is now limiting what’s possible for ourselves and our organizations. For example, traditional hierarchical leadership models are not well suited to the realities of expanding, interconnected global networks.
As leaders, we have been well trained to find and implement new tools and techniques to improve our performance and to create breakthroughs. Process change, continuous improvement and reengineering are useful initiatives, but today these actions seem a bit like playing charades with blindfolds on. Never has the need for inventiveness, connectedness, integrity, transparency and new thinking been so critical. But our addiction to “more, better, faster” makes it impossible to operate in a fundamentally different way—in a way that could create very new, bold possibilities for the future of our organizations and, ultimately, our planet. Even the most ambitious executives are struggling. According to a recent McKinsey survey of executives undertaking a “step change”, 67% said they were unsuccessful in producing that step change in their organization. For the most part, what we’re doing isn’t working.
The prevailing top-down leadership paradigm has managers plan, predict and control. The paradigm that is emerging focuses on leaders engaging their employees and other stakeholders in generating the future now. Leaders can access their ability to generate a new reality and prosperity by developing their facility with language. Until recently, language was largely seen as being descriptive of reality (that is, people expressing their opinions, explanations, ideas and assessments as a description of their observations). Now we are realizing that language is also generative. When we speak, we create the future by declaring our commitments to a possible future that is not “predictable”, sparking and coordinating action through our requests and promises, and opening up conversations for new strategic options by shifting our view of “the way things are”.
As human beings, we all live in a ‘story’—a set of interpretations—about the meaning and implications of what is going on in the world. Our interpretations are shaped in language by the conversations we have—not only conversations with ourselves, our colleagues and our friends, but also the media-driven conversations of other expert ‘storytellers’ with which we are relentlessly inundated. The ‘story’ we create from this collection of conversations greatly affects what we see as possible, what actions we are willing to take and what results we are able to produce. For we live our story as if it were ‘the truth’. We tend to forget that even though we ‘wrote’ the story one way, we can also rewrite it another way if that would better serve our mission.
A predominant story in the media today speaks of downturn, scarcity, diminishing returns, and the “greatest economic crisis since the Depression”. This shared set of interpretations and related conversations is often combined with partisan attacks on any ideas put forth by the ‘other side’, which gives credence to the idea that people are essentially victims of the circumstances. Actions become reactions: we focus on protective and defensive maneuvers (like hunkering down, reducing costs, saving jobs and minimizing discretionary spending). We make strategic choices that align with waiting for the economy to turn around. The effects of living in this ‘downturn’ story can be resignation (“Nothing I do can make much of a difference right now…”) or blame (“It’s our leaders that created this mess…”). Neither of these moods is useful for creating a new future that inspires us, the people we lead and our customers.
One characteristic of most stories—whether they are for an individual, an organization or a society—is that they are rooted in the past. When a company looks primarily to its history to find answers for the future, the future becomes some extension, modification or better version of the same past. In essence, the past governs the future. A growing number of leaders today realize the limitations of this approach. They recognize that it is less important that they come up with ‘the right answer’ for the troops to carry out, and that it is vitally important that they ask powerful questions—questions that engage and inspire their people and that call for new interpretations. Questions that create new levels of accountability, innovative thinking, collaboration and performance. For success in these times depends on a leader’s ability to provoke conversations that hold the promise of a new future—a future not at all predicted by the past. A future that is invented by all the stakeholders, and that everyone involved begins living today.
These generative leaders are combining a deep self-awareness with new conversational competencies to match the challenges of our transforming world. They are creating new possibilities for the future by shifting the conversations—and the prevailing ‘downturn’ story—within their organizations. If we see an organization as a network of aligned commitments generated and sustained through conversation, then conversation is the bridge between what we care about and the results we promise to our customers and other stakeholders. When employees become fully engaged as ‘owners’ of a ‘new story’ about the future of the organization or their industry, then inventiveness and collaboration flourish. Everyone who owns the new story can see opportunities—not just problems—and start coming up with innovative ideas to create value in today’s marketplace.
We at the Praemia Group believe ‘deep self-awareness’ and ‘conversational mastery’ are essential elements of successful leadership today. The following five questions are fundamental for leading—and prospering—in today’s challenging environment. The conversations they provoke are not intended as a cure to fix anything. Rather they are the vitamins and minerals—the basic nutrients—necessary for a company to take in, circulate and use to thrive. Successful leaders look for which of these conversations are missing in their organization and then insure that forums exist in which each conversation can take place—skillfully and completely.
1. What do we really care about?
There is a shared concern that, in your lives as citizens, community members, employees and suppliers, connects you and defines who you are in the world. This is where your actions as individuals and as an organization should create an impact. This question may reveal a need to realign key organizational goals, strategies and actions with what you most care about.
2. What compelling future will we create together?
This future can be generated in a conversation that is exciting, compelling and sustainable, as well as one that “takes care of what we care about”. This inquiry may require the development of new stories about what’s possible with your people, customers, market and communities.
3. What is our prevailing story about our company today and what impact does that have on the predominant mood in our organization?
Looking at how you talk about your company to yourselves and to others can reveal where your story is either holding you back or opening up new possibilities. Carefully examining exactly what you are saying and how you are saying it can also point to moods, attitudes and behaviors that might better serve the contributions you want to make to your communities and the world.
4. What shared promises are we willing to make?
Every business runs on a network of inter-related promises: promises to customers, suppliers, shareholders and employees, promises to the communities and countries in which they operate, promises to the world. Your company’s shared promises must be based on the special gifts and talents that the organization, as a team of talented teams, has to offer. As a leader, your ability to make requests that generate authentic promises—and then manage those promises until fulfilled—is vital for overall success.
5. What opportunities lie in front of us—if only we were more bold and courageous?
Consider what you would do differently if this were the last chance you had to take care of what you and your customers care about. Test your ideas against higher standards. Will this inspire people? Will this be the kind of thing people will want to tell all their friends about? Will this idea make a meaningful difference in our lives and the lives of our customers? Refuse to settle for ordinary, ho-hum thinking.
Leaders operating from the emerging paradigm are not waiting for the economy to turn around. They are creating their collective future now. These five conversations can enroll people at all levels in taking accountability and ownership for that future. For example, Roberta Lang, Vice President and General Counsel at Whole Foods Market, noted that, “We are inquiring into what’s really required to succeed. In grassroots conversations with our team leaders and staff, consumers and the communities we serve, we’re reinventing our relationships with customers by asking questions like:
- What can we do to deeply connect within communities on a one-on-one level with our customers?
- What can we do to empower and reward our people in a new way for being powerful and creative in their in-store relationships and with customers?
- What are we doing to maintain and grow a team dynamic at this stage? What can we provide our team with to increase their effectiveness and create more balance in their lives?
- What does today’s environment bring to the surface? What is our company’s work? What is our personal work at this time?”
It takes courage to step forward and tell the “truth about today’s story”. It takes even more courage to publicly commit to creating an entirely new story in the face of what most people believe to be true. The emerging generative paradigm offers leaders the possibility of shaping the future—not the circumstances—through the skillful management of new conversations.
There are no guarantees of success. Everything clearly rests on our commitments—both those we make as individuals and those we share among ourselves. To sustain our energy and forward momentum, all we need do is continue learning and sharing our perceptions and interpretations of what is happening and keep creating new conversations that are consistent with what people most care about. As leaders, we have an opportunity to show our people how they can be the authors of the future. Let us assume that responsibility and consciously create what happens next—together.
The Praemia Group helps leaders and their teams achieve previously unthinkable levels of performance in the areas that matter most to them. We accomplish this by first helping our clients see the prevailing ‘story’ or way of viewing the world that exists in their organizations and how that is limiting their future. We then help leaders co-design a story for a new future with their teams that is exciting, compelling and sustainable, and which may have been previously seen as unattainable. Finally, we coach them through powerful conversations to align the commitments and coordinate the actions that will produce the results and fulfill the promises of that new future.