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Frustrated that people don't follow your lead? Find out where your leadership style is fragile30/4/2024
I want to express my heartfelt appreciation for initiating this [leadership] training program.
How are you making sure your organisation is dedicated to the same direction, stays strongly engaged to move forward and your teams are striving to give their best? Great leadership is without doubt the (not so) secret recipe to lasting success. It creates the resilience to go through uncertain times and enables the necessary transformations.
What do you need to lookout for in 20204? Swiss leadership institute IMD shared earlier this month how they predict the trends for this year. Let me share them here with you.
How will you drive change in your organisation? Source: Seven leadership trends to focus on in 2024 This year might become a tough year and there might not be much we can do about it - especially about the external and geopolitical aspects. What we can focus on as a leader is to equip the organisation and enable our teams to give their best. And one special aspect is Energy!
Organisational Energy is what I want to talk about today. How often do we feel that work is draining our energy? That the efforts within an organisation are clashing; that people are lethargic and inert. And as a leader we simply wish that we are able to give our teams a spark. I recently came across the work of Heike Bruch and it is refreshing to see peers that are sharing the same vision and passion for energy, positivity, and enabling Drive within our work ecosystem. Here are some of her thoughts on the topic:
As with many things with effective teams, the collective energy is larger then the sum of the individuals. When we align this energy we can create synergy that triples or tenfolds the efforts. As a team we can then ride that wave and easily overcome barriers. We can collectively become antifragile. Source: TEDxZurich - Heike Bruch on How to Manage Organizational Energy When we look back at 2023 it was the year of ESG Reporting. The great thing about it is that companies started to take the topic of sustainability seriously and allocated resources to do something about it. And for any sustainability journey, understanding the baseline is important. Though, as Robin Hicks recently pointed out, companies are confused with the selection of standards, information and opinions. For example, calculating a company's carbon can take 2-4 years!
In my experience, this is frustrating and boring. Which leads to dissatisfied shareholders and employees as a lot of effort is put into something that does not generate results. With this we are fuelling resistance that costs energy and reduces productivity. That is why many well-intended sustainability journeys end and are axed. Can we simply not do carbon accounting? No. Does it need to be this cumbersome? No. And here my experience in operational excellence is really helpful. An area where you focus on creating more value with the resource you have based on data and analysis. Let's apply this to ESG improvements as well. Here are some thoughts:
What are in your eyes the key ingredients for a successful sustainability journey? Reference: Eco-Business CSO Survey, Robin Hicks, Jan 2023 A New Year has started and fresh inspirations are coming in. At Hive17 we focus on facilitating effective teams, and that is particularly important on the top (also check our recent CxO Team post). Just yesterday, the Embassy of Switzerland in Singapore shared a post about the Swiss Federal Presidency and the Swiss Federal Council. An example I like to share as it is a high-level model for a self-organising team.
CxO Teams are in similar situations; they have broad and deep responsibilities; they have the tendency to focus the majority of their time on their own department; they tend to work less as one team. The Swiss government puts a structure in place to counter these tendencies. A structure that any company can learn from and become more effective in delivering change. Here are some suggestions to look out for:
How do you build a more effective and self-organised CxO team? Source: Swiss Federal Presidency, LinkedIn The end of the year is coming and I got asked, if you would give one piece of advise, what would it be? In my experience dealing with leaderships, one foundational attitude I discovered is Win-Win. In our work life we come across various situations: developing a product, negotiate with a client, hire an employee, resolve conflict, onboard a supplier, provide feedback, conduct meetings, and simply solve a problem. When you observe yourself in these situations, how often do you want to win, how often do you want the other party to lose? Or you might simply not care if you lose. All these attitudes have in common that they are not effective. For success, we need to practice a win-win attitude. When I help people to obtain this new approach, I usually share Green & Clean by Stephen Covey - a fun and inspiring introduction to the topic. And there are so many great quotes which I would like to share here:
How will you approach win-win in your next negotiation? “Only 41% of CEOs believe employees’ behaviours are mostly aligned with company’s values and direction.” This statement from PwC's annual CEO survey means that about 60% of the employees are not fully aligning their productivity with the company's priorities. As a result, efforts are wasted in the wrong direction. Further, according to Hive17's surveys, about a third of the managers underestimate the importance of goal setting for motivation.
How are you going about setting targets for 2024 to create maximum impact for your business? Hive17 successfully implemented vision to action programs since over six years, driving change for new strategies and large-scale initiatives. At it's core is a interactive approach that translates your strategy into actions in people's daily work. What we deliver is:
Our programs focus on principles, structures, tools and behaviours to enable everyone in the entire organisation to give their best. How do you plan to create more impact for 2024? Source: Leading in the new reality, PwC's 26th Annual Global CEO Survey - Asia Pacific, January 2023 Enabling teams to give their best - When I approach CEOs with this topic, they almost always think this is important for the teams reporting to them. Yes, the operations team needs to work more effectively. That business unit needs a boost in productivity. In the organisation, the different functions need to work closer together across the silos. While these are important areas for improvement, we forget one important team.
What about that team on the top? The CxOs forming a team together with the CEO. How important is it that they are a highly effective team? In my experience, when this group of people are not enabled to give their best, it will slow down the entire organisation. Here are some of my observations:
What can we do as CEOs to build stronger bonds, create a solid team that is effective and is setting the right platform for a great company culture? Here are some simple steps:
Where do you see the barriers to effectiveness in your team? When will you schedule your next CxO lunch? "Hope is not enough: turning vision into climate action!" This was one of the themes of the second Green Tech Festival held in Singapore. And for concrete and lasting action, I believe we need two essential ingredients: innovation & culture. This was a theme that weaved throughout the presentations and panels at the conference.
One example that stood out for me was the Hot Heart - a project with the purpose of decarbonising the district heating system in the Finnish capital. One the one hand, the technical solution is innovative in a way that it integrates the energy storage component when harvesting renewable energy for keeping the citizens warm. On the other hand, the transformed the technocractic solution with an experience for its community: establishing a all-year tropical island right in front of the city gates. Why is this important? In this way you bring the technology closer to the people, allow them to interact and benefit from the solution - in a very direct way. This will accelerate acceptance and inspire new innovation. We at Hive17 believe that driving a sustainability culture in your organisation will drastically increase the adoption of climate action and in turn your efforts in substantial triple-bottom-line benefits. How will your start your internal movement? Learn more about The Hot Heart. |
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