For many leaders it is obvious to focus on long-term benefits; for our shareholders, customers, for our employees and many other stakeholders. We will be able to survive, grow and we are focusing on sustainability and lasting success.

Still, this McKinsey study shows that the majority of executives feel under pressure to redirect resources from strategic initiatives in order to meet short-term financial goals. This is impacting the sustainability of the business. The company will reduce its readiness for the future and the motivation of the people are jeopardised. The article formulates five behaviours that brings back the leadership focus to long-term objectives.

1) Invest in risky, large-scale initiatives which help the company to navigate into a position of growth. These initiatives can be about digitalisation, product innovation, talent development, exploring new markets.

2) Design a portfolio of strategic initiatives that in its sum are delivering positive value. These initiatives focus on how to maximise the value creation with existing assets; this can be in the areas of operational excellence.

3) Continuously allocate resources and people to strategic revenue generators. This also means to regularly exit old businesses; this allows you to focus on growing forward.

4) Take a broad range of stakeholders into consideration (beyond shareholders). Generate meaningful value for customers, employees, business partners, the society and the environment. This will also secure stakeholder value.

5) Ensure that short-term gains are not jeopardising your long-term success. Navigate through a crisis that will make the company stronger.

How are you navigating around the temptation to focus on short-term financial goals?

Often, I get involved in discussions about how to motivate people; simply because I believe that in order to achieve excellence, we need people that are excited about what we want to achieve in our company. In this context, it is difficult to avoid the topic of financial targets. In my eyes, financial targets are a contributor to dissatisfaction when handled wrong. When handled right on the other hand, they don't motivate. Why is that?

Here, I want to share some of my thoughts about financial targets; and I am happy to hear your comments as well.

• Financial KPIs are typically lagging indicators; they show us what has happened in the past. It is like sailing a boat by looking at its stern; we don't know if we are leading in the right direction.
• In my observations, they stimulate selfish behaviour; and I am curious if there is a scientific explanation for that. Sales people that have a commission act only for their own benefit; people that are tasked to reduce cost are only focusing on their own benefits - these are my observations.
• More important though, when a company's strategy is to increase revenue or to reduce cost, then they have no distinguishing factor; these targets don't hold a meaning and don't create habits that lead to lasting success; based on that, employees jump to new opportunities very easily.

What are alternatives targets then? In a discussion with my friend Daniel Benes, he has suggested three key factors to focus on:

1. Staff satisfaction & retention
2. Perceived customer value creation
3. Benefit creation for environment and society

Which key performance indicators create success in your teams?

In an environment of uncertainty and complexity, anti-fragility will allow you to create lasting success. That's a nice sentence and many people agree to this. And then the big question comes: how do you get there? how do these puzzle pieces fall in place?

Two months ago, I posted my leadership view on the four pillars for agility: customer value, purpose, relationships and experimentation: How to reach agility? Four Key Drivers for Leaders. Today, I want to come back to these pillars and share how they fit together.

The underlying premise is that your company is acting in an uncertain and complex environment. Now, in this uncertainty, you want that decisions are made fast and bottlenecks are removed. This means, you need to empower the people at the front to experiment and try out what might work - and learn. You need to increase their autonomy to allow your teams to run forward with high velocity.

Now, many people argue that this will only lead to chaos. Yes, and while we allow our teams to run forward, we need to ensure that they are moving fast in the same direction. The organisation requires an aligned and transparent understanding of the big picture purpose. Important, this is not a top down vision. I like to call it the collective dream which is evolving with everyone participating.

What is the key ingredient to this collective dream? Our customers decide if we are successful. That means, we need to create value for them. The company purpose and the different team purposes are highly influenced by how we are creating value to our customers. And this is based on a deep understanding of their needs and challenges.

The fourth pillar is about creating a platform that allows the teams to run forward in the right direction. This platform facilitates cross-silo collaboration which allows quick sharing of information and further eliminates barriers to speed and fuels creativity. Smooth collaboration is based on common goals and good relationships.

As a leader that drives anti-fragility, your role boils down to two things: bring the people together to define a meaningful and customer-focussed purpose. With this established, the second role is removing bottlenecks, providing resources and further driving motivation. Sounds easy and yes, it takes a lot of efforts to become this agent of success.

The other day, a financial adviser shared with me that there will be a market correction coming soon and I should put my planned investments on hold. I was contemplating on this... What happens if many people believe in this correction and act accordingly? The spiral will go down. And, what will this mean for the companies I planned to invest in? They might lose funds and their growth will slow. Is this what I am believing in?

As a leader, I think we have a choice. We can follow the advice, maybe get richer ourselves and then what? Or, we can stick to our long-term investment strategy, support the organisations we are passionate about and reach our long-term growth targets; not just financially.

So, what does that mean for leaders? What can we achieve with financial targets? How is this creating engagement with your teams? Can these monetary targets be meaningful? Aren't these objectives leading to more selfishness?

As an alternative, we leaders can follow our passion and activate excitement among our team members. This will stimulate motivation and will lead to value creation for our customers. We can develop a greater and collective feeling of purpose. This collective dream will strengthen the collaboration in our team and across the wider ecosystem.

When you sit down with your team and define your goals, try to go beyond these dollar figures. Think about the results you want to achieve for your customers and with your business partners. In addition, specify the work environment you as a team want to cultivate. These are objectives that will bring meaning, excitement and passion to your team.

How are you leading beyond financial targets?

Challenging times are dragging us down. We see that among our friends at work, and we observe that about ourselves. We feel frustrated, overwhelmed, angry and this feeling lingers and gets stronger. Why is that? This downward spiral is often related to negative self-talk. But, how can we prevent this?

Andy Puddicombe says that you have a choice. Either you choose to succumb to your challenging emotions and make them worse with your own thoughts. Or, you can choose to observe them, to live with the challenges around you and let them go.

What does that mean in your daily life? The idea is to start to feel in balance and get at ease with the many challenges and opportunities in life. Focus on what is real and the things you can influence now. And, accept the things you can't. Then, you can slowly view the positive impact of the challenges and try to turn them into opportunities. Judgement of others and of yourself will peel away and you have the brainspace to focus on the actions to succeed.

As a leader, you can be patience with your team members, recognise when they (and yourself) have a bad day - that's part of life. In addition, define (collectively) meaningful goals that provide the big picture; this allows to turn current challenges into a stepping stones for a successful future. Don't fret when your team members do mistakes; they are part of the learning journey. The same way as they were on yours.

And what is in it for the company? Happy employees are 12% more productive than unhappy ones. And this also stimulates creativity as well - so important for innovation.

Illustration: Headspace

There is no magic how to master uncertain times - be innovative, be creative, think out-of-the box! Why is it so hard for many companies to thrive?

This article - ​​How to rebuild a business after the coronavirus lockdown, WIRED UK - shows interesting cases of startups in the UK that managed to turn around and be successful despite the storm hitting the business world.

“Go back to basics,” Hannah Martin says. “Who are your ideal customers, what problem do you solve for them, how has that changed, can you adapt? Approach people, don't wait for them to update you. Look at what others are doing, in and outside your industry, see if you can get ideas.”

Many corporations are stuck in their view of the world, decision makers are too far away from reality, motivation structures are based on lagging indicators, experimentation is discouraged, silos are preventing velocity. Today's leaders need to get out of this cycle to create lasting success.

How do you bring your vision into action?

This sounds weird, right? If we fully focus on performance, our performance will go down? How is that possible? And what can we do to improve performance in a sustainable way?

A while back I learned about this formula that your performance is equal to your potential minus your interferences. While I wanted to learn more about this a stumbled across this article written by Tim Gallwey about the Inner Game and its impact on capability building. One passage brilliantly explains the above paradox:
"For example, my need to finish an article by the requested deadline obscures the reasons I chose to write the article in the first place, and dampens the natural enjoyment of expressing my thoughts and convictions. The person caught up in performance momentum neglects learning, growth, and the inherent quality of the work experience."

Let's look what we are doing at work. At first, yes, we are producing products and services; a key aim is to produce outcome of our work. At the same time, we are also engaged in two other things. We are building teams, cultivate relationships, providing a safe environment for our people - this is what Tim Gallwey calls 'experience'. In addition, we need to grow in our skills and as personalities during our career - this is what Tim Gallwey calls 'learning'. As a summary and taking the example of sales, we need to provide a trusted environment with our customers and we need to engage with them to learn what they need. Only then, we might be able to sell our products to the customers.

This week, I was coaching a team to develop their objectives and key results and based on the discussions we had, the team then added two objectives related to cultivating better relationships and engaging in more learning. They are very engaged now with their objectives.

What does that mean as a leader? Do I stop pushing for results? The way I see it, a leader's responsibility is to provide a safe and challenging environment. This will create a condition in which people can grow their capabilities, become more creative, take more ownership, enjoy more and become better team players.

In my work, quite often I see myself as the person that is providing the space to reflect. Which is important to become more excellent.

The Inner Game of Work: Building Capability in the Workplace.

Two years back, I read the story of Ilkka Paananen in Wired UK (link); still today it is an inspirational story on how to lead with motivation. After a failed endeavour, he started Supercell and within 6 years the company was valued over 10 billion US dollars. How did he do that?

In simple terms, he put the right team together and then created the best environment for the team to thrive. What is that best environment? Turn the organisational structure upside down and empower them to define everything that relates to the success of the company: the vision, how they work, where to put the focus... Full autonomy? Yes, provide the team with all the freedom and automatically they will also take over the responsibility, the ownership for the results. The success lies in motivation, the energy and the passion that you can observe in your teams.

So, what do I need to do as a leader? Create that environment! Create excitement, allow them to discover how to do things, hire a diverse team, be a coach, be passionate about the company - and be transparent.

What makes you a great leader?

​
Image Credit, Nick Wilson, WIRED UK

The current times create a lot of disruption and uncertainty. Many try to stick to old recipes and the old normal. Still, we know we are heading into a new normal, we are in the need to find new ways to be effective, profitable and valuable. This part of the journey can be daunting and paralysing. What can we do?

In situation of conflict, confusion, disorientation ​I always try to review the original objectives. What did we set out to achieve at the beginning? Often this purpose brings us back to the right direction and. Today can be an excellent time to review and reflect on the Collective Dream of our organisation. What was our vision at the start of your endeavour? What are our values? What do we as a team, as individuals stand for?

Why is this important in situations of uncertainty? Isn't it better pushing hard and running forward? Here are my thoughts around this:

1. Giving people a purpose is stimulating their motivation and engagement with your company.
2. The conversation about the vision, objectives, values, dreams will get people out of inertia and procrastination.
3. Going back to your roots will also show the continuity and shine light into a bright future.
4. Reflection on your values, capabilities, relationships will uncover new opportunities.

This Harvard Business Review article confirmed my thoughts around this topic. We might want to rush and run forward, though we might only run in the wrong direction and waste a lot of energy. Allowing yourself a pause, reflect on your purpose and then accelerate in the right direction will give you confidence to create value for the people around you.

When will you invest in reflecting your collective dream?

A regional business unit had introduced a new strategy that set ambitious targets in various market segments. The leadership team launched many conversations with their teams in order to understand the new strategy. The functional heads (i.e. marketing, sales, R&D) encouraged their teams to discuss and define the path forward - with mixed results. Hive17 Consulting understood that the team members didn't yet feel empowered to act on this freedom; at the same time, the leadership team struggled to provide that autonomy.

Together, we planned a new workshop that build on the previous intervention. The new one-day event aimed at providing a structure that provided a safe environment to be creative and establish alignment between the functional heads and their team members. This workshop was based on the method of Objectives and Key Results (OKRs).

First, we split the group of about 45 managers from all functions into different 'virtual' teams. Each of these market segment teams had members from all key functions: marketing, sales, R&D, manufacturing and supply chain. Each team selected one of the functional head as a sponsor of their team. We did not introduce new reporting lines and the sponsors had the responsibility to give guidance and provide the strategic direction.

The teams then went through an exercise to define the objectives and key results for their market segment - jointly within the cross-functional team. At certain points in the journey, the sponsors joined their teams and they reviewed what the teams established. These OKRs were then used to provide the teams direction on where to focus their efforts. And they created transparency with the leadership team on the status of their activities.

This workshop allowed two things: the cross-functional teams were empowered and given the space to translate the strategy into tangible operational activities by themselves. And the functional leads had the opportunity to provide their feedback without interfering the thought process at an early stage, applying a coaching leadership style.

The regional leadership team was surprised with the results. The dialogue between them and the team members was constructive and they felt as part of the team. The autonomy of defining their own objectives created a strong team cohesion and engagement with these objectives. The teams were inspired and had a great motivation to push ahead with the new strategic focus in their daily work.

"If we keep doing the same thing, we keep getting the same results. In order to grow, we all need to start doing things differently!" - Regional Technical Director.

One of my core beliefs is Positive Leadership; I am supporting leaders to adopt a human-centric approach to drive operational excellence. And our recent study showed, that human-centric traits are accelerating innovation: Sustainable Innovation Requires a Solid Foundation.

Some leaders respond to me that they agree to this belief and at the same time fear that they are seen to be weak. Leaders are supposed to be strong, able to command people and need to make "tough decisions" - right? In today's world, uncertainty is accelerating and we can not rely on historic recipes; traditional leadership styles will not deliver fast and sustainable success. Based on a neuroscientific understanding, these leaders will prohibit creativity, stifle motivation and drain energy.

A human-centric personality trait is a strength for today's leaders. Empatic leaders will be able to give energy to people, they will be able instil intrinsic motivation. Giving teams a clear and meaningful direction is vital for long-lasting success. Removing the barriers to creativity and agility will lead to fast results. Be bold, follow your heart and mind, and avoid falling into old patterns.

Thank you Emmanuel, for our conversation that led to this insight.

Digital transformations are in everybody's mind and talk - the topic of the decade, I would almost call it. And multiple studies are quoted that 70% of them have failed. Is it because we set the wrong targets? Do these initiatives fail because leaders are not committed? Can we achieve success while applying the same processes and methods of the past?

On my side, I like to think of transformations in a different way. Instead of leading people from a situation A to a situation B, I suggest to enable the teams to define and achieve their own change - perpetually as a continuous journey. The based principle in my experience to achieve sustainable and fast success for transformations is intrinsic motivation - with two core elements.

Frame - the first key element provides two things to the team members: a direction and boundaries. There are many names and input for this frame: vision, dream, values, strategy, beliefs... All of them are contributing to ensure that our people are putting their efforts on the right things, established in a collective and positive way.

Empowerment - the second key element allows the people to act fast within the defined frame. The main goal of empowerment is to remove barriers and facilitate speed in achieving the collective dream. This is achieved by providing our people with an autonomy of responsibility which means allowing people to experiment, fail and learn. As a result, we will strengthen creativity and agility - contributing value in a short period of time.

This frame and empowerment is a structure which is best achieved by starting with small steps. First, creating a safe environment to get used to this new way of operating. Team members and leaders alike need to experience the benefits, define how this works best for them and enjoy the journey. Then we can expand this new operating model to more, bigger and exciting challenges.

​Where do you see success in digital transformation?

My fellow transformation practitioner, Kamales Lardi, published an article sharing her views on the challenges that occur when executing a digital transformation strategy - Digital Transformation: How to develop strategy under uncertainty. A great list for leaders to understand how we can contribute to successful initiatives. And it made me thought, can we even give it another spin, make leaders bolder?

#1 Create a Confident Leadership Team

• yes, an icy wind blows in the top ranks of many organisations; let's get aligned on a collective dream; involve our teams in the creation of this collective dream
• trying to control what others are doing will slow down and demotivate; as a leader I need to feel confident to let go

#2 Thrive in Uncertainty

• create an environment that allows experimentation and creativity; "great idea; let's test it!"
• and as leaders we can create fast success when we pull our people to fail fast and learn fast

#3 Create a Frame for Fast Results

• The collective dream is creating that passion that drives people forward; engage people to brainstorm crazy ideas that lead us in the right direction
• Then think of modules - smaller parts of these ideas - that can create tangible business outcomes in three months

#4 Create a Human-centric Organisation

• We focus too much on process and rules; sustainable success though is based on a stronger focus on value creation
• Each organisational unit is contributing value to the customer journey; allow them to discover who their customers are; they might be internal, paying customers and communities at your doorsteps

#5 Implement a Structure that Strengthens Creativity and Agility

• create routines where teams frequently plan, review and reflect on their collective dream
• implement regularly activities that engage people to strengthen their creativity and agility muscles

Am I the bottleneck to our business success?
How do you translate your vision into action?
Do I appreciate the creativity and insights of all people in our organisation?
​

Beside reading a lot of Science-Fiction books (inspiration to think far far out of the box) and Wired UK (for the latest tech trends), I am also following McKinsey for their solid insights into the business world. And they have this series of Five-Fifty which are great in today's fast paced world; and this one is about change: Five Fifty: The changeable organization.

Yes, we need to change; and yes, we are afraid and resist change. Still I believe that in order to "manage" change, we need to enable our people and our organisation to define the change and then be excited about it. Here is what the research of McKinsey tells us about this.

• Scope matters - focus on goals that seek to get the best and most done with the assets we have
• Speed wins - break down your crazy ideas into modules that can deliver results in 3-6 months
• Health rules - a healthy organisation can master the transformation; based on strong leaders, button-up improvement, talent focus and customer value insights*
• Stretch targets - aspire great leaps that ignore any constraints and triple initial estimates; a collective dream

How do you prepare for exciting digital transformations?

​
* ​Organizational health: A fast track to performance improvement

You heard it enough: a clear vision, a meaningful purpose, a comprehensive strategy is the foundation for a successful business. And why is this so important? I share here an alternative and simple idea.

​Today we often observe that teams and entire organisations are pushed to achieve some financial targets - and they all rush, putting a lot of effort to reach these objectives. Is everyone running in the same direction? Are they joining their efforts to create a larger momentum?

In this context, "collective dreams" might be superior to typical lagging indicators:

• they are more tangible and exciting; a dream has a meaning and is typical human-centric and planet-centric
• they are gathering all team members into a "frame" which gives them a direction to run to and also boundaries based on values and principles
• because of that all the efforts are placed into a common purpose and hence creating a momentum
• collective also means that every team member is involved in shaping this dream; it is not a simple top-down communication
• we involve people from all levels because they gain insights from diverse views and create more transparency
• based on the collective nature this direction is easily understood and adopted by the entire team and we have instant alignment

Where do you success with your collective dreams?
​

In order to be successful in an environment where change and disruption are accelerating, we need to significantly speed up the way we work. Though, success is not achieved with rushing; greater velocity can be achieved with reflection on doing the right thing - slowdown to speedup. Sustainable success is based on creating a frame, empowering people and facilitating intrinsic motivation.

Where do you see these elements in your organisation?

This article is an excellent summary on how to be an inspiring leader and apply a coaching style. And, in my experience these five points are applicable for all of us, not only millenials.

Do you thrive while being micromanaged and kept in the dark of the big picture? Do we feel great by being exploited for the task at hand and standing in front of a huge obstacle? Aren't we all in for a long-term career across multiple organisations (and open to join an old boss)?

Let's make leadership easier for us leaders and us team members:
1. Provide structure and sharpen their focus
2. Create opportunities for growth
3. Encourage ‘quick wins’
4. Foster an environment for learning
5. Give opportunities to bolster their CVs

How to Coach Millennials

The first time I saw this video (The 7 Habits) I felt so... confirmed, I think. In my experience in the business and as a father I can only attest and share many stories about how we better pull people to their success than push.

Yes, you can put people under pressure and they deliver what you want - until you let go of the pressure. If you want to create a drive in people and then they run with their own energy, isn't this a more sustainable and actually effortless approach? I think in theory this is called an eco-systematic approach; dealing with the context of a situation in a more human-centric way (yes, I need to read more about this).

How can you pull people and create an inner drive? First of all, patience. Then, here some tips:
* agree together on a meaningful purpose and on how the result will look like
* provide freedom on how to reach the result
* engage in frequent coaching conversations; ask how does it go, what are the concerns, repeat the purpose
* hey, and why not join them on their quest, on the same level - just because it is fun

What are your experiences in this field?

​Today, I have a very quick Friday Share. What is the foundation to be successful?

1) follow your dreams, values and beliefs
2) have an authentic relationship with yourself and the people and things around you

Thank you Jags Burhm for our insightful conversation today!

Happy Friday to all

"The Value of Everything"

Everybody is talking about innovation and yes, it is a critical components for the sustainable success of companies - and entire societies.

This article (long read) shares the experience of successful innovation in a larger scale - how governments can push creativity and successful new solutions for cities, provinces, countries - large scale. And the result:
>> Innovation is driven by a mission <<

In detail this means:
* let's be bold and inspirational
* aim at high ambitions that are risky
* define clear timelines and results
* connect people across silos
* give research teams autonomy and allow them to experiment

How are you applying these points in your team / lab?

This economist has a plan to fix capitalism. It's time we all listened

Linkage has organized a great event earlier this year and shared here their insights.
1) Be authentic
2) Leadership requires intention
3) Collaboration is key
4) Look to your own "Success Circle"
5) Seek out your opposite
6) Never stop learning

Do we need more inspiring people that can give us direction and at the same time provide space to others to grow? I do believe so...

What are your favourite leadership traits?

​6 Leadership Truths from Learning Teams at Linkage’s Global Institute for Leadership Development (GILD) 2019

Last week, the community of Design Thinking professionals met in Singapore. On Friday, we discussed how culture can be influenced and how Design Thinking might support transformation - very interesting question...

I have started to use Design Thinking in order to cultivate customer value focus, agility and cross-silo collaboration. With great success.

Another thought we developed is around intrinsic motivation. Design Thinking facilitates:
* a clear definition of challenges that supports purpose;
* autonomy due to the focus on empathy (button up thinking)
* the iterative prototyping allows mastery (getting closer and closer to the customer needs)

How do you see the connection between transformation and design thinking?

​"Instead of forcing change, create an environment where change can happen"
Andy Puddicombe

What is the difference between Efficient and Effective?

This is a very illustrative video that shows how difficult it is to shoot for short-term efficiency. In my eyes, effectiveness means I am creating a platform that enables to deliver excellent results in a sustainable way - again and again.

How do you create this platform of excellence?
> agree on a purpose, an ambition, common results
> provide autonomy on how to reach these results
> engage in frequent conversations and enable a smooth journey
> join them in their quest, support as a participant

How do you see this happening in your work?

FranklinCovey: the Win-win Agreement

“This is what transformation is about: Giving people a purpose, connecting them to the right people across different silos, and engage them, motivate them and make it fun.”

For our third podcast episode of #LostInTransformation, we sat down with Tim Wieringa, internal consultant for innovation and collaboration at Huntsman. What are the 3 most important challenges when managing change? And how long does it take to change people’s mindsets and routines? Tim opens up about facilitating a move from Command & Control towards Facilitate & Guide, shares his tips on introducing new behaviors in companies, and talks about the role of culture and trust in reaching business goals. Tune in now to find out more:
Spotify: https://bit.ly/30Ip4jg
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