 CFOs Leading Business Intelligence – Digital Workshop Series in 5 Parts | Q3-Q4 2021
In today’s business world, the markets are changing in an accelerated fashion; customers shift their preferences, supply chains are facing major challenges, and the workforce requirements are evolving. In this context, business intelligence covers a broad range of important topics. Whilst the topics individually are important, it is by connecting them and thinking about business intelligence holistically that CFOs can preside over a best-in-class process which is both effective and efficient.
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 So far in this trail about agility, we talked about two major things: giving people direction based on our purpose and the value we can create to customers; and starting to experiment and continue to learn. Both are focusing on what we deliver and what we produce. All of this is only possible when one magic ingredient is present: the foundation of agility. Besides the delivery, our way of working is highly determining if we will be successful. Do you sometimes feel that your daily work feels like a constant fight, peers around you are not aligned, the processes and approvals are bottlenecks that slow you down?
In this episode, we talk about how we can create solid connections between people. Establishing alignment and transparency, and cultivating a safe environment where people can share their ideas and thoughts. A place where it feels like we are working together and pulling on the same string. What portion of the delivery can we fully delegate to smaller teams and allow them to be self organising?  Every day we are confronted with challenges that require solutions - they might be small, they might be big. Following the same patterns and focus on past achievements is at best futile - what we need is creativity. And why not ask the creatives for their tips?
Hideo Kojima is a Japanese video game design since over 35 years and can celebrate decent success in his industry; and, he wrote a book about his secrets. One key thing he shares that without fail, every day he is visiting a book store and browses through the books. He then buys a book that talks to him and reads it. This routine brings him a wider perspective of the world, provides him new inputs, and also gives him the opportunity to get a break from work. He also emphasises that he keeps this routine from being mundane. The same book in a different store is speaking in a different way to you. Therefore, he keeps visiting new bookstores to keep his mind and heart fresh. What can we do to keep a fresh perspective and stay creative? Find an activity that suits your surrounding and interest, which allows you to get a perspective of the bigger world around you! And establish a routine for that; a simple 30 minutes task every day. What can that be? Walk around your neighbourhood as a tourist; call a friend you haven't spoken with in two months; find an online course about a topic you want to discover more. There are plenty of things to learn and discover. What will you start with? Please share! Source: Hideo Kojima on What Makes Hideo Kojima Tick, Wired UK, October 2021. Photo credit: Charlie Clift.  Agility is in everybody's mind. And yes, its principles can help any part of the business to build lasting success in an environment that is complex and ever-changing.
Tigerhall invited me to a series of podcasts to share my experience with agility in the manufacturing and financial service sector. Here is the first episode! How do you enable your team to define their change journey from within? Since years, I am advocating that the traditional change management, enabling people to switch to a future state, needs rethinking. Our world has become complex and changes are happening faster and faster. This means the 'future state' is soon obsolete and we need to change to the next one. We are in a state of continuous change.
This means we need to cultivate an environment that allows people to thrive during their change journey! For example, when you introduce a new performance management system, or a new hybrid working policy, or a refreshed regionalised organisation, for all of these transformation projects the end is not the installation of these end states. Rather, we want to enable the adopters of this change to be able to evolve their system, processes and team structure by themselves. And this requires direction, guidance and support. Leadership is essential in this context. Leaders cultivate the environment where successful change can happen. While we all heard of these leadership qualities, it is essential that the right behaviours are becoming a second nature. How are you developing these routines and master positive change leadership qualities?  Last week we conducted the fifth session of the workshop series 'CFOs Leading Business Intelligence' organised by CFO Connex. This last session was all about change management, in particular: how can we define that dream state of the new finance team and how we can take the first steps in that direction. We also had a great panel that provided insights on how to bring change to the finance team and how this team can facilitate change in the broader organisation. Here some interesting bits and pieces. Starting with the senior leadership team, it is important that transformation initiatives receive commitment from the top, often in the form of a prioritised vision of where the company is heading. This means that we are creating space to think - with creativity and with curiosity. The CFO is the objective sparring partner for the business and is in a very good position to guide and drive change projects. For the finance team, the business leaders are the customers. With continuous conversations finance is able to deliver value to their customers. When we are leading the finance team to that new future state, it is important to look at the change journey of each individual team member. What are their skill gaps and their career ambitions? Coming back to the senior leadership team, we need to acknowledge that transformations require to investigate how the cultural environment is contributing and blocking change. The senior leaders are significantly shaping the company culture and hence contribute to the success of the change. Thank you to all the panelists: David Newton, Lisa Dawson, Michael Zimmel, Shin Yng Lee, Tim Wieringa.
 For years, I have been looking into agility, its principles and how they help to create lasting success in teams. We have brought agility into manufacturing, R&D and for sure also in IT teams. Earlier this year, I then decided to jump deep into the certification for Scrum Master. What did I learn?
There is one thing that becomes obvious very quickly: scrum as methodology is not prescriptive. Instead, it contains a series of suggested activities, templates, processes, etc. The key foundation is empiricism! Each team then needs to find out what works best for them - based on a set of principles. In my projects, I am mostly engaged in leadership development. And while going through the scrum master certification, I understood that the principles are strongly supporting a modern, dynamic leadership approach. Scrum can give us answers to the question: how can we deliver maximum value in complex environments? Are you curious to bring agility to your organisation? Then let's look at these key principles! Here my take:
How can you follow these key principles in your organisation? Where do you see the obstacles for agility? Thank you, Takeshi Yoshida, for pushing me on this path!  This article was originally posted in the GloCoach Blog. Since the beginning of 2020 we learned that change can suddenly be omnipresent. Many companies struggled; some companies thrived due to the new business environment. And over the recent months there might be only a few companies that are not facing big challenges; if not from a business and financial perspective, then from an engagement and social point of view. How can we build an environment where we can thrive in all aspects of work and life?   Any transformation journey will experience resistance; that's is a normal behaviour. Important as a change manager is to identify these hurdles and design activities that nudge the adopters forward and create structures that reinforce the change. This will smoothen the journey to the future state. Transcript
Hi, do sometimes feel that day in and day out, for weeks and months, the only focus is on delivery, delivery, delivery. That's how many people feel these days. Still, that's not how we thrive. How can we create, how can we establish simple structures that lead to lasting change? In this series, we introduced the four knowledge areas of the CPC change management methodology. These themes provide guidance on what to consider in your change activities. My name is Tim Wieringa and I'm a change management practitioner here in Singapore. Today, we talk about institutionalisation. In this dimension, we are looking for underlying structures and we're looking for nudges which are reinforcing the change, reinforcing the future state. People, easily fall back to old habits. How can we prevent this from happening? Best to explain this with an example. About a year ago, I was exactly observing this single focus on delivery, and people around me were struggling a lot. In an agile transformation project, we wanted to allow the people to go through that change in a more sustainable way. The teams were using OKRs and we wanted to use this artefact to create a structure to think in different ways. Beside objectives for deliverables, we overall wanted to introduce two new objectives; one around learning with experiments and another one looking at the way of working. We then encourage the teams to define their own key results, which are contributing to these objectives. This gave the people the necessary permission to look at these two areas and started to improve and the delivery of the change. In a transformation journey, we need to continuously look out for this resistance and see how people feel about the change. Often, small notches allow people to reflect on the overall purpose of the change and define their own journey. Thank you for listening. Please click on the link below to learn more about how to become a Certified Associate in Change Management. And stay tuned for the next episode.  We often talk about high-performing teams and trying to find recipes of success. In this context, it is important to look beyond short-term gains and work with establishing a platform for lasting success. At Hive17 Consulting, we like to look at different drivers for change:
How can we establish a solid human connection? One important element of establishing healthy relationships is trust - an understanding that we can rely on each other. Trust is typically between two individuals. In order to cultivate trust within a group of people we need to create a safe environment. We then want to look at what is psychological safety and how to establish such a place. And there is no easy path to achieve this. First of all, how is it not done. During my advisory and coaching activities, I have observed a number of teams and supported them to create a positive, collaborative environment. With one group of people, I observed something interesting. When the regular group was meeting, they had a open, respectful conversation and were easily able to bring issues on the table and then solve them. Then, a new person joined these conversations and immediately that openness was gone; the original group was not comfortable to speak up. This shows that each individual in a group is contributing to that safe space. And one thing is clear: stating that this is a safe space is not creating psychological safety! Laura Delizonna, from Stanford University, shares here how we can increase psychological safety in our team:
In order to creating lasting success, you need your team to be creative, you need them to feel comfortable to experiment and possibly "fail" (learn is the better word). Removing negative barriers created by lack of safety allows to build on the knowledge, experience and intelligence from everyone in the room. How are you building a high-performing team? Source: High-Performing Teams Need Psychological Safety. Here’s How to Create It, Harvard Business Review, August 2017  The imagination of the future state is guiding the adopters during the change journey. When we formulate this impact as a collective activity, we can create a better understanding among a wider group of people. And as a result, achieve a stronger impact in people's daily work. Transcript
Hi, do you sometimes feel that you are very clear about the impact of your change; and all you get are empty faces and no concrete actions? How can you establish a collective idea of a meaningful and desirable impact of your change initiative? In this series, we want to introduce the four knowledge areas of the CPC change management methodology. These themes are guiding you on what to focus on in your change activities. My name is Tim Wieringa and I'm a change management practitioner here in Singapore. Today, we talk about impact, and impact is more than a generic purpose. Here it is important that the individuals are understanding on what this is all about. We need to find a story that fits the different audiences. A few years back, I supported this regional leadership team and they wanted to embed a new strategy. The reporting senior managers understood the general concepts of this strategy but were a little bit amiss on how does it impact their daily work. We then organised a workshop, where we took these senior managers in different teams and allowed them to think about, to reformulate the strategy in their own words, in the context of their responsibility. And we also encouraged them to define their own objectives. The quality and the practicality of the results, really impressed the regional leadership team. When you impose your strategy from the top, it is almost natural to get resistance. In order to have success, you need to allow each individual to digest and translate the impact, the formulation of the impact in their own words. What is essentially in the end, is the end result; that your new direction is embedded in people's daily work. Thank you for listening. Please click on the link below to learn more on how you can become a Certified Associate in Change Management. And stay tuned for the next episode.  In change management, we want to guide or lead the people that are impacted by the new solution from where they are today to the new future state. We call this the knowledge are 'Leadership'. Learn more what that means in practice! Transcript
Hi, do sometimes feel that change is a burden on one person's shoulder. It doesn't need to be like that. And how can we build a support organisation for our change activities? In this series, we want to talk about the four knowledge areas of the CPC Change Management methodology. These themes are guiding us in what to consider in our change efforts. My name is Tim Wieringa and I am a change management practitioner here in Singapore. Today, we want to talk about leadership. And, with leadership we don't mean the senior leaders and sponsors. Leadership here represents the group of people which are leading the adaptors from where they are today to the future state. It's a lot more than the sponsors and the change team. Let me explain leadership with an example. A few years back, I was supporting a global chemicals company in introducing an SAP module for new product introductions. Here, we took a novel approach; we introduced about 20 communities, which were responsible to guide and engage with the relevant people that were impacted by the project. This allowed us to identify the change agents and influencers and easily reach out to over 300 people. Successful change happens on an individual, personal level. And that's why we need to have a larger group of influencers and change agents. They are able to address the individual needs of the adaptors, and they are supporting the change team and the sponsors. These groups of people together are forming the leadership in a transformation journey. Thank you for listening. Please click on the link below to learn more on how to become a Certified Associate in Change Management. And stay tuned for the next episode.  Last week I was sharing some thoughts with a friend about leadership and how we can bring the best out of our team members and peers. In this conversation, we thought about a new quality of a good leaders: being malleable - able to be changed and to adjust.
Around us we can observe managers that want to give direction and give guidance to their team members. They are confident with the experience they have and want the people around them to learn from them. This almost sound like a good thing, right? Though, in my experience there are a few side-effects which I would prefer to avoid. One is that with a rigid mindset, we are limiting the people's autonomy and creating frustration. Another is that we encourage the people around us to listen instead of applying their critical thinking capabilities. And a last - and in my eyes crucial - element is that we are limiting the creativity, innovation and development of the team. What can leaders do instead? Ok, let me introduce another fancy word: impermanence. Things around us are in a continuous cycle; they are changing all the time and nothing is really permanent. Once we acknowledge that the ecosystem we are in has the qualities of impermanence, we also come to realise that we need an open and curious mind to absorb this ecosystem and to be able to thrive in it. With this we are able to adjust to the permanent change around us. How can you apply this in practice?
These are some initial thoughts around the quality of being malleable. What do you think about it? Where do you see this to be applicable and important?  This week the CFOConneX network has launched the first workshop series and I am delighted to be part of this event! Thank you David Newton and the entire team! The entire workshops series is about how CFOs can take a new spin to business intelligence; reflecting on how we are doing business planning, budgeting and forecasting. The first session was giving an overview of what this topic entails. As a change management practitioner, for sure I am looking at the people side of these activities. As a leader we should always think about the why! What is the purpose of financial planning & analysis? In the end we need to make decisions that are pushing our business forward. Here is an extract of the workshop covering this topic. Enjoy! In my presentation I have covered three key aspects:
How do you engage as a CFO with the business and contribute to the overall business success?  Did you know that about 26% of the change initiatives are failing? Most probably you did. And this statistic is quite sobering. And you might very well be deep in a transformative initiative and things take too long, and the impacted people are not sharing the same enthusiasm as you. Yes, this is normal. The good news is, there are clear ways how to improve your odds to over 70%! How? With a clear and structured change management practice in your organisation. Key success factors are:
Curious to learn more about a structured and hands-on approach to change management? We have launched a program for Certified Associates in Change Management. Sources:
 A few weeks back, I shared some views how you can let go of control. Why would you want to do that? Because the people at the front know how to create value to our customers; and they need to be able act fast without barriers - control from the top. Have a look at the previous post: Letting Go of Control - Made Easy?
Once you let yourself guide by others, how do you get up along the U? That's a valid question I received after sharing the last post. Here are some thoughts around the right side of the U. Before we climb up, let me share more about the left side and the valley. With the steps on the left side, you can imagine that you are going down a hill. In the moment you think that you let yourself be guided by others, you realise that hill turns into a cliff and you need to climb further down. And most probably it feels like you are walking in a fog; there is no view of the other side of the valley. It feels like going through a tunnel or crossing the sea. I like this analogy because in problem solving you often want to immerse yourself in the current situation like an anthropologist and thoughts around possible solutions should be far away - early solution ideas might only lead you into a wrong direction. Only when you really let go and you are in that opaque place, the magic can happen. Ok, not real magic, though it might feel like this. When we are drifting (not consciously seeking anything) then suddenly things will get clear, the new journey will appear right there. This might sound very esoteric but it is not. People who practice design thinking might be able to share similar experiences when they get inspired by empathising with the people they are creating value for. Long prologue... So now, how does that journey up the hill look like?
Reflecting on the entire journey along the (theory) U, I think the right side might be more familiar. The big part of letting go of control happens on the left. Letting go of judgment, ego and power are essential for this new leadership. It starts with difficulties on the path down (left), and it continuous inspired on the path up (right). It does feel like a freedom once we don't need to control anymore. How did you apply these steps into your leadership role?  About three years ago, I started to run design thinking workshops and brought the topic closer to people in various companies and functions. As a change management practitioner, I immediately realised the attraction and the synergies between the two stream of thoughts.
Let's look at two of the traditional barriers to innovation and leadership: lack of speed in decision-making and lack of creativity. Both barriers are behavioural. While these are typical barriers to innovation, they are also holding up most change initiatives. And design thinking is a method to address both barriers in simple ways. Speed - in design thinking we encourage to try things out; the focus is on learning by making mistakes. When we present prototypes early to the customer, we get early feedback on how we can get closer to create value for them. This early feedback facilitates decision-making. Design thinking also promotes to spend a significant amount on identifying the right problem; and still, this time is well invested and allows the team to create the right value for customers in a short period of time. Creativity - here, design thinking brings many activities that allow people to use their inert creativity. The immersion into the customer's environment creates exposure to gain and pain points that trigger inspiration and critical thinking. During all my workshops we are spending time to prototype - to make the solution ideas tangible. With this activity, we are activating the creative brain and further facilitates the discover of new ideas and solutions. And finally, when we converge and digest the information by using gallery walks and journey maps, we extract the essence of the challenge which triggers further inspiration. In addition to these two barriers, here are four points how I see design thinking is supporting your change initiatives:
How did you adopt design thinking for your change project? Source: Why Design Thinking Works, Harvard Business Review, October 2018  During my career I conducted many workshops to develop capabilities. And, I also participated in excellent training workshops. Of extremely high quality. And all of them had one thing in common: the change that occurs to our own daily work after the workshops is minimal.
Since a few years, I also had the honour to coach - guiding people to discover themselves and to apply new routines to their work lives. This is the change we want to see in people. Though, coaching is highly intensive and simply not scalable. Last year, I started to work with a few teams here in Singapore to develop solutions that are closer to what their customers want. We started with design thinking training sessions which - no surprise - resulted in no change in their daily work. Then we started to play around with different interventions - as a team, as individuals. Slowly we can observe that new habits are forming and the mindsets are shifting. Training versus Coaching? With this short article, I want to suggest to take a hybrid approach and combine both practices. The aim is to develop new leadership capabilities and cultivate new routines that enable teams and individuals to create lasting success. We can join the benefits of both and add other elements to it. Here is what I suggest:
How do you see that we can combine different practices? What are your experiences with this hybrid approach?  The uncertain times we are living in made one thing clear: we need to innovate! In order to stay successful in our businesses we need to find new ways to create value to our customers, our operations face new challenges we need to address, and our employees require environments that keep them healthy, nimble and engaged. Small improvements will not suffice - in many areas we need to go back to the drawing board.
How can I, as a leader, deal with this accelerated necessity for change? How am I able to control innovation across all corners of our organisation? Let me pose another question: why do I need to control innovation from the centre? Successful, lasting solution might be better identified and implemented at the front - they will be achieved faster and create more value. Then the question is: how can I enable and facilitate innovation at the front? Many people talk about innovation and how to achieve this. Though, there is one trait that is often overlooked and I see it as a essential foundation for innovation and a successful business: Critical Thinking - the objective analysis and evaluation of an issue in order to form a judgement. This will allow the organisation to identify where we can create value, to deeper understand the challenges, and to make better decision to explore the future. Bruce Eckfeldt, in this Inc article Want to Improve Your Leadership Skills? Focus on Critical Thinking, introduces five levers to drive critical thinking. In my words:
These five elements give us leaders ideas on the mindsets and skills we want to develop in our people. Based on critical thinking, we will be able to delegate control to make decision, to experiment, to find solutions. Are you courageous enough? Image credit: Getty Images  We all heard about it - Agile Transformation! I have seen the term used in two situations. Either the organisation wants to introduce Agile Development and that is indeed a major transformation. Or, the organisation wants to drive change (innovation, market expansion, increased competition, etc.) and they decided to become more agile. I suggest to converge to the latter.
So, how can a change management approach bring more agility in leadership, to the teams and to the success of your operations? Here are a few pointers from my practice, inspired as well from two articles linked below. Mentioned many times, the North Star is key to make people excited about the change to come, gives them meaning. And it is also the anchor and the imagination for what we want to achieve. Without this, agility turns into chaos. The people in the frontlines have access to the best knowledge and information on how to bring success with change. Delegating control to the people that can run the show, makes the teams nimble and they can act faster. People on the top might - often involuntary - act as bottlenecks. Facilitating lasting success means, these teams need to be self-sufficient and self-organising. The team needs the right environment and the right skills to get there. And, for sure, they need to be aware that they are acting in a larger ecosystem, all striving for the same north star. Achieving the north start mostly includes creating value for our customers. The teams should create structured routines that allow them to discover a clear view on how this value looks like and what the customers appreciate most. At the core of each team is learning - this bring the individual, the team and the entire ecosystem forward. Experimentation enables continuous learning; and the leaders facilitate and contribute in this journey. Planning for the next 12 to 18 months often leads to situation where a team is stuck in their course and unable to take the necessary changes to adapt to a new environment. Therefore, I suggest to create an imagination of the future state and of the path to get there. This provides direction and keeps the flexibility. Based on this, the team can plan what they want to achieve and learn now - typically in a horizon of three months. Lastely, the agile teams work best in an environment that cultivates meaning and trust; as leaders we can create a platform for success and this requires a place where we can have open conversations, feel safe and find our work fulfilling. In my eyes, agility is not about processes and organisational structures. Change management practices have shown how we can engage with a new leadership style that is universal on all levels of the organisation; a style that is inspiring and enabling people to be successful. This is how we can stay adaptive, nimble and jump ahead to new opportunities. Where do you see the the link between change management and agility? How do you put these into practice? Sources An Agile Approach to Change Management, Harvard Business Review Unleashing the power of small, independent teams, McKinsey Quarterly  Since about a decade, we talked about a business environment that is constantly changing, complex and exposing our company to disruption. The year 2020 showed us, how real this can be for any business and for our entire life. Over the last five years, I have developed a framework which I think allows us, our teams, and our company to create a platform for lasting success. A conversation yesterday motivated me to share this here again.
The volatile business environment we are in, requires an important revelation: if we continue doing the same thing, we will be getting the same results. So, we need to try new things. Then, the main question is: who should define these experiments? Who should be in control of bringing our business forward? As a change management practitioner, I suggest two dimensions which are highly important to our leadership. Direction - How often do we define a new strategy and after some time realise that our business is still running in the same way? In my experience, the bottleneck is not the understanding of what the strategy is; rather, there is a lack of understanding and persistence on how this new strategy is impacting everybody's daily work. Here we need alignment and transparency to define and implement the collective dream. Acceleration - In a next step, there are more barriers for success: who is coming up with the crazy ideas? Only big bets will make us move forward over time. And, implementing big bets seems to be a daunting endeavour like climbing the Mount Everest. Here we need experimentation, focus, safe working environment, cross-silo collaboration, etc in order to innovate and to excel. How are you able to trigger the change in your company culture to achieve this platform for lasting success? Please reach out to me to exchange thoughts.  For the people that know me, I like to promote the concept of People Excellence - driving operational excellence through our people.
This recent article in the Bangkok Post by Arinya Talerngsri also emphasises the people in the transformation work. We are in an age where many thought leaders are talking about how we can robotise our workforce and create fantastic efficiencies. Arinya shares my conviction that lasting success will come by cultivating a workforce of engaged critical thinkers. Here my key points I took out of this article:
This article also shows that we have great thought leaders in Southeast Asia. Based on the cultural backgrounds within this diverse region, we are able to build on a strong habits that focus on building relationships and putting people at the centre. This is a fantastic opportunity - also for the rest of the world. What is your story in shifting your focus from technology to people? Source: Driving digital transformation through people transformation  "How do I motivate my staff?" This is a common question and an exciting one for me. This week I started to bring it in relation with resistance to change. I think these two topics are two sides of the same coin.
How do I motivate? How do I remove the resistance to change? The answer in my eyes is "simple" and from the start, I admit it is not easy to actually do it - let's get later to this. If you impose change on people, they will resist. This is basically wired in our brains. When you provide the space to people to define their own change, they are excited about the things that will come. They are motivated to start their change journey. This means, true motivation and change comes from within. As a leader, what do I need to do? Something many people don't feel comfortable to do: let go of control. In their respective scope, allow teams to define what they want to achieve and how they want to get there. This means give them the necessary decision-making power and resources. This freedom is exciting and unleashes a huge potential. OK, I get that... How do I get started? Letting go of control is scary. So, let's start with something small, an area where risk is small and where your teams and you as a leader can try out, how the delegation of control works in your environment. In this case study, you can find an example in a factory. Another example is giving ownership of the office coffee area. Recently, I am also suggesting to give your people control over where and when they work. Why not? One last question: how did you feel when you took responsibility over a certain area?  Agility is often mentioned to be the accelerator for performance. And yes, when introduced in the right way, agile working methods can deliver solutions that are closer to what customers need within a shorter time frame. At the same time, I observe that these benefits are not so easily reached. One crucial component is how we are planning with agility.
Oh, are we still planning in agile? Yes, we do - and in a smarter way. Let me walk you through some steps which are essential for success. In my eyes and also outlined in this McKinsey article: Planning in an Agile Organisation. In a first step, we as a team want to get guidance, a direction where to head to. And with team here, I am referring to any size; this can be a regional leadership team, a functional department, a project team, a smaller operational team, etc. And this guidance is typically expressed in strategic priorities, or as I like to call it meaningful purpose statements or a collective dream. Important for these priorities is that we limit ourselves to five strategic priorities at a time - more will be distracting and the focus will be lost. These meaningful purpose statements are then translated into clear and specific goals for the different teams. And this translation is an effort conducted with the entire team. This allows that the insights from all team members are considered, facilitates the adoption of the goals, and significantly improves motivation and drive. The strategic priorities combined with the specific team goals act then as a clear foundation to make decisions on the team level. The team should be in control how they achieve their goals; this allows them to become independent and self-sufficient. For sure, they will still consider the larger ecosystem they are embedded in. This delegation of control further stimulates the drive and engagement of the team. Alignment is created with the direction. The second important element is transparency. This we will achieve with monthly and quarterly reviews which intend to allocate critical resources based on the achievements, priorities and the goals. As a leader in an agile environment, we are left to focus on two critical activities: guide the teams and develop a clear direction; facilitate experimentation and allocate the right resources. This results in a very different, self-organised path of planning which results in more velocity and value creation. How are you planning in your teams today?  Many companies are in the process to define the annual performance goals and in this context, we often talk about accountability. Harvard Business Review was recently sharing some interesting insights, how these goals are set; for example, 21% of the employees feel that they can control their goals and 69% of employees feel that they don't perform up to their potential. How are you creating motivation and ownership during these goal-setting conversations?
At Hive17 Consulting, we are conducting Vision-to-Action programs that translate your strategy into changes in people's daily work. In this program, we create an environment where the teams, the employees, are defining their objectives themselves. As a result, we have observed that these teams are taking more ownership of the outcome, are collaborating closer together, and the delivery quality improved. What are the key points that drive engagement during the goal setting period?
How do you feel about giving away control? Source: How to Actually Encourage Employee Accountability |
TimTim is a change practitioner in the area of innovation and excellence. He is working with teams to accelerate innovation, collaboration and agility. Categories
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