Coaching Organisations
Back Story
... we can work together to bring about breakthrough, realise potential and see lasting change...
Through my interactions with organisations over the past decades, whether immersed in the very centre or on the fringes as a partner or advisor, these 4 key areas have consistently been the places of great joy and success or often times high levels of disfunction and frustration:
Strategy – Innovation – Culture – Transition.
I can almost guarantee that any realignment that could help propel you forward will be rooted in one of these 4 areas.
This is where I can help you. This is where we can work together to bring about breakthrough, realise potential and see lasting change that will lead to a healthier, more productive and laser focussed environment.
I’ve written down a few brief introductions on these 4 key areas to help us as we look to potentially begin working together.
Hopefully they are helpful.
Strategy
Whether we are talking about central overarching organisational strategy, department strategy or project strategy, without it things will end up siloed, less productive and disjointed.
When an organisation has a specific vision, function and goals it’s important to make sure everyone and every aspect of the team is pulling in the same direction, clear on goals, clear on vision and Org DNA.
Strategy pulls everything together, keeps a sharp focus, finds and encourages synergy, increases productivity and fosters unity. Strategy is the glue that holds it all together avoids confusion and maintains focus a clarity.
Our focused approach on strategy will be: Historic Strategy – Present Strategy – Emerging strategy.
HISTORIC STRATEGY
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Historic Strategy
- Things that have lapsed and no-one is sure why.
- Things that remains but are no longer relevant.
- Organisational behaviour and patterns developing into unspoken 'strategy'. (Both positive and negative).
PRESENT STRATEGY
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Present Strategy
- What is the Plan?
- Does everyone know the plan?
- Has everyone been involved in the strategic planning?
- Does the strategy serve the vision?
- Is it working?
EMERGENT STRATEGY
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Emergent Strategy
- Emergent strategy requires-flexibility innovation and the ability to adapt a change.
- Emergent strategy is a response to unexpected events or changes in the environment..
- Understanding 'emergent strategy' allows you to more successfully 'role with punches' before they land spare on your nose! Understanding' emergent strategy' means you can harness its transformational power without allowing the cart to get in front of the horse!
A strategy Review will help to bring clarity, focus and a chance to reposition/realign where needed. Wether this is personnel or activity based.
The review goal being to asses how well existing strategy serves the vision.
This leads us to innovation and how strategy and innovation sit alongside each other.
Innovation
In the mid 1980’s Peter Drucker famously declared
“Innovate or die”
In the current climate we find ourselves in, at the early part of the 21st century, innovation is increasingly more essential as the exponentially increasing pace of change gives Druckers prophetic warning new life.
Drucker was talking to business, so does the same sentiment apply to faith based organisations and churches?
I say ‘YES’
Innovation is often linked to creatives and entrepreneurs, but innovation has to be an integral part of our organisational rhythm and culture.
Wherever we sit in the organisations structure, we either need to be ‘doing’ it or ‘open’ to it.
Innovation has been described as ‘creativity put in to action’ which I really like.
According to the World Economic Forum, the ability to solve problems ranks second on the list of the most growing demands for companies by 2025.
In addition, the following characteristics are part of the TOP 15 skills most sought after by companies for 2025, according to the World Economic Forum:
- Analytical thinking and innovation, occupy the first place;
- Resolution of complex problems, in the third position;
- Creativity, originality, and initiative, occupy fifth place.
Innovation can help us solve problems, get unstuck and move forward.
We can look at how innovation sits in your orgs culture. Is the balance good? Keeping true to the core vision but open to new and exciting ways to outwork it.
We can explore the 4 types of innovation:
- Sustaining/incremental innovation;
- Breakthrough innovation;
- Disruptive Innovation (my favourite);
- Basic Research.
A review around Innovation will help to make sure there is balance ie. You are not living like the Amish but also not abandoning vision on every whim and ‘Great’ new idea!
Avoiding mission drift and maintaining forward motion.
Culture
We live in a new era when it comes to where, how and why we engage with work.
This is of course, a typically ‘western’ 1st world privilege. However, it’s real.
Work/life balance, awareness of mental heath, not just physical health and gender equality etc., etc. These are all extremely positive things but not ‘fixed’ set in stone things they are still in process, settling, but not settled, improving but not perfect.
It is vitally important that we are, where possible, ahead of the game, designing and implementing best practice, leaders not followers, slow reluctant followers at that!
We don’t want to always be the last to the party and we for sure don’t want to be the guy asking to ‘turn the music down’ before I call the police!!
Sadly, so often the christians are the grumpy neighbour.
Let’s change that!
We regularly read about leaders and leadership styles that dictate the culture, in a very bad way.
Well……. NO TO THAT.
We want healthy, inclusive, open, productive fun work environments. We want our people to have a strong sense of agency and ownership. We want everyone to thrive as a result of the organisational and leadership culture.
Basically, we want to lead well, so well, that we lead the way for others to lead better also.
A review on Organisational / Leadership Culture will help open us up to the evolving nature of work and how we can be ahead and not behind.
The review will help identify helpful and unhelpful cultural themes, allow us to strengthen the good a root out the not so good!
Transition
We live and work in a fast paced ever changing world. The pace of change is relentless and we need to keep up. People’s expectations have changed.
Work patterns. Workplace dynamics. Work/Life balance. Agency/Inclusion.
I could go on! Expectations are far from what they were a decade ago. Heck, they are far from what they were 3 years ago!
Your organisation needs to embrace change. Learn how to be comfortable with and good at transition. It’s easy to get trapped in’ mourning’ the loss of ‘how things used to be’ It’s easy, as a leader/decision maker to resist change and force everyone else to stay at the back of the que with you. We don’t want that.
Trust me, they won’t stay! Good people can be lost as they find other spaces at the front of the que.
The challenge is to separate models from outcomes.
The destination is the focus. How you get there is less important. If when you started, your main vehicle from getting from A-B was a donkey, and you now love the donkey, the cute donkey, so much that you have failed to see that everyone else is now travelling, way faster, in an electric car, then you will be left behind and your team will keep pointing to cars, reminding you how stinky the donkey is! Eventually they will find somewhere with a fleet of shiny cars and they will be gone. It could be time to put the donkey out to pasture!..
Transition takes effort, insight, courage and vision.
Without the ability to see the need and the skills to transition well, you could be left languishing.
Learning how to transition well without losing focus on the destination will impact every area of your organisation in a healthy way.
Embrace transition. It’s exciting, life giving, healthy and, most importantly….. essential.
A Review of how you perceive and manage Transition will highlight where change in approach is needed. It will help you to see how change can and should be embraced in order to keep the vision and mission aligned.
Say farewell to the donkey!!