It began as an average day for Jean, an HR executive in a large public relations firm. The ride in on the subway was uneventful. Summer was lazily winding down but the day was warm and agreeable. Autumn was approaching, though – back to school and back to work time.
And so the winds of change began to blow.
Jean was usually the first to arrive at her office but today she was greeted by the CEO – a very excited and anxious CEO. This combination was never good. Jean felt a small storm begin to churn in her stomach. Trying to ignore it,she prepared herself for what the CEO had to say.
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As a company built on helping organizations and people be their best when it matters most, we recently faced one of our biggest changes ever.
Here’s our story.
It began about 18 months ago when the newly formed board of directors (consisting mostly of founders, owners and a great consultant named Mike Boydell from Boydell Inc.), came together to assess IHHP’s future. The goal was to grow the company in order to reach more people with what we at IHHP feel is a very important message. After some challenging (and sometimes painful) reflection sessions, it became clear to the leadership team that the key issue was the current management and operational style and they would need to bring in a new leader if they truly bought in to the changes that needed to be made.
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After a series of sessions with a leadership group from one of the world’s largest multi-national corporations, I followed up with a list of their key learning outcomes. I wanted to share these with all of our clients as they reflect some of the broader brush strokes of our approach.
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The other day I was speaking with the Senior Manager of Organizational and Leadership Development at a major corporation, and this is what she had to say:
Why would someone want to improve collaboration and cross functional effectiveness?
It’s easier to get things done
You don’t have to spend time trying to “sell” your idea or influence people
You have alliances with key stakeholders and know what you are doing is important
Your stakeholders understand the value
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In a recent study of senior leaders around the globe, 91% of those surveyed saw strong leadership capability as critical to their firm’s continued growth, yet only 8% considered their own leadership teams to be “excellent.”
This difference between the need for strong leadership and the current lack of it has been referred to as the ‘leadership gap.’ By some estimates, this gap can influence bottom-line profit margins in an organization by as much as 47%! How does leadership, or a lack of leadership, cost your organization?
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Are you losing 50% of your business strategy’s value because of conversations that aren’t happening? Execution is not easy. Some of the most brilliant business plans (think Sony Betamax, or the Ford Edsel) or critical organizational goals fail to gain traction not because of the quality – but because of the execution – of the plan or goal.
One measure of the cost of poor execution can be found in a survey of 197 CEO’s reported in the Harvard Business Review, who were asked how well their business strategies converted into business results. Their estimate? 37% of the value to be gained from the business strategy was lost in execution; worse yet, one third of those CEO’s estimated their loss at over 50%! Why is that?
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The decision to ‘approach what is difficult’ (what I call a micro decision of leadership) has immense impact on the important people around us. We are so worried about how we appear – something called ‘impression management’ – that we completely miss the power of admitting a mistake to everyone around us. Do you think being vulnerable makes others more open to admitting their own mistakes and their contribution or less open? I think it is obvious…
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In the course of my travels, I meet interesting business leaders from around the world who want to build great companies. They say that people are their most important asset. They say they will stop at nothing to improve the potential of their people. They say they are ‘committed.’ Then they ask if we can help them create ‘real change’ in a two-day leadership training program, and I tell them to go fly a kite … well, not exactly….
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