Role and Goal Clarity

The most important factor that ensures good team work is establishing the role and goal clarity, especially as the organisations go bigger. Bigger in this context would even mean just be more than 20-30 people. Let me use an analogy to explain this success factor.

Imagine an Orchestra where the individual musicians aren’t clear what their role and goal is. Role would be to play an instrument and the goal would be to strictly adhere to the music notes as well as to the conductor’s instructions, mostly visual in nature. Jazz on the contrary is impromptu music where the number of musicians involved is far lesser and thus apart from some overall understanding clarity is not really necessary.

When organisations are small I would refer them as a Jazz band, where not having role and goal clarity in itself is an advantage to allow everyone to perform to excellence only with an overall understanding. As organisations get bigger they move towards an Orchestra. Have you been to any Orchestra with around 50 musicians without music notes in front of them or without a conductor?

However when it comes to organisations, especially during the ramping up phase, very normally neither is the need for role and goal clarity appreciated nor do the employees are convinced in needing the role and goal clarity. The result obviously is a huge hit to both the top and bottom line as well as huge problems in any kind of healthy team work with everyone wondering why we aren’t able to deliver the same way as when we were smaller.

Role Clarity is established by thoughtfully (considering the necessary interfaces with the other functions and hierarchy levels) crafting the Job Descriptions that then must be approved by a cross functional leadership team. The Goal Clarity is established by defining the Goals of the organisation and then the individual functions in an interactive session involving the leadership team. The key here is to involve the entire leadership team so that the Goal conflicts, quite common in organisations, are addressed openly and the Goals appropriately modified. Once the roles and goals are thus established, the deployment can then be done to all the employees in a cascaded manner through the hierarchy.

My next blog will be on the next success factor of using structured reviews to meet the goals.

Delighted Stakeholders

Any business can only sustain if its stakeholders are satisfied and can flourish if its stakeholders are delighted. Stakeholders for any Business are Customers, Management (Shareholders), Employees, Business Partners and Society.

The key to delight is to meet the invisible but intrinsically desired needs over and above meeting the visible needs which are like hygiene factors if not met will lead to dissatisfaction. It is also very interesting to note that over time many invisible needs become visible needs. Excellence is all about sustainably meeting the visible needs as well as sustainable identifying and fulfilling the invisible needs of the stakeholders. The first step therefore is to regularly review the visible and invisible needs of all the stakeholders. I have listed some visible and invisible needs of the various stakeholders to get an idea of this concept of visible and invisible needs.

Customers consume the products and services that any business creates. Visible needs could be on time delivery, defect free products and services, etc. Invisible needs could be an added functionality like the intuitive operating systems of smart phones or forward integration of some sub-assemblies, etc.

Management (Shareholders) promote the business. Visible needs could be smooth running of operations, accurate and timely reporting, achievement of planned top and bottom line, etc. Invisible needs could be significant increases in top and bottom line, unexpected awards and recognitions, etc.

Employees are the most important asset of any business; the resource that runs the business. We can analogically compare all the cells in our body to employees. Visible needs could be status, remuneration, fairness, etc. Invisible needs could be the freedom of choice, unexpected praise, etc.

Business partners are all those external to business necessary to run the business. Visible needs could be demand forecasting, on time payments, etc. Invisible needs could be transparency and fairness in dealings, relationships, etc.

Society would be all those external to business which is impacted by the business. Visible needs could be compliance to legal regulations, acting with responsibility, etc. Invisible needs could be initiatives for inclusive growth, establishing of industry standards, etc.

 
As I have mentioned earlier it is necessary that the leadership team debates and identifies these visible and invisible needs and develops strategies to systematically meet them to delight the stakeholders.

Sustainable Success

The saying success breeds success is very true even for organizations. Precisely this is why sustainable success with recognitions and awards is very much essential for the psychological health of the organization.

That is why I have this success factor up in my listing even before looking into how and organisation can achieve this. I would like to use the analogy of geeting good grades in school or college to put forth my point of view.

How frequently have you come across students who haven't been doing well through out the year, but get esceptionally high grades and end up with recognitions and awards. I am sure you have found some. Have these been able to repeat similar success on a sustainable basis, year after year? Now I am quite sure that you would not find anyone!

Getting recognitions and awards on a consistent basis not only gives us a pat on the back but also reinforces our approaches and gives our brain a sense of security which in results in the increase of dopamine, a simple organic chemical in our body. Increased dopamine provides a positive feeling that is conducive for further learning and discovery.

Imagine what positive energy will be flowing around in organisations with high dopamine employees!!!

How are we going to get to this stage can be answered easily if we check out the stretch we have in our targets. Are the targets stretched enough to encourage the additional learning and discovery but easy enough to sense success, get recognized for the success and get awards. Many a times it may also be necessary to choose to participate in such events where competition is not that severe, especially at the early stage of an organization wanting to become world-class.

I will explain my  though process on target setting in the Goal and Role clarity blog.

For now I want to conclude by suggesting to create an environment and set targets that are achieveable so that success can breed success.

Leadership Team Voice

Let me start this blog by going straight to the point on leadership team having one voice.

In many organisations, especially from the SME sector generally it would be just one leader whose voice would have to be adapted and owned by the key managers for the unit to be successful, since a leadership team may not exit. This situation is really very effective when the organisation is relatively small, may be a couple of employees who know each other by the first name and are very close.

The moment the organisation size or the number of employees in an organisation crosses ~50 a hierarchy would become necessary to lead and manage the employees as any effective span of control of direct sub-ordinates is max 10. Once this condition is already a reality or the SME organisations want to grow then identifying and nurturing a leadership team is mandatory for sustenance and consistency in performance.

I remember a joke about the various parts of the body wanting to compete and demonstrate who the boss is. For those of you who haven't read this google to find out. What moral from this becomes relevant for my blog is the thought of our organs not working in synchrony with the others and the crisis that we get into very fast.

In organisations when the leadership team hasn't identified, discussed, debated and agreed upon in consesus that one voice one can see a lot of noise in organisations. When I say voice I mean the leadership team to have a common understanding on Goods & Services, Competencies, Passion and Conscience. When this is achieved and consistently communicated within the organisation music is achieved.

Have you given a thought if your organisation has a leadership team and if the leadership team has one voice?

The process of finding this voice needs investment with the leadership team meeting together, preferably with a neutral moderator as a group executive coach, over days firstly to get to know each other better and then to start identifying that single voice in consesus.

I am sure you can identify many companies who not only have realised phenomenal growth but also consistently delivered exceptional results. You may further want to check and confirm the existance of the single voice in the leadership team of these organisations.

I welcome you to go on the journey of discovering that single voice.

Organisation Purpose

I am writing this blog after a long as I am stuck in a traffic jam. The purpose, a noble one, is really the key to get over such jams in any organisation’s life. What other than inclusive growth can be a noble purpose for an organisation?

Inclusive growth just means the growth of all the stakeholders – Customers, Shareholders, Employees, Business Partners and Society. Just imagine the number of well-wishers any organisation will have should the purpose be inclusive growth. When and why we need well wishers is surely a question worth asking?

Growth is something that gives all of us hopes of a better tomorrow and is very much essential from a philosophical perspective. Would profits and sustainability become integral with growth when inclusive growth has to be targeted? Maybe worth debating!

Profitability results in short-term thinking, growth on long-term thinking and sustainability in systems. Inclusive growth addresses not only all the stakeholders but also the basic needs of business.

How many entrepreneurial ventures become world class? Checking out if the ones that became world class had Inclusive Growth as the Organisation’s Purpose would be a good approach to validate the hypothesis!

I am sure we can make the choice of either negative feelings during jams or use them positively. Won’t having inclusive growth as an organisation’s purpose intrinsically create great opportunities with a lot of positive energy?

Organizational Success Factors

In the enclosed slide I have listed the key success factors that can make an organization world class. After developing these, I have validated too. You may want to have a look.

Success Factors

I will explain each of these success factors in my subsequent posts.

Facilitating Self-Discovery

Last week I had the opportunity of facilitating some people self-discover the factors that lead to their successes. They got a totally new perspective of the challenges they had after this self-discovery and become quite energetic at taking them on. I personally was quite delighted with the result.

All I did was to listen very attentively for the positive aspects of what they were saying and asked questions that made them self-discover these success factors as they explained these positive aspects. I found that the key was to keep summarizing before moving on with another question and thus supporting the brain by establishing the baseline constantly as we moved on.

I am sure further such opportunities will come my way and I will get further insights that I can share!

Wisdom

I thought of sharing the questions I ask myself for my self-discovery to continuously become wise and gain wisdom on my path to enlightenment.

In almost all our relationships, we normally perceive just what is said and very rarely take time to dwell on what the big picture could be or what the individual’s drivers could be and what this individual is really trying to communicate. We then respond almost instantaneously as has already been said by many experts, mainly on to what is said. Doing so we continue our conversation and end either with an agreement, a disagreement, a good feeling, a bad feeling or in the worst case never to talk again.

Each one of us are unique and have our own ways of doing and getting things done. Just respecting this uniqueness in each one of us made me become more inquisitive and motivated me in trying to understand the uniqueness of the other person. I not only completed the tasks on hand successfully but also learnt new ways of doing the things.

The ability to respect the uniqueness is naturally easy with individuals who are apolitical and are nice by heart. With others sustained consistency and adherence to moral values helps me with my ability, though it is quite difficult, I must say.

When I started asking myself what the big picture and drivers could be to understand the uniqueness and only then responded, not only did the conversation release enormous energy but also helped me become wiser.

I wish you all the very best is your quest of becoming an exceptional leader.

Consultancoaching

Personally I developed clarity on my mission of “Creating world class companies” and my vision to “Create more than 100 exceptional leaders”. Learning a bit about the functioning of our brain, mainly by reading books on neuroscience, I conceptualized the path of my mission to realize my vision. Consultancoaching is what I evolved combining the necessary expertise for consultancy and necessary ability to catalyze thinking for coaching.

I have depicted the various methods of Learning and Development in the following link to explain what Consultancoaching is all about.

L&D Methods 

The following link depicts the process of Consultancoaching.

Consultancoaching Process 

The first phase of Self-Assessment is described in the following link.

Self-Assessment Steps

I would be more than pleased to consultancoach towards your organization becoming world class and thus eagerly look forward to be part of the journey to increase the share of manufacturing in our GDP from 16% to 25% and to create additional 100 Million Jobs by 2022.

The following link takes you to the self-assessment checklist that you may use.

Self-Assessment Checklist