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The term, 'it's a VUCA (Volatile, Uncertain, Complex, Ambiguous) world', has been used so often that it is now quite a cliché. However, this does not detract from the fact, that the business environment is becoming even more VUCA. Brexit bears testimony to this fact.
How does a CEO navigate the 40 foot waves that appear to be the norm and forget about serene seas of the past as an unreal memory? How does a CEO not just stay afloat and survive, but race ahead in the storm and reach the port ahead of competition? The truth is that growth, which is not an option, is so contextual that there is no playbook for the CEO to refer. Yet some CEOs deliver their greatest successes when times are the toughest. They innovate and focus on transformation. They think differently, do things differently and behave differently. They write their own playbook.
Transformation is a dramatic outcome, a result of a series of innovative steps each building on the other. So when CEOs decide that they need to transform their organisations to move ahead of the market, they choose to focus on 'changing mind-sets' as the starting point of their intervention. There are many learnings along the way, but to my mind there are three specific steps which a CEO can make a difference.
Changing Mind-sets - Realising individual potential. The starting point matters. Individuals, by being aware of their thinking preferences and by understanding the lens with which they 'see' the world, recognise that there could be other more effective ways of thinking. Individuals recognise that they have a choice of not being stuck in a groove and to do things differently. A major learning is to ensure that everyone speak the same language - there are no exceptions.
Diversity of Thinking - Realising team potential. The best ideas are generated when people who think differently, understand each other and do not take differences personally. They are comfortable challenging each other so as to encourage creative abrasion, the sparks which generate new ideas. The value of this approach is that when differences in people are explained from a cognitive perspective, people accept these differences readily and are less judgmental. Secondly, people need to know 'how' to change their behaviour. The turning point was when they understood that what they really needed to focus on was on adapting their thinking and behaviour to be effective in a given situation and not change who they were. This has helped raise the level of collaboration within teams and with teams from other departments.
Defining and Reward New Behaviours - Leaders need to live up to their potential. Everyone needs to demonstrate a new set of behaviours, especially the leader who needs to energise their teams by being bold and thinking big. From an individual and team perspective, for example, it is the willingness to move away from constraint based thinking to solution based thinking, and to step out from one's boundaries to collaborate. Leaders need to demonstrate by their behaviours what this means in a given context.
The ambition to grow and stay ahead of the market can put an organisation and the CEO under pressure and under pressure CEOs need to bring out the best in themselves and others.
Justin Menkes in his brilliant book 'Better under Pressure' summed this up succinctly. CEOs who succeed do so by drawing on a set of three essential and rare attributes:
- Realistic optimism: pursue audacious goals at the same time remain aware of the magnitude of challenges confronting them and the difficulties ahead.
- Subservience to purpose: an extraordinary dedication to work based on the remarkable importance they place on their goal.
- Finding order in chaos: people with this ability find taking on multi-dimensional problems invigorating and bring clarity to quandaries that baffle others.
By focusing on changing mind-sets and not just competencies, by transforming how an organisation collaborates with each other, by effectively demanding leaders to 'step up' by using existing cognitive resources, a CEO can imbue some of these essential attributes in his team to stay the course. In the end, it's really who we are that matters.
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