Coming Down the Mountain: Coming Out Of This Crisis Stronger
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Breakthrough technology, uncertainty and the unprecedented and ever-increasing speed of change demand an organisation that is a fit for the challenges of the 21st century. We are describing not just a better, but a very different kind of way to operate. An organisation built to change; one where disruption, agility and speed of learning dominate the leadership conversation.
Which brings us to the COVID-19 crisis. A crisis has three stages. Stage one: acceptance. Stage two: survival. Stage three: growth. And the winners will be? Those who come out of this crisis stronger.
Amid the veritable avalanche of "me too" advice on how to get through this crisis it is easy to overlook two central questions:
"How will your business come out of this stronger?"
"As a leader, how will you personally come out of this stronger?"
"Part One: Coming Down the Mountain" looks at how to come out of this crisis stronger:
The Three Stages of Crisis
Letting Go of Our Past
Following a Script From a Different Century
The New Normal
Coming Down the Mountain
Why Culture Matters
Next Steps
Appendix one: 3 X 3: Crisis, Culture and Change
Mindset Assessment: Will You come Out of This Crisis Stronger?
"Leadership: Moving Beyond The Crisis" is a complementary book series, specifically aimed at enhancing how leaders respond to times of crisis.
The books cover concepts such as how to come out of this crisis stronger, culture, leadership agility and learning, what makes great teams. Also included are essential skills to enable us to start having conversations about moving forward while taking appropriate actions.
Part One, Coming Down the Mountain, looks at how to come out of this crisis stronger:
The Three Stages of Crisis
Letting Go of Our Past
Following a Script From a Different Century
The New Normal
Coming Down the Mountain
Why Culture Matters
Next Steps
Appendix one: 3 X 3: Crisis, Culture and Change
Mindset Assessment: Will You come Out of This Crisis Stronger?
The Culture Conversation
Recognising, as we move forward, how important organisation culture is, Part Two outlines the Culture Conversation:
The Culture Carriers
Look, Listen, Learn
The Building Blocks
Culture Is A System
Is the Organisation Managing Its Culture?
What Makes the Business Special?
One Culture or Many?
Measurement
Strategy Versus Culture
A Team of Teams
Without Leadership You Ain't Got Much
The Orxestra Change Model
Culture Assessment
Leadership, Learning and Agility: The Way Of The Dolphin
Part Three explores the need for leadership agility and what that implies: Leadership Agility and Learning - The Way of the Dolphin:
Agility is a Way to Think
Bass and the Shark
Agility and Speed of Learning
The Way of the Dolphin
Conclusion
Assessment: How Good a Coach Are You?
Great Organisations Are Built Around Great Teams
Drawing on the reality that tomorrow's organisation will be a team of teams, Part Four examines what it means to be an outstanding team - Great Organisations Are Built Around Great Teams:
Who We Were is Who We Are
It's All About Culture
Organisational Lessons from Nature
The Organisation of Tomorrow
Building a Great Team
Team Assessment
When the Trees Get Bigger and the Forest Gets Deeper - It's Time To Sharpen Your Saw
Part Five moves beyond leadership as a philosophy and drills down into essential skills - When the Trees Get Bigger and the Forest Gets Deeper, It's Time to Sharpen Your Saw:
Are You The Leader They Need?
Assessing Your Organisation's Leadership Balance
If Ever There Was a Time to Listen - It’s Now
The Listening Tree
To Lead Is To Care
50 Ways To Say You Care - In a Covid World
If You Are Not Living Your Own Story, You Are Living Someone Else's
Resilience Assessment
Download your complementary copy of "Leadership: Moving Beyond The Crisis" from TRANSEARCH Downloads.
"The Future of Jobs report maps the jobs and skills of the future, tracking the pace of change. It aims to shed light on the pandemic-related disruptions in 2020, contextualized within a longer history of economic cycles and the expected outlook for technology adoption, jobs and skills in the next five years."
"It's important to take lessons out of this rather quickly. So, what can you learn out of this crisis? What can you do? How can you shape your solution? How can you shape your services? How can you shape the sale of your product? This is pretty much something that every single industry or every single client has to think about." - Ullrich Ackermann, Chair of the Board at TRANSEARCH.
Ullrich shares his views on dealing with the ever-evolving status of organisational life, with the AESC.
Leadership is fickle. As you climb the corporate ladder your role changes. When you lead a department you are expected to give orders. People look for leadership. When you lead a division you are expected to empower middle management. People look for guidance. When you become the CEO of a company you become a servant leader. People look for inspiration. Reaching the pinnacle role of a CEO is every graduate's dream, but when you finally arrive you have too much to do, with too little time and too little information. Moreover, you become a public figure and vulnerable to critique. Not everybody wears the armor to withstand such forces.
The findings of Harvard Business Review published in 2004 still seem relevant in 2020. Here are 7 surprises that new CEOs discovered when entering office:
You can't run the company
Giving orders is very costly
It is hard to know what is really going on
You are always sending a message
You are not the boss
Pleasing shareholders is not the goal
You are still only human
Published by Michael E. Porter, Jay W. Lorsch and Nitin Nohria From the October 2004 Issue
Summary by Geo Wehry, Senior Partner at TRANSEARCH, originally published on LinkedIn here.
What can leaders aspiring to board roles do to prepare and position themselves for success? Interviews with board members representing some of the world's leading companies found that boardroom capital is built on five different types of intelligence:
In a recent survey, employees considered 'purpose' to be more than twice as important, on average, as traditional motivators such as compensation and career advancement. How do you clearly articulate organisational purpose and execute the actions needed to deliver on it?
"With this article, we set out to show which mindsets and practices are proven to make CEOs most effective. It is the fruit of a long-running effort to study performance data on thousands of CEOs, revisit our firsthand experience helping CEOs enhance their leadership approaches, and extract a set of empirical, broadly applicable insights on how excellent CEOs think and act."
Eighth annual research report assesses the concerns of 1,063 board members and executives globally, across a variety of industries. The survey report provides detailed insights broken out by size and type of company, respondent role, industry and geographical region.
A private company board with a unique mix of personalities wanted to attract a non-executive director with the right chemistry and Audit Committee leadership ability. The following case study shows how our team leveraged a global network of trusted business relationships, our proprietary TRANSEARCH Orxestra® Method, and the Hogan Assessment tool to help attract and select a globally experienced executive with a reputation for being a true collaborative leader with deep finance and board experience.
Over many years, TRANSEARCH International have developed a unique set of tools that has enabled organisations to clearly articulate what they are looking for when hiring, based on a clear definition of their current culture.
"The way CEOs allocate their time and their presence - where they choose to personally participate - is crucial, not only to their own effectiveness but also to the performance of their companies."
