How does your leadership approach impact the ability of your company to embrace change?
In today’s fast-moving environment, any business that is looking for the pace of change to slow will be deeply disappointed. In fact, change is vital for every organisation because, without it, businesses lose their competitive edge and fail to meet the needs of their customers.
This poses leadership challenges that are complex, multi-faceted and global in nature, and such challenges rarely lend themselves to archetypical solutions.
It is against this context that leaders must ask themselves whether their current leadership model is fit for purpose and how this impacts on the ability of the business to effectively manage change.
Systematic, Interdisciplinary Understanding
When you read any contemporary research about effective leadership in a changing world, the message is clear – successful leaders have ditched the “business as usual” approach and are adopting a “breakthrough approach.” This approach is founded upon a systematic, interdisciplinary understanding of what it takes to be an effective change leader.
What is systematic, interdisciplinary understanding?
This article explores four of the fundamental concepts systematic, interdisciplinary understanding and their application:
2. Social, Living Organisms
Although the concept of a business as a complex social system and a living organism has been an underlying theme expounded by distinguished business thinkers for decades, leaders continue to make changes without a clear appreciation of how these changes will affect the collective functioning of the company.
A systems view recognises the interrelationships of people, processes, and decision-making and this interdisciplinary understanding informs the organisational thinking, structure, actions and rewards.
In essence a systematic, interdisciplinary understanding requires knowledge of how all the parts work together and also depends on an intimate understanding of the parts themselves.
2. Adaptive and Self-Correcting
There is now insurmountable evidence to show that immobile management solutions quickly become new sources of dysfunction themselves. That is why organisations need to be dynamic — capable of adapting to unexpected developments.
Organisations of all shapes and sizes and in all sectors must develop the capacity for managing change, making decisions with limited information and for trial-and-error learning if they are to be self-correcting.
Leaders must recognise that change in any part of the business, or in its external environment, produces profound ripple effects throughout the company.
3. Participative Decision-Making
Significantly, break through leadership approaches recognise the importance of human participation in decision-making.
The ability to make decisions, test new ideas and find new solutions to old problems is not just for senior executives. Everyone who works for the business — including partners, stakeholders and suppliers — must understand how the system works, develop their resourcefulness, and apply that resourcefulness to improve the business.
4. Constant Learning and Improvement
Breakthrough leadership emphasises constant learning both for the individual employee and for the organisation as a whole.
Those who are closest to any given part of the system hold the most valuable expertise. Management’s primary jobs are, first to facilitate learning, adaptation and improvement by creating a culture that is free of fear. Second, is to provide the tools and training that employees need to identify problems and opportunities for improvement.
Simply asking the question “Why?” can lead to new ideas and innovations that can directly impact the bottom line.
Organisations benefit from change that results in new ways of looking at customer needs, new ways of delivering customer service, new ways of strengthening customer interactions and new products that might attract new markets.
Breakthrough leaders constantly test current assumptions and seek to anticipate future needs. They pay attention to process, and they see continuous improvement as the best way to achieve not only step change but also innovative leaps.
Conclusion
Without change, managers would still be dictating correspondence to secretaries, correcting and sending them back to be retyped, wasting time for all involved.
While adoption of breakthrough leadership approaches can be disruptive at first, ultimately it will increase productivity, service excellence and profitability.
Therefore an understanding and application of breakthrough leadership is absolutely fundamental for companies at any stage – from start-ups to the most staid organisations in all sectors and markets.
What action will you now take?
If you want to be a breakthrough leader, taking your business to the next level, contact us now and we can plan your journey together.