Real Life Leadership: Taking your business to the next level requires commitment and vision

My latest Real Life Leadership column - Taking your business to the next level requires commitment and vision - is now online.

Going to the next level is one of those cliched lines that people use to represent something.  Just what does going to the next level mean?

It means being flexible enough to change so that you maintain a high level of impact upon people as their situations and needs change.

Understanding how you impact people is key.  If that is a bit vague, then you need to consider what are the ideas that drive your business. How do you conceptualized your purpose and work?  Is this a mission statement?  Possibly.  But it may well be a values statement or a change statement.

When you reduce the discussion of impact down to its essence, we are talking about what changes as a result of what you do.  What are you trying to change?  Is it a problem or diffenciency in a specific context? Is it an opportunity that you see?  If you are working, and not focused on change, then you are not getting down to the bare escence of what your work is about.

Does talking about change in a proactive sense confuse the matter?  Possibly, because so much of our social condition is to resist change, rather than to create it.  The reality is that change is normal and healthy.  As a result, we need to look at change as having a positive, constructive, affirming impact upon people.

So reaching clarity about your impact upon people is a process of articulating a vision for change.

But it is insufficient  just to want to impact people through some ideas that are important to you. Too often I've seen well-meaning people stymied because they fail to understand that their good intentions mean nothing. Only action that leads to impact is what ultimately matters.  In other words, either you are the changer or you will be forced to change.

You have to create an organizational structure that provides focus and direct to the energies and resources that are needed to acheive impact.

If you are thinking about the impact of your organizational structure, you need to look at three areas.

1. Goverance -  This is where you establish policies and practices that guide the work, and goals that measure the outcome the business.

2.  Program -  Whatever you do, you have a program, it is how your goods and services are received by your clients.  The product you market is your program.  And if your program doesn't have the impact it should, then you have to look at changing it so it does.

3.  Operations - This is simply the system the supports the program.  It isn't the program.  It is the production system that produces a product.

Leaders need to be aware of how each of these broad areas impact their business.  They need to define it terms of how each impacts the marketplace.

I have come to call the interplay between - People, Ideas and Structure - The Circle of Impact.

Why a circle?

Let's say you identify a problem.  The problem maybe a relationship one.  Do you resolve the problem by just attending to the relationship? Possibly, but you don't really know at the out-set.

You also need to look at the Ideas and Structure of the business to determine whether they are contributing factors to the problem.

Let's say the problem is cash flow?   A logical response is to cut costs.  But to do that may make matters worse. For when you begin to dig deeper into the situation, the problem isn't cash flow, but customer service.  Your clients like the product. They don't like how they are treated.  As a result, just cutting costs will only make matters worse because you are not addressing the real issue.  In fact, you'll be starving the solution.

This is why it is important to ask the question of impact regarding each part of the The Circle of Impact.  I'll write more on this over the next few weeks.

Technorati Tags: Real Life Leadership, People, Ideas, Structure, The Circle of Impact

Comments

[Ed Brenegar]

Ellen,
I totally agree.
As I work with these three areas, I find that the least developed is the people side. Partly because people are more dynamic. It is easy to deal with ideas and structure because it doesn't require us to step outside of ourselves. But the people side requires us to be people of greater depth and humanity. Not business automatons.
Recognizing that there is a culture there is vital as well. To the point that every change effort is affecting the culture of the organization. I continually use Collins and Porras' Built To Last vision model to get at the cultural issues of organizations. It is tough work, but when you get to a breakthrough with them, it is like they have rediscovered life.

[ellenweber]

Ed, thanks fr the thoughtful explanation of this interchange -- which does show a key to leadership that gets missed. Lately I find the people part drops out quickest -- and especially the part that opens to different cutural contexts that people add to any rich circle. What do you think?