Australia has enjoyed unprecedented prosperity since the early 1990s, resulting in fantastic living conditions for the last 30 years. But such prolonged good times may have inadvertently eroded our preparedness for adversity. Many of today's middle and senior leaders were not even born when the last recession occurred in Australia and have yet to gain firsthand experience of the resilience required in tough times.
Considering the recent challenging times, including a global pandemic, high debt and inflation rates, and unstable political environments, one would be wise to anticipate further economic uncertainties. Organisations must consider their readiness for these upcoming trials.
Tough economic times will come. Business prosperity and performance run in a cycle of growth and downturns. The current extended period of high growth has been favourable. When will the downturn hit? Some say it already has, with the closure of thousands of businesses globally that needed more time to be ready to make immediate changes to survive.
To help with this, we present four steps that anyone can take to engage their organisation's leadership team, enhance Enterprise Excellence, and reap the additional gains to prepare themselves for the future:
1. Engage, motivate, and align all senior leaders to focus and act now.
2. Understand Enterprise Excellence.
3. Enterprise Excellence your way.
4. Lead the transformation.
1. Engage, motivate, and align all senior leaders to focus and act now.
Engaging, motivating, and aligning your senior leadership team on a transformation towards Enterprise Excellence is crucial. While the reasons for this shift are significant, not every leader will rapidly jump on board and embrace change. As shown in the graph below by Geert Hofstede, Australia's unique cultural traits are characterised by individualism, low acceptance of power distance, short-term thinking and self-indulgence.
These qualities necessitate a tailored approach for each senior leadership team member. We need to understand that senior leaders are likely to back an aligned transformation with an understanding what is in it for them. Understanding what drives your leaders is vital.
Understanding the individual
To understand the motivations of a senior leader, individual meetings provide a safe space for a deep connection. Exploring the two significant sides of motivation is valuable in these meetings. Starting with understanding their background and core beliefs is a safe place when you don't know someone well.
Utilising available platforms like LinkedIn and social media to research their backgrounds before a meeting can facilitate finding common ground and enhancing empathy. You can then plan to uncover more common ground using carefully constructed questions in the meeting.
Ask a senior leader about their:
· Background,
· Where they have worked,
· The roles they have been in and
· Hobbies?
These questions can help you understand them, as well as share, at the right time, common histories, traits and interests.
Let them talk and share, only sharing what you have in common once they have finished.
The conversation needs to stay about them, not yourself. This helps to build empathy, a vital aspect of any relationship. We can deeply listen, learn, and show we hear another person rather than dominate or control a conversation.
After you have built some initial rapport, it will be easier to move the conversation to the second phase of motivation: goals and future direction.
Leaders typically share subjective information; asking a leader about their improvement measures will provide more targeted information. People's behaviour is highly influenced by how and what they measure. Once you understand an individual's goals for the future, you can ask what motivates them to achieve these or why these goals are essential to them. You are looking to understand the why or purpose behind these goals.
Understanding your leader in Australia is essential due to our highly individualistic culture and lack of respect for power distance. Run this same approach for each senior leader. The information gained will provide you with the keys to aligned motivation within the whole leadership team while helping each individual on the journey.
Alignment
You have collated some great information about each senior leader. You can now review this to find the alignment within the team and the alignment/fit towards an Enterprise Excellence journey. This might seem daunting, as you may be concerned that there won't be any alignment. Rarely is this the case.
Typically, when you understand each senior leader's goals and purposeful drivers, you find a high level of alignment, even in a dysfunctional team. Reasons for dysfunction include not understanding one another's goals and purpose, not looking at their leadership team as their primary team, and being focused on division rather than connection.
Finding alignment between the senior leadership team's goals and purposes puts you in a great position to align them towards an Enterprise Excellence Journey. Considering Australia's high level of individualism and the lack of respect for any form of power distance, leaders must be involved in defining the approach the organisation will take.
2. Understanding Enterprise Excellence
Senior leaders will likely have a good level of existing understanding of the critical elements of Enterprise Excellence. A powerful way to enhance their learning is to visit other organisations already on the journey. Seeing is believing. Virtual or in-person tours can really help leaders to gain insights in how to move forward themselves.
Several organisations in Australia, including the Enterprise Excellence Community, can arrange study tours to global hotbeds, such as Silicon Valley and Utah in the USA, Scandinavia and Germany. I recommend US companies, as we are culturally similar in our cultural traits and values.
The Shingo Prize is the West's most prestigious prize an organisation can win. It is the equivalent of the Deming Prize in Asia. Touring businesses that have won a Shingo award or are working towards one is precious.
Link to Shingo:
The Shingo Institute has published a set of principles essential to an organisation achieving excellence. These principles can guide a leadership team to review their knowledge of Enterprise Excellence and the learnings from site tours.
3. Enterprise Excellence Your Way
The most exemplary organisations worldwide have not merely adopted existing models of excellence but have customised them to align with their values and principles. This approach, often seen in organisations like Toyota, Amazon, and Danaher, involves defining Enterprise Excellence to reflect the organisation's culture, values, and ideal behaviours. This step necessitates the involvement of senior leadership and middle management. Tailoring the approach to Australian culture requires either a top-down, bottom-up, or bottom-up, top-down approach, depending on the organisation's unique dynamics.
Top-down, bottom-up.
In a top-down, bottom-up approach, a senior leadership team define their thoughts on the organisation's purpose and values. These will typically already exist in many organisations. We are not going into how to define these within this article.
The next step is to engage middle management and then front-line employees. This is often workshopped, with real-life practical activities that draw out purpose and values that link to the senior leadership level. The information gleaned from these workshops can be collated and analysed.
Bottom-up top down
The bottom-up, top-down approach is quite different to the previously mentioned approach. In this approach, front-line teams contemplate their purpose, principles, and values for their work, which is often more customer-centric than at higher levels of management. They can then test their thoughts against best practice models like the Shingo model. In a global company, it is vital to have each front-line team represented globally.
These results are then collated at a senior level who will find alignment and form a unifying umbrella of purpose and values aligned to the front line. This bottom-up, top-down approach truly respects those who create value for customers. It requires a maturity of thinking from managers who can genuinely respect front-line team members and the knowledge and value they bring.
With either approach, comparing your findings against the Shingo model and against organisations you aspire to is powerful. This ensures you don't miss any critical gaps that could undermine your excellence journey moving forward.
Culture is built on a million conversations, so staying moderate when defining values and principles is vital. Memorising your values will allow you to live them in your workplace.
4. Lead the Transformation
An Enterprise Excellence Transformation is a long-term commitment, not a short-lived endeavour. Toyota has led its purpose and principles for over 100 years—Danaher for over 40. Luckily, the results don't take that long to come to fruition. They start rolling in from the first year and continue building from there.
Dr. John Kotter's 8-step transformation model provides a robust framework to lead this journey.
These steps encompass:
1. creating a sense of urgency,
2. building a guiding coalition,
3. formulating a strategic vision,
4. enlisting a volunteer army,
5. removing barriers to enable action,
6. generating and celebrating short-term wins,
7. accelerating the transformation, and
8. instituting change across the organisation.
This approach ensures that the transformation becomes integral to the organisation's systems and processes.
The 8 Steps for Leading Change
Kotter’s award-winning methodology is the proven approach to producing lasting change.
In conclusion, initiating an Excellence transformation within your organisation is a proactive step to prepare for an uncertain future. Whether challenging times arrive sooner or later, such a transformation can enhance economic, social, and environmental benefits while better positioning your organisation to navigate adversity.
Book a 15-minute consult with Brad to chat about your strengths and growth areas in Enterprise Excellence.
Engaging experts in this field can provide additional insights and save time and effort in the long run. To learn more, you can visit www.enterpriseexcellenceacademy.com.
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