The Missing Element in Your Organizational Strategy

by: Randy Ottinger

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In a cover story for a recent issue of Harvard Business Review, Professor John Kotter described a new type of organization that combines speed of execution with agility to seize new opportunities quickly. “Speed plus agility” is the holy grail that leaders of organizations seek to achieve. Many don’t. There are two big missing pieces that are overlooked by a majority of leaders. This blog describes one of them.

Recently, I was presenting to a group of senior executives from 40 different companies. They represented many different industries and were from different parts of the world. I asked them to work collectively to design the perfect, high-speed, fast-executing organization. What would it look like? What would it feel like? What processes would it have in place? I kept gathering ideas until they had exhausted all of their thoughts and insights.

What they came up with was an organization with a clear strategy, where everyone is urgent and aligned toward a common goal, and where execution of those strategies flowed smoothly with all of the management processes you would expect in place. They had designed the typical process most people think successful companies use to implement new strategies.

“So what is missing,” I asked? “Nothing,” they responded. “Let me ask you all a question,” I continued, “Tell me how well this model works at seizing new opportunities or going after new strategies that require a lot of change?” They scratched their heads as they thought about this, but they came up with an answer that is confirmed by research, that only about 30 percent of organizations are good at seizing new, strategic opportunities. Put another way, 70 percent fail trying to do so. So I asked again, “What is missing?” Silence.

One answer that we have uncovered in our work — and it’s something John Kotter learned a long time ago — is that a missing piece required for speed and agility is an “urgency process.” When I say an “urgency process,” I mean including an actual process — as essential as your strategic planning and execution processes — that is dedicated to creating urgency.

When I mention an “urgency process” to groups of executives, I’ll often hear things like, “What is an urgency process?” and “We did not learn this in business school.” Well, here’s one way of defining it: An urgency process is a quantifiable and repeatable way to generate alignment, urgency, and engagement in a majority of employees in a company, division, functional area, or large team. Some of the elements it contains are:

• Senior leadership team alignment around a market opportunity
• An urgency team
• Urgency initiatives to create alignment, urgency, and engagement
• A way to capture names of urgent employees that want to volunteer to help
• A means of measuring urgency to ensure at least 50 percent of the organization is urgent

To be clear, an urgency process is not a communications plan. A communications plan is typically a one-way set of activities designed to inform and create awareness. It is not typically designed to align and engage employees as volunteers to take action.

So what do you do when you have 50 percent of your employees in your team, division, or organization urgent and raising their hand to help? How do you put them productively to use?

Read more from Kotter International here.

Tags: Alignment, John Kotter, Randy Ottinger, Strategy, Vision Clarity

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The Danger in a “Mostly Aligned” Team

by: Ken Perlman

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My two worlds collided one recent weekend. I introduced my young daughters to the classic film, The Princess Bride. I also had just completed a number of interviews with executives and stakeholders of a client I’m working with on Leading Change in these remarkable times. These things may seem unrelated, but watch how this comes together.

My girls loved Billy Crystal as Miracle Max. The minute the credits ended, they began quoting him. “Girls, come down to dinner,” was met with, “Why don’t you give me a paper cut and rub some lemon juice in it?” My youngest daughter punctuated her kiss goodnight with, “Bye bye boys, have fun storming the castle!” When I asked the girls to retrieve a book for me, they responded with, “It will take a miracle!”

“It will take a miracle” — this is how many business leaders feel as they try to rally their organizations around a big opportunity. After the girls went to sleep, I started reviewing my interview notes from earlier in the week. During these interviews, we always ask about strategy, opportunities and challenges. We also ask how aligned the leadership team is around where they are going, how they want to get there and how quickly and boldly they are planning to move. As I read their responses, I kept hearing Miracle Max. The most common response for this client, as with many of our clients, was “mostly aligned.” Miracle Max had a great line about “mostly”: “Mostly dead is slightly alive.”

I believe executive alignment—really, any alignment—is binary: you either are or you are not. I think about the wheels on my car being “mostly aligned” and what that would feel like. Yet most leadership teams stop at “mostly aligned” and accept it as sufficient. They tend to forget that “mostly aligned” is amplified exponentially further down in the organization, creating more and more distance among an organization’s members. By the time you’ve reached the rank-and-file, the organization is only slightly alive.

One interview answer particularly caught my eye: “ We are aligned on the things we need to be aligned on. The other stuff … we don’t play in each others’ sandboxes.” We talked to the people who worked for this interviewee. They too, recognized this leaders’ attitude, which they translated as, “They do their best to not work together with others or have us coordinate our efforts.”

This may seem trivial, but here are the downstream and long-term effects of this lack of alignment:

1. Inconsistent instructions based on different interpretations of a new strategy;
2. Conflicting priorities across silos and departments;
3. Performance metrics and expectations that reward silo performance and individual achievement over organization-wide results and customer satisfaction;
4. Vastly different content, focus and messages from meetings.

So, what will it take for these executives to get from “mostly aligned” to aligned? It won’t take a miracle, or even a really big (though chocolate-covered) pill. It will demand the courage to create the time and space to have a conversation about what needs to change so they can accelerate their strategies toward success. Often executives will say they are too busy to make that kind of space. Later, they recognize the turbulence, lost opportunities and wasted energy they’ve caused, and how it has crippled their strategic efforts.

But with a little effort—no magic required—an organization can go from “slightly alive” to thriving.

Read more from Kotter International here.

Tags: Alignment, John Kotter, Ken Perlman, Vision Clarity

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What I Wish Someone Had Told Me: Leading Pastors Share Thoughts on Vision and Alignment

by: Will Mancini

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Every year, Outreach Magazine provides a profile of the 100 Fastest-growing churches in the country. This year, they had a few interview spots entitled, “What I wish someone told me.”

What really struck me are the common threads on vision and alignment. Look for how these pastors discuss clarity and unique calling. The big themes are as follows:

• Radical emphasis on mission and vision (including values and strategy)
• Willingness to “let people go” who don’t align with the vision
• Commitment to stop programs and cut ministry not aligned with the vision

Now, listen to their own words form the 2012 special issue.

Luke Barnett (@LWBarnett),  Phoenix First Assembly of God (12th Fastest-growing)

At first you think the mobilizing leadership happens naturally, like leaders and volunteers and magically appear because you have a great idea, but that’s not so. Over time you learn that you have to be intentional in mobilizing and recruiting leaders and you have to develop the leaders that have bought into the vision and feel appreciated.

John  Beukema (@John Beukema), King Street Church (39th Fastest-growing)

Some people will never leave no matter what happens and some people will leave no matter what happens. Since that has been true, I wish I had been told how pitiful and unproductive it is to worry over who you retain and who you don’t. Just do the right things, be clear on your mission, and don’t get emotionally invested in who stays or goes.

David Brown (@DavidBrown_Ave), The Avenue Church (44th Fast-growing)

People do not have trouble committing to something. Look around at the ball fields and cheerleading meets. The church has been slow at giving them something worth committing to be in. When leaders are passionate about the vision God has given the local church and begin to share that vision people will follow.

Jim Burgen, Flatirons Community Church (2nd Fastest-growing)

At least once a year we carve out six weeks to work through our primary six values that drive everything we do, why we do it, how we do it, and why we don’t do that other thing.  Regularly working through our values in creative parables allows people that have never been to church to know what kind of place they have landed in.

Jeff Clark, First Hattiesburg (20th Fastest-growing)

We killed Sunday School, and it saved our church We killed men’s and women’s ministry and it saved our church. We found that you can’t have competing ministries and build intimacy. Simple, clear and focused opportunities for connection build intimacy. Small groups are driving a stake in the heart of feeling disconnected and left out.

Mark Connelly (@missionmark), Mission Community Church (8th Fastest-growing)

The bigger you get the better your Sunday morning experience is. That draws spectators. We constantly fight against that by boldly calling people to sacrificially live their faith, and don’t worry about the fallout. In a recent sermon, I called spectators parasites on the body of Christ. I am sure we lost some people as a result. And they’re probably parasites on some other church now.

Jack Graham (@Jackngraham), Prestonwood Baptist Church (75th Fastest growing)

The most important lesson I have learned is to ensure we planning and preparing or growth. It’s more than a cliché: Vision produces provision.

Too often we ride dead horses into the sunset. We always ask, “Is this program fulfilling the church’s mission?” Is it vibrant and life-changing?” “Is it good stewardship?”  We must be willing at times to make tough decisions and cut programs that are no longer productive.

Stuart Hodges (@stuhodges), Waters Edge Church (36th Fastest-growing)

From the verbiage we use in an e-mail communication to things we do on Facebook, we’re connecting people to mission. We utilize weekly team huddles to keep our volunteers connected to the mission, We emphasize the mission regularly in our community group curriculum. And throughout the year, I constantly tie the mission of our church into sermons.

We limit our programs. By saying “now” to additional church programs we can say “yes” to resourcing outreach. If we said yes to every great idea for “the church” there would be no time, energy or dollars for outreach.

Jonathon Howes (@Johnny Howes), Graystone Church (40th Fastest-growing)

One of things we have done to retain more people is to lower our requirement of membership. We still want every member to live out our values, but we realized that it’s a process, and we need to let them grow spiritually as the Holy Spirit moves in their lives and they learn from the Word of God.

Some people will always be spectators, but our goal is challenging people to move from the crowd to the core. We have built into the Graystone culture: Everyone comes, everyone serves and everyone gives.

Benji Kelly (@BenjiKelley) Newhope Church (5th Fastest-growing)

I truly believe that the same vision that attacts some also repels others. In the larger scheme of things, I think we pastors would do well to become OK with people leaving our church. For the sake of those that God still wants to reach with love and forgiveness, we have unfortunately have to sometimes let believers exit out the back door!

John McKinzie, Hope Fellowship (48th Fastest-growing)

One thing I don’t know if I realized in my early years is that retention in the body of Christ is more important that retention in my church. If people are unhappy, I would rather help them find a church that “fits” them than have them stay unhappy and possibly quit going to church altogether.

Scott Ridout (@scottridout) Sun Valley Community Church (4th Fastest-growing)

I wish I would have know that the natural drift of every church is inward. The more time Christians spend in church, it seems the farther they move away from God’s original intention­­– to reach the lost.  Momentum is easily lost when it comes ot evangelistic fervor, and we have to constantly champion an outward-focused lifestyle among our people.

Kerry Shook (@kerryshook), The Woodlands Church (9th Largest)

I had no idea how intentional I would have to be to stay true to my purpose and the vision God had put in my heart for what the church should be and do. It is so easy to please everyone and compromise your calling of the vision God has given you and how he desires to you and your ministry uniquely in His Kingdom to reach people for Christ…No one every told me that if you lead well people will still leave the church.

Once a year we have an alignment campaign where all of our small groups are expected to take the same small group challenge. This provides a sense of shared mission and we all do the same study together, and it gets everyone on the same page with the vision God has given us.

Tags: Alignment, Vision, Vision Clarity, Will Mancini

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