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Enhance Leadership
Problem 1. You Don’t Even Have A Strategy
If you don’t have a crystal clear strategy that everyone knows, then you’re likely to find one person going off in one direction, another going in a different direction and perhaps another somewhere else.
Solution
Strategy, strategy, strategy!
Outcome
Aligned leaders understanding precisely where they’re meant to be going.
Read Key Points & Transcript
You Don’t Even Have A Strategy
video key points
- Understanding your business strategy is crucial for enhancing leadership; every leader should be clear on what it is and what their strategic tasks are for the quarter.
- A clear, ambitious, and hyper-focused strategy is the bedrock of business direction, driving and inspiring all to achieve set goals and create a competitive advantage.
- Ensuring leaders are aligned and moving in the same direction is essential for them to perform optimally, highlighting the importance of a unified strategic vision.
- A well-constructed strategy not only benefits internal leadership but also defines the value proposition for customers, enabling effective communication of this value.
- Equip your leaders with the necessary knowledge and tools to excel; don’t demand excellence without providing the means to achieve it.
Presented by: Drew Pflaum
video transcript
If we came to your office and spoke with each of your leaders, will they be able to tell us what your business strategy is?
Let’s assume they can give some answer to that question. Are you confident each of your leaders will provide a clear and focused explanation of your strategy? Will they know what strategic tasks they have to perform this quarter to move your strategy along?
We know they won’t. Otherwise, you wouldn’t even be watching this video and contemplating what it is that you can do to help enhance leadership within your business.
To enhance leadership, you have to get everyone to know your strategy.
Your strategy is the bedrock of your business’s direction.
A clear, ambitious and hyper-focused strategy will detail your goals. It’ll include a series of actions that drive and inspire the entire business to achieve those goals and create a competitive advantage.
It’ll enable your leaders to get on the same page. To drive down the same road. A necessity for them to perform at the top of their game.
Outside of directly enhancing leadership, a well-constructed strategy stipulates the value proposition you offer to customers. Enabling you to communicate this effectively to them.
Don’t be that business which demands the world from leaders but doesn’t equip them with what they need to excel.
Problem 2. Meetings Last Forever But Don’t Actually Achieve Much
If you find yourself walking out of a meeting with little resolve on what is actually going to get done, or you find yourself in meetings that are mostly focused on short-term budgets and firefighting, you’ve got a seriously problematic time wasting issue.
Solution
Strategically focused meetings with accountabilities.
Outcome
Meetings actually translate to better outcomes, rather than wasted time.
Read Key Points & Transcript
Meetings Last Forever But Don’t Actually Achieve Much
video key points
- Effective leaders ensure meetings are focused and outcome-oriented, driving the business forward by executing its strategy effectively.
- The differentiation between successful and exceptional businesses lies in their ability to prioritise and execute the right actions, standing out from competitors.
- Meetings should not only discuss strategy but also assign clear responsibilities and accountabilities to team members, ensuring progress towards strategic goals.
- Common meeting pitfalls include lack of clear decision-making processes and consensus ruling, leading to inaction and inefficiency.
- For tangible improvements in meeting efficacy and strategic execution, adopting best practices in meeting management is crucial.
Presented by: Drew Pflaum
video transcript
We suspect you’ve been in at least one meeting that lasted an exorbitant amount of time and after you and your colleagues left the meeting practically nothing came from it. What an incredible waste of time!
Now, if that experience was a once-a-year occurrence, it would probably be palatable. But if it’s a more frequent occurrence, that’s an organisation killer!
Effective leaders make effective use of their, and their team’s, time.
Meetings must be focused and drive real results.
You’re strategy should be the cornerstone of focus. There is definitely a place for looking into short-term matters such as budgets and firefighting, but ultimately, as leaders of a business your meetings must continually drive the business towards executing its strategy.
If we’re not being direct enough, then perhaps this is more clear.
Many businesses can do strategy planning. Many have ok strategies. What separates the good from the great? Those who focus on getting the right things done!
Your meetings, and the actions and accountabilities which come from them, are directly linked to how well you execute your strategy. They influence how your business does things that little bit better than your competitors, and therefore how it reaps the rewards that come from doing so.
At this point, ask yourself, of the last few meetings you’ve been to, have you and your team:
- Even discussed your strategy?
- Know the key strategic focus for this quarter?
- Of the things discussed in the meetings, was anyone given direct responsibility to take action?
- At the next meeting, is it crystal clear what everyone’s accountabilities are?
- When it comes to the next meeting, will people actually be held accountable?
- Are there common problems which may garner discussion but no action? Probably because there is no clear decision-making process.
- Are your meetings ruled by consensus decision-making?
Just like everything in business, we learn what is best practice and how to implement it. Learning how to have effective meetings is no different.
Let us know if you’re ready for better meetings, and the rewards which follow.
Problem 3. You’re Not Embracing Boardroom Conflict
Less than ideal decisions, and long-term deterioration in business performance, may arise when questions are put to the group and there is silence or bickering ensues.
Solution
Embrace conflict
Outcome
More productive relationships and better decisions propelling the business forward.
Read Key Points & Transcript
Embrace conflict
video key points
- Embracing conflict within a high trust environment is pivotal for leadership and business health, fostering a willingness to engage, debate, and depend on others.
- The presence of conflict, managed well, leads to better decision-making, whereas its avoidance due to low trust results in poor outcomes and resentment.
- Trust and conflict are intertwined; establishing a culture that supports constructive conflict requires building trust over time.
- Evidence-based approaches guide the process of enhancing trust and conflict management, drawing on studies to inform strategies.
- To explore strategies for building a high trust culture that positively engages with conflict, consider booking a complimentary meeting.
Presented by: Drew Pflaum
video transcript
Perhaps a counter-intuitive idea for enhancing leadership is to tell you and your leaders to embrace conflict.
Yet, we’d go as far to say that, a healthy business is a business which embraces the possibility of conflict at every opportunity.
But importantly, embracing conflict always has to be within a place of high trust.
You see, a team with high team trust, has a high degree of willingness to engage, debate and rely upon other team members.
Whereas a team with low trust, which avoids conflict, sees the opposite.
It sees leaders avoiding sharing their opinions, avoiding putting forward their disagreements and thereby avoiding the pursuit of best solutions.
A low conflict business sees leaders choose their battles carefully, regularly remaining silent on important matters. That’s not in any business’s best interest. Rather, it’s a recipe for poor decision making, and perhaps even worse, resentment.
So here, we’re talking about trust and conflict going hand in hand. Creating a high trust culture which embraces conflict and therefore allows leaders to make better decisions.
If you’re seeing the avoidance of conflict within your business, it’s either contributing to trust always being low, or it’s eroding trust over time.
Tackling this issue is delicate.
Conflict without trust can be nasty and destructive. So, we don’t encourage you to simply proclaim to your team that “we need more conflict and less silence”, thinking that’ll achieve desired outcomes.
Rather, you need to follow a process of building up trust over time, eventually getting to a stage where your culture would accept nothing less than high trust and constructive conflict.
As with all processes at Munro’s, they’re informed and led by evidence. So when it comes us to helping clients through this type of process, we apply the science.
Let me give you one small example of what this means.
A study regarding teams in 2022 found that interpersonal conflicts significantly reduce proactive behaviours. That’s because interpersonal conflicts influence employees to view the team as unworthy of their efforts when they feel unsupported.
In the same study, process and task conflicts were not found to impact the proactive motivation of employees. From this we learn that addressing interpersonal conflicts is of greater significance than process and task conflicts. We accordingly cater for this when designing programmes to support your business in its pursuit of building a high trust culture that embraces positive conflicts.
If you’d like to speak with us about how this can be done with you, then book a complimentary Get To Know Each Other meeting.
Problem 4. You Should Have Better Leaders
If all your business leaders aren’t growing they’re capabilities by at least as much as your growth ambitions, the business may find itself drifting as opposed to growing.
Solution
Hone capabilities
Outcome
Leaders who are capable of growing your business.
Read Key Points & Transcript
Business Ownership Education
video key points
- Managers, while experts in their domains, often lack crucial leadership skills for sustained business success, underscoring the need for focused training and coaching in business leadership capabilities.
- The wisdom of Ayman Al-Abdullah, echoing JFK, suggests that leadership and learning are intrinsically connected, highlighting the misconception among some leaders that reaching a leadership position negates the need for further learning.
- Incremental improvements in knowledge and skills by leaders can have significant, positive impacts across their organisations, leveraging leadership as a tool for widespread improvement.
- Addressing the challenges of leadership capability development involves determining the timing and extent of learning, identifying essential skills aligned with business strategy, and choosing effective learning modalities to combat the forgetting curve.
- Emphasising the importance of learning for results rather than mere knowledge accumulation, Munro’s offers tailored learning programmes and leadership improvement initiatives through Munro’s Business Academy as practical steps towards enhancing team performance.
Presented By: Drew Pflaum
With Thanks To: Ayman Al-Abdullah
video transcript
Managers are often domain experts in what the business makes; but they often lack the skills to lead the business to sustained success.
This is partly because little time is devoted to training and coaching leaders in the necessary business skills. Here’s why this should not be the case.
If you watch enough of our videos you’ll notice on several occasions us quoting Ayman Al-Abdullah, now business coach and former CEO of App Sumo – a business Ayman grew from $3million to $80million in revenue. This is because he is incredibly good at distilling down important business leadership insights. So, here’s a social media post by Ayman:
He begins with quoting JFK: “Leadership and learning are indispensable to each other”.
Ayman follows up with:
“Leadership and learning are indispensable to each other.” -JFK
Too many leaders think that achieving a leadership position means they have all the answers and don’t need to learn anymore
But in reality, it’s the exact opposite
— Ayman Al-Abdullah 🧱 (@aymanalabdul) July 6, 2023
Whether or not too many leaders think they have all the answers and don’t need to learn anymore is debatable. But, we certainly agree with the sentiment that learning commonly becomes a lower priority.
So, Ayman continues and this is where he starts to make a very powerful point:
As leaders, we should seek to learn more
We don’t have all the answers
And improving our knowledge just slightly could lead to huge changes across the organizations we lead
— Ayman Al-Abdullah 🧱 (@aymanalabdul) July 6, 2023
That’s a very powerful thought. The fact that even incremental learning by leaders can influence profoundly upside improvement for a business because of leveraging that acquired knowledge and skills.
If you’re in agreement that business owners, leaders and managers should be continuously improving their capabilities, then the key consideration is how.
Three key challenges for building and honing capabilities are generally:
- When and how much time to dedicate to it.
- What should one learn.
- How should that learning and capability building take place.
We’re an evidence-led firm and prefer to follow the rigorous science on this. However, for the moment at least, we’re not aware of definitive evidence heavily directing us to a certain approach. Given this, we let science direct us as best it can and we continue to evolve learning best practices over time – just the same as with how we should learn all our business skills.
So, with regards to when and how much time to dedicate, it depends on what is being taught, what are the current capabilities, what is the urgency to acquire the capabilities, what is the capacity to learn, especially given other time demands, and how to mitigate the forgetting curve. The more new and novel the learning, the more likely it is that learners need to regularly commit time to learn.
What should one learn, should be directed by your strategy, current capabilities and critical business areas that science has shown to have the greatest influence on business success.
How should the learning and capability building take place, is similarly influenced by the afore-mentioned factors. There are a mixture of learning options available, such as impactful sprints involving face-to-face and online material, online courses, group meetings for rising stars and personalised coaching for business owners and CEOs.
If you take only two things away from this video, then make them these:
- Improving leaders’ capabilities can have a profoundly positive multiplier effect due to leadership leverage; and
- Learning is about building and improving capabilities. It has to produce results, not knowledge that’ll soon be forgotten.
We offer impactful learning programmes tailored specifically for our business clients, and also host leadership improvement programmes through Munro’s Business Academy. So please do take advantage of this if enhancing your team’s performance is of interest to you.
Problem 5. Employees Aren’t Involved So All You’ve Got Is A Plan
If employees don’t know the strategy, don’t understand why certain decisions have been made, don’t understand exactly how to perform their role in strategy execution and don’t have a say in continuous improvement of the strategy, then your “plan” isn’t likely to get you very far.
Solution
Never in isolation
Outcome
Successful strategy execution.
Read Key Points & Transcript
Employees Aren’t Involved So All You’ve Got Is A Plan
video key points
- Strategy formation is often perceived as straightforward, but the true challenge lies in its implementation, hampered by rigid organisational structures, counterproductive work cultures, poor communication, and insufficient employee involvement.
- Research highlights the critical need for leaders to enhance their skills in executing strategies, involving middle management more effectively and ensuring continuous communication and understanding of strategic objectives across all levels.
- For successful strategy execution, it’s essential for employees to not only be aware of the strategic plan but to deeply comprehend it and actively contribute to its continuous improvement and refinement.
- Encouraging a culture where insights from every level of the organisation can influence strategic decisions is key to avoiding the common pitfall of neglecting the strategic document in the hustle of daily operations.
- To stand out, investing in the development of capabilities for executing exceptional strategies is recommended. Explore Munro’s Business Academy for inspiration and consider scheduling a ‘Get To Know Each Other’ meeting to further your business’s strategic execution abilities.
Presented by: Drew Pflaum
video transcript
It’s a fairly common view that strategy formation is the easy part. Leaders are already decent at it.
It’s strategy implementations which broadly needs to be improved.
Rigorous research in this area has found that strategic execution is significantly negatively impacted by:
- Strict regulatory and organisational rules.
- Organisational structures.
- Work cultures.
- Lack of communication.
- Lack of employee involvement and understanding.
Enhancing leaders strategic execution knowledge and skills to carry out the strategic plan is accordingly pivotal.
Leaders at the top need to know to involve middle managers. Truly involve them.
They need to know that once-off or intermittent communication of the strategy is seldom enough. They need to develop and refine their skills of discussing strategic affairs with their team.
Not only does the wider team need to know the plan, but they also need to understand the plan. Even more so, they need to be encouraged and enabled to drive continuous improvement. To help insights make their way from employees to the board. This is how your business enhances the continuous cycle of strategy refinement and execution.
We don’t want to see you stumble. To be like countless other businesses who are too caught up in the day-to-day grind with a strategic document that is neglected, gathering dust.
Separate yourself from the pack and invest in enhancing your business’s capabilities to execute a phenomenal strategy.
See the Munro’s Business Academy for some further inspiration and book a Get To Know Each Other meeting at your earliest opportunity. You’ll be very pleased you did.
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