View from the Cockpit

Leading an organisation into turbulent and uncharted airspace, from the cockpit of a Boeing 747 cruising at 30,000-feet, certainly has its advantages. No one will deny that when you are able to back away from the day to day preoccupations of business life, your view of the horizon can be clearer and your perspective wider. A focus on the big picture is undeniably important.

On the other hand, any good captain knows there comes a point at which you simply have to grab the controls; ignore the instruments and land the plane. Sometimes, it is just necessary to get your head out of the clouds and face reality where it stands. Right in front of your nose.

Climbing Down

There are shelves in bookstores full of compelling stories based upon successful business leaders like Herb Kelleher, Jack Welch and Bill Gates. Many of them glowingly recount the amount of time these leaders choose to spend down from the clouds and out on the front line, in the middle of their reality. It is highly likely that, from now on, organizations wishing to achieve sustainable success will have to find ways to reset the flight plan and reframe performance expectations. They will have to do an even better job of 'inviting' each and every member of the organization to learn how to fly 'closer to the ground' where they can be more aware of the heartbeat of the organization.

The Brutal Lenses of Reality

The agitated, over-hyped, unrealistically enthusiastic, easy road to value creation of the dot-com era is a thing of the past. Investors (and employees) are becoming more impatient than ever for their leaders to produce tangible results. In turn, your organization will sooner or later find itself forced into a rigorous self examination and will be faced, through the harsh lenses of reality, to determine where your true strengths and weaknesses lie.

Ultimately, you will be asked to make hard decisions in order to correct long-standing core issues - once and for all. Don't put it off any longer. You owe it to yourself, your organization and your people to face reality as it is, not as you wish it to be.

The bottom line – it's time for a reality check.

The Trouble with Day Dreaming

The velocity of change, the uncertainty of market conditions and the pace of the business world are ever increasing. The luxury of long, drawn out, bureaucratic and process-laden strategic planning sessions have long gone. These days, the great organizations are the ones who are able to make strategy in real time. As a result, they choose to spend the majority of their organisational energy focused on executing, delivering, and achieving results. Organizations who continue to over spend in an effort to craft the perfect strategy will inevitably find themselves chasing a competitor who decided to focus instead on implementation.

Tom Peters has often exclaimed that today's mantra is "Ready, Fire, Aim!". Speed is the name of the game. How much information do you need to make a decision? The answer – just enough!

Reality TV – Reality Business

In their incredibly pragmatic and thought provoking book 'Confronting Reality', authors Larry Bossidy and Ram Charan explain that to execute any successful business strategy, one grounded in total unbridled reality, an organization must face three reality factors.

The Internal Realities - including an honest assessment of such things as organisational capability, the ability to learn and the constraints of culture.

The External Realities - things like the real health of the market, the nature of the current economic state and the true level of competition.

The Financial Realities - including reasonable assumptions with respect to profit margin, capital investment and stock value.

The authors make an obvious - but not too subtle point. They suggest a prescription that includes a willingness to stop lying and an ability to start telling the truth. They suggest that by facing each of these realities head on, your decisions will be more effective and your actions more grounded.

In Our Opinion
The Beacon Group's Keys for 'Leading for Reality'

Aside from taking the three 'realities' into consideration, we believe that, in order to truly Lead for Reality, you must embrace the following:

Live in Your Business – Companies based in reality live in their environment every day. They face it, warts and all. They focus on relentless truth telling. That way, they spend less time planning and more time doing. They also get a much better feel for the organization and can sense when something is wrong and deal with it faster.

Promote a Collective View – Your employees must understand one simple fact. The overall success of the organization is far more important than their own personal outcome. You must insist on this credo so that, in the event a situation arises that may hurt the organization, people will have an expectation that they must act in the best interest of the organization - and speak up.

Ask for Assistance – Too many employees believe the leader of the organization has all of the answers. As a leader, you have to avoid this myth. Your responsibility is to create willing followers and new opportunities for people to rally behind you. The easiest way is to be humble and ask for help.

Make the Tough Call – This is often the hardest part of facing reality. The fact remains we are talking business. Whether the 'tough call' is firing employees, or closing a division, the key is to depersonalize the issue and use sound business judgment to explain the rationale. You owe it to your organization.

Our Monthly Rant...
No More Jargon!

The amount of unnecessary confusion that exists inside most organisations is breathtaking. Much of it is created by too many versions of the truth being allowed to exist under the same roof. So why not end that practice? Why not simply ban the use of confusing jargon in your organization – starting tomorrow.

Comedian Jerry Seinfeld once said that for a comedian to swear in a comedy routine is a sign of professional laziness. In the same way, promoting the use of jargon (i.e. paradigms, value added, customer solutions, etc). is another form of leadership laziness that adds to confusion and lack of clarity. Promote a jargon free organisation and, in so doing, you will force your employees to speak in real words and increase the chance they will start focusing on real issues.

Contact us to learn more about how The Beacon Group can help your organization confront reality using our World-Class Strategic Planning and Leadership Development Training.