Leading Lasting Change
High impact and lasting change can be fast, effective and fun. First–Create a “vision story” for the future to engage a critical mass of people. It taps into multiple levels of knowledge-emotion-creativity and yields a shared sense of the future that is aspirational, inspirational, logical and exciting.
Then, charter a small, carefully chosen client team to design and conduct a process to gather information and knowledge and to make sense of the issues and conditions at hand. They will translate this learning and insight into potential strategies. The team then delivers events that spread their learning to others in the organization utilizing highly engaging educational and work shop activities.
Finally, teams implement waves of short-duration (60-90 days), high impact projects that move the organization toward the vision. This offers opportunities to bring others into the expanding process of building the future. Recognizable and measurable success in projects yields progress, energy and enthusiasm. These factors combine to yield change that has impact and lasts.
Unleashing Potential
Some claim manufacturing is dead in America—costs are too high, capabilities too few. But this claim is far off the mark. Company after company is discovering that enormous potential exists and can be unleashed to create sustainable competitive performance. Rather than giving in, they are achieving long term success.
It’s not easy of course. Without an effective process the attempted improvement will fall short of targets. To be successful, three key principles must be followed by leaders and their teams:
- Leadership—There can be no substitute for strong, committed leaders who are willing to stake their careers on ratcheting up performance. That includes the executive champions and project team leaders.
- Abandoning Assumptions—Too often the search for improvement is constrained by “well-accepted” assumptions of how fast a machine can turn out its product or the level of output a plant can produce in a day. The leader must move the team beyond such assumptions and instead start with considering the high bar of theoretical performance targets–that is, targets set from a “Zero Based” concept. By starting here radical, yet achievable, enhancement opportunities will be found. Once the scope of inquiry is widened possibilities abound.
- Lead with Results—Building from this theoretical basis the team takes actions to generate results early, to demonstrate progress and to build commitment and confidence. Most studies estimate programs designed to change behavior yield a paltry 20% success rate. Why? Largely because the focus in on the change process itself rather than on results. The successful teams concentrate on delivering results early and often.
Unleashing potential is possible and necessary for success. To learn more visit Stroud Consulting at www.stroudconsulting.com.
S.C. Johnson Graduate School of Management, Cornell University– Strategic Alliances
Sage Partner, Rich Schneider, a member of the Board of Advisors of the SC Johnson School, arranged for Tom Doorley and John Conway to lead discussion on the leading practices of companies as they work to achieve successful strategic alliances. While the failure rate is high (our research suggests in the 60%+ range) John and Tom have culled the lessons learned and applied by successful organizations. John focused on the role alliances can play in helping young companies grow, whereas Tom focused on his experiences with larger companies.
Sage Fall Gathering 2011
The Fall gathering will be hosted by Larry and Cathy Bennigson at their homes near Damarscotta, ME. The focus of the 2011 event will be on identifying the common themes in the several key client engagements and how to bring the approaches and insight to a broader group of clients. Especially in this time of economic turmoil we will work to bring the practice of value-creating growth to a marketplace in need of stimulation and productive expansion, for all the interconnect constituencies, namely, customers, employees, investors and the communities in which the organizations operate.
Sage on Oversight
In conjunction with the Financier WorldWide magazine and the National Association of Corporate Directors, Sage Partners wrote about the governance challenges we face in the global economy. Oversight, the essential duty of governance, has floundered, yet again. In this article we outline the nature of the problem and identify five steps to improve the effectiveness of this critical function.
Sage Presents the Decision-Ready Board to NACD’s Master’s Class
Tom Doorley, working with Herb Baum, retired CEO of Dial, member of several boards and long-term client of Sage Partner’s Rich Schneider, will lead the panel on the Board’s Role in Corporate Strategy at NACD’s Master’s Class for Directors in Scottsdale, AZ in March. Tom and Herb believe today’s Directors must take a bigger role in understanding the Big Things their companies face, and how management will deal with them. The Big Things cover the gamut, i.e., any opportunity or problem with enough impact to make a difference in performance or viability. For this session they focus on the strategic dialogue and ethics. Sage Partners’ Decision-Ready Board construct will be the platform they will use to explore issues and define the Board’s role.
Sage Fall Gathering 2010
The Fall Gathering of Sage Partners was hosted by Stanford’s University’s Design Institute, a world-class, multi disciplinary program created to “build innovators using the design thinking process to innovate across industries and disciplines.” Thus, being able to tour the d.school’s new facility and absorb its approach to innovation and practical creativity fit neatly into Sage Partner’s world view and commitment. Our common themes for each gathering are to share of intellectual capital and ensure we embrace our core values. Central to building a sense of and commitment to community are gathering together in a mix of business and social activities. The later deepens our ability to share and collaborate.
Sage Fall Gathering 2009
At our Fall Gathering at the Wequassett Inn on Cape Cod, MA, we welcomed two new partners, John Conway and Clyde Rettig. Our prinicpal intellectual capital contributions came from Roland van Kralingen and Clyde Rettig. Roland reviewed the major themes of his new book, Emotuning, and its consumer branding implications. The concept is based on his work and a year long research project into how consumer behavior is shifting from values-based decision-making to being triggered by emotional responses. The book has been published in Europe. We are introducing the concepts into the US market and anticipate publishing an English version later this year. The focus of Cylde’s session was on the strategic importance of a growing shortage of rare earth metals (REMs). Given the widespread use of REMs, and the impact on the US economy of the lack of availability, we have launched an effort to identify strategic alternatives and responses. In addition John Conway, Rich Schneider and Larry Bennigson brought the issue of IT solutions to the health care challenges. We have launched a effort in this arena to bring IT solutions into relevant client environments. As always we mixed community-building activity into our time together. We closed with a day trip to Nantucket Island on one of those exceptionally beautiful autumn days.