Biology
“Culture eats strategy for breakfast, operational excellence for lunch, and everything else for dinner.”
One of the things we like best about working with our corporate clients is that we get to know all the key stakeholders. Sometimes when just working with an individual executive, there are parts of their companies or even partners that we never get to really engage. Almost like a counselor working with a challenging marriage and never meeting the other spouse.
But every once in awhile, we start with an individual leader and then get to move beyond them with the rest of the team.
We began working with the quintessential perfect client a couple of years ago. He was not only the typical entrepreneur, he was atypically an incredible executor. He moved through our roadmap with precision. He created core values, a purpose statement, and crafted a vision statement. He built an organizational design to help serve the strategic plan to fulfill that vision.
Virtually everything changed in his leadership, his team, and partnership. He asked that we take a deeper step into his organization. We began coaching his COO, meeting with the leadership team on a quarterly basis, and meeting with his partner one-on-one.
Meeting with his business partner has been one of the more pleasant surprises this year. He not only fully embraced the cultural, leadership, and organizational changes, but has become an enthusiastic fan.
In an initial conversation, he described the power of core values more clearly than any leadership book I’ve ever read:
He said their core values were now woven into the biology of the company and were like precision tools strategically applied for change and impact.
He went on to share how leaning into their core values during the COVID-19 crisis has made this season effortless and invigorating. Rather than waiting for clients to approach him about renegotiating contracts, he preemptively called every one of them to discuss their value of “mutually profitable relationships”.
Rather than wait for the awkward conversations he likely would have had with many of their clients as a result of the economic implications of the crisis, he actually strengthened each of them. He did the right thing based on their culture for the right reason. It just turned out to also be an incredibly strategic business move.
We’ve said for months now that this kind of season will reveal the best or worst in people. We will find out who they truly are.
Without…
translating and memorializing the best things about us,
articulating a culture that can be increasingly fulfilled,
or leaning into that clearly identified sense of who we are and intend to be as a culture,
…what everyone is likely to see is the worst version of who we are, motivated by our fear in all the uncertainty.
But this leader is in a radical season of deconstructing and reconstructing. As he is finding the best version of himself, he is leaning and willing the best version of his partnership as well. He sees the fulfillment of their values being realized in every employee and client relationship as his personal responsibility.
Talking with him is one of the most invigorating conversations I am enjoying this season. Inspirational doesn’t seem quite enough to capture it!
Consider
How are you responding to this season?
Has the most inspired version of your organization been articulated?
Is that what you are offering, or are you finding the worst of your leadership and organization in fear and uncertainty?