← Leading Organizations That Matter
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Ray Spadoni
Foreign welcome to Leading Organizations that Matter podcast about leadership, organizational culture and how we find meaning and purpose in our work. I'm your host Ray Spadoni, and today's topic is three questions to Jumpstart your turnaround Now As a general rule, I don't actually recommend jump starting a major turnaround initiative. Careful planning, goal setting, preparation and analysis are essential. Still, though, I thought I would offer some advice to those who are plotting a critical course change for their organization, particularly if it has been facing a sustained financial decline. In my book and in my consulting work, I spend a fair bit of time describing an organization's culture and how best to manage it during a time of change. Culture is, in my experience, often underappreciated and certainly underrepresented in many turnaround projects, and so that's why I dive a bit deeper there. Additionally, there is no simple blueprint for how to launch an intervention designed to alter the trajectory of an organization in trouble. Rather, there are important principles and approaches that are worth considering and which I describe in my work. Still, though, I often hear that it can be a daunting task for a leadership team to begin the planning process. So I often find it helpful to nudge the kickoff planning by asking three questions. First, looking at the current or maybe most recently completed year, what are the specific reasons for negative vacation variances? This blame pie logic needs to be clear and well quantified. I'm often surprised by the number of times that I encounter an organization where there's a lack of clarity and sometimes pretty incomplete understanding of the depth of the hole they're actually in. Second, what relatively minor changes and and tweaks need to be made in order to improve performance. These might be considered the low hanging fruit, and typically there's a decent list of possibilities here. Benchmarking and reviewing industry best practice key performance indicators will be an essential part of this process. For the lowest hanging fruit on that list, it's important to understand and uncover the historical barriers to success. Sometimes they are far from trivial, thus making the low hanging fruit more elusive than might meet the eye. Third, what are the sledgehammer opportunities? Yes, sledgehammer opportunities. So nobody wants to go there, believe me. But if an organization has to in order to survive, I suggest that there should be very few sacred cows. Everything should be on the table here. I'll suggest that organizations, for example, quantify the full impact of the possible divestiture of its programs, whether it's services or products or divisions. Whatever. It's helpful to think about this from the perspective of the four values which I often describe. I'll put a link in the show notes to that. Again, you never want to jumpstart something this big, this impactful, this essential. But I like to pose these questions and then launch the analytical and planning phase with this as the framework to help organize thinking and to allow leaders and other participants in this process a chance to gain a common understanding with which can help then facilitate the development of a more formal turnaround plan. The simple act of categorizing in this way can help organizations move past the inevitable friction that leaders encounter when trying to get started. Thanks for listening. I hope you'll consider leaving a five star review on Apple Podcasts or your platform of choice that will help others find us here. My mission is to help empower organizations that matter by supporting those who lead them. Feel free to learn more about me and my work@redsailadvisors.com SA.