Gaurav Gupta, principle of Kotter International recently wrote an article about how to support managers to lead progress instead of protect the status quo. Here is an excerpt from that article.
The best managers are extremely effective at planning, budgeting, executing against plans and mitigating risks to these plans. But does this focus on reliable consistent performance and this behavior of risk mitigation come at the expense of capturing potential upside? Upside that could help you go well beyond the current status quo?
Focusing on threats and problems can help maintain a steady ship, however by itself it will never result in industry-defining or industry-leading performance. Innovation and growth result from focusing on upside opportunities in addition to reacting to threats and mitigating risks.
So how do you ensure your organization effectively mitigates downside risk while also enabling opportunities for growth and improvement? Some strategies have helped managers with the inherent challenge of balancing steady predictable performance with the desire to grow, innovate, and improve.
- Prioritize upside opportunities and downside risks together. We are conditioned to view risk to the status quo performance as inherently more valuable than upside opportunities. An immediate threat is easy to visualize, but the value of a missed opportunity is just as easy to overlook. The value of losing customers because you are not able to deliver products within a promised lead time is easy to appreciate but the opportunity of increased sales from shorter lead times is more complex and ambiguous. By factually comparing the potential for creating value above and beyond existing plans equally against the potential erosion of value from risks to the plan, you can appropriately allocate resources to the best opportunities.
- Don’t only whack moles. Instead of whacking moles and focusing all your effort on individual problems, divert some attention to the underlying causes of these problems. If you find yourself needing to train and retrain employees on the use of a process, then maybe it’s time to re-evaluate the process not only the training.
- Encourage aggressive plans – but make it ok to fail. We all want our teams to set stretch targets but often set the price of failure so high that it discourages the behavior we are looking to support. What do your managers believe you value more – stretching for 100 and “falling short” in achieving 90 or settling for and achieving 80?
- Reward opportunity seeking as well as risk mitigation. Most businesses have almost mythical stories about crises that were avoided by swift and decisive action from managers. Rarer are the stories that illustrate the innovative and foreword thinking actions that resulted in capturing a new opportunity. When faced with new regulations in your industry do you encourage your managers to minimize the impact of these regulations or also equally to look for opportunities that may be arise from these regulations?
Good managers are able to mitigate risk, problem solve and ensure that their teams and businesses deliver to plan. Good leaders, on the other hand, are able to mobilize people to see opportunities and inspire their teams to “over-deliver” and hence push their business forward.
