Delivering your strategy is easier than you’re making it

It’s a racing certainty that the most pressing big issue facing your organisation right now is its ability to keep up. It might not be the issue you think about everyday, because you’re perma-snowed under with business-as-usual. But out there, your external environment is doing things that are beyond even the imagination of a four-year-old with a crayon. You want to drive change, but it’s hard to divert time and money away from the coal-face. If economics is the allocation of scarce resources, then leaders need to be part economist, part magician. It’s tough at the top.

But at this point sympathy for your position evaporates, because not only are you shooting yourself in the foot, you keep on shooting with every change initiative, and here’s why:

You don't need to be a master blacksmith to know that you don’t try to bend metal cold. You heat It, change it, and cool it. But every time you want to recycle that horseshoe or wrought iron gate, you have to heat it again. And if you’ve ever been in a smithy, you’ll know just how much time and energy that takes.

And that’s the problem with your approach to change. You warm your people up to your next change du jour, and when it’s finished you let them cool down again. It’s a time- and energy-intensive process that’s about as efficient as a patio heater. Your mistake is to – perhaps subconsciously – accept the received wisdom that people’s steady state attitude to change is cold and solid. Rigid. Stable. And that can make your organisation brittle. It feels solid, it looks strong and it’s worked for years, so it feels fit. But when subjected to novel external forces, it shatters. Complicated just-in-time global supply chains were lauded for decades until the pandemic demonstrated how brittle they are.

The answer is to raise the Adaptability Intelligence of your people, which will permanently warm them up to the idea of any change. As a result, they’ll be able to respond faster, with less energy, and the results will be better, sooner.

If your biggest headache is in freeing up enough resources to deliver your strategy, there is a solution. Raising your Adaptability Intelligence is not a leadership silver bullet but it might just be the closest thing that is. If you’re thinking you’re too busy to develop a culture of adaptability today, it’s a racing certainty that you’ll be even busier tomorrow just trying to keep up.

Rich Alderton specialises in raising Adaptability Intelligence, so if you're looking to be more of a smithy, call us on 07873 823 800, email us or complete our enquiry form.

And why not download Rich's free e-book? It's available here.