Leadership Unites and Partners to Deliver Rare Results

Strange bedfellows have emerged in the past year as the world addressed the pandemic. For example, GM and Ford pivoted their production lines to make ventilators, and beer breweries shifted to produce hand sanitizers.

Pharmaceutical companies around the world began the race to create vaccines to protect society from COVID19 and its variants. Independently, corporations compete to win; they are rivals. First to market, best to market—who will it be?

The pandemic has driven all of the pharma companies around the world to discover vaccines that will be safe and effective.

A Compelling Aim Unites a Collaborative Team

This week we saw the Biden administration and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services identify and supply the funding so two typically rival mega-pharma corporations (Merck and Janssen, a Johnson & Johnson company) would collaborate, unite, and support each other. Together they will accelerate the vaccine production needed. Merck did not succeed in discovering their own vaccine, but they are scaling up their manufacturing capacity to deliver millions of vaccine vials for distribution to the people in need.

Leaders Use a Strategic Compass

The Strategic Compass is a powerful inter-dependent strategy tool that can be used to drive toward and accelerate successful results in any or across organizations and industries. The Compass has five interactive parts. It quickly helps leaders to:

• focus and prioritize

• ask and answer the essential questions, and

• communicate to the teams the extraordinary results they need to achieve.

When the compelling aim is clear, great leadership communicates it to the people who can collaborate and deliver. By what method will they achieve the aim? What values will they stand for in action, not just words? Who will they serve and what do those customers/patients/members/students need? How will leaders measure progress and success?

Strategic Compass

Whether an organization has its annual goals to achieve or a global pandemic and crisis is threatening survival of society as we knew it, leaders can focus and address their issues. The Strategic Compass is an imperative guide.

Win-Win-Win

There are times for competition, but there are more compelling opportunities for cooperation and collaborations. Businesses may compete, but during the times they collaborate, we all may win. When the Compelling Aim is enormous and too large for one organization, leaders who merge resources, creativity, and brain power, create more successes. Another example is climate change. It will take millions of people working together to reverse the impact of global climate change.

When you’re faced with challenges and crises, look at the bigger picture to discover the power of Win-Win-Win results. Use your leadership and courage to answer the questions on the Strategic Compass, and optimize (not merely maximize) your results.

Pivotal Leadership: Thoughtful Action

2021 will be a year of thoughtful action for leaders and their teams.

Strong Connections

It means creating a stronger link with:

• Customers

• Collaborative team members

• Partners

• Suppliers

• Your coaches and mentors

Investments Are Essential!

2021 will be a Year of Investment! Invest in:

• Yourself; your self-care, your learning; your time to be humble and grateful;

• Rapidly developing your staff, your teams, your colleagues, and your partners; educate, develop skills, and strengthen their communication and team-building.

• Deeper commitment to communicating in multiple ways to all of your team, in every corner of your operation;

• Your systems and processes! What do you need to do to optimize your System (not maximize!) and quickly improve your processes? The status quo and small improvements are not enough.

• Your infrastructure; build out more foundational systems for scaling growth into the future. The time is now!

Reduce the Built-In Flaws, Complexity, and Waste

Organizations are full of waste (estimating 60-80%.) Ensure that you’re reducing waste and increasing productivity:

•  Conduct a Team Audit. Are your teams all focused to support the Aim of your organization? Are they making progress at the speed you need? If you have too many teams that are struggling, you’re zapping the energy of your resources. Focus on a few, and disband those that are unproductive.

• Post-pandemic planning and 2021 Strategic planning are different. Are you ready to implement both—at the speed that you will need?

• Teams are burning out, zooming hour after hour (executives, managers, and employees) are exhausted, and often are too afraid to speak up. I’ve developed new team education, processes, and policies that can increase your meeting time productivity and reduce the time in meetings by 40 to 60%. Help your teams!