Marcia's Leadership Q&As: Pivotal Leadership—the New Norm
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Pivotal Leadership—the New Norm
Q. Planning for our staff returning to the office is a roller coaster ride, especially with the new Delta variant in full force. Simultaneously, employees are voicing resistance to return because they like working from home. What’s the solution?
A. Your question is relevant and timely. For any crisis or challenge, we have to think of the aim of the organization, and then answer, “what will we do to optimize our system? What are new ways to achieve our goals?” There are customers to serve, applicants to recruit, and employees and vendors to support.
Finding the Win-Win-Win for each organization is a leadership challenge—how to optimize the whole. There are business needs that have to be met so that the company is sustainable. This is a time for pivotal leadership. More than ever, leaders need to discuss (and integrate the voices of the employees and customers) how they are going to create and manage all of the parts of their organization. Use a system diagram. Draw the organization’s interactions (not an Org. chart) and see how the work, information, and communication can flow. You’ll ask new strategic questions.
More important, be open to new methods to accomplish your aim. The more creative you are, the more innovation you can offer. Strive for a happy, productive workplace.
Q. Our corporation is looking at acquiring five to ten companies in the next year or two to help us scale toward our vision. What are the blind spots we should be aware of?
A. Great question! So few corporations think through the M&A process. This leads to more than 80% of M&A transactions failing. The sad part is, there’s such potential for success! The answer is easy; the work is harder, but essential. The issue is that often, corporations that acquire another corporation don’t do two fundamental requirements:
1. They don’t think through the integration process fully (they focus on the financial success and capturing a skillset of workers they need); their potential success is immediately stunted.
2. They don’t assess the leadership and cultural fit. If the two fundamentals are done, leadership (of both organizations) create an integration team.
It’s mandatory to have an Integration Team with the knowledge to optimize the whole transaction—and then follow it through into the next year or two to ensure problems are addressed. They assess how the two organizations (and following on, more) will integrate from a leadership perspective, cultural perspective, and financial perspective. It’s like a three-legged stool. If you don’t have all three legs stable, you’ll fall and fail. But focus on optimizing all three parts, and you’ll have a great potential for long-term success. You need to become an Integration machine!
