Q&A from CEO Forum: “Pick your path – the role of the modern leader”

Johan: One thing I love to do is to ask before and after questions to our clients. What really is the difference? In my experience, the cultural shift is the most apparent one. We sometimes refer to a culture of commitment, let me elaborate a little bit about what this implies.

When I talk to management teams that have not yet started with the Howwe journey, they often share these three complaints about their culture:

1. Too many long conversations result in too few concrete actions resulting in very inefficient meetings and unclear decisions and ownership
2. Too little progress is being generated between meetings, meaning that the same old topics are being brought up repeatedly
3. We operate as siloed functional managers, rather than as one management team

The culture of commitment arises when the discussion is more focused on what truly matters, meaning what is most important also gets most of the time and focus available.

Second, it is not being discussed in general terms, but rather from a perspective of: Why do we need to do it, when do we need it done by, who needs to do it and what is the definition of done?

Thirdly, driving these initiatives through the Acceleration Meeting ensures that progress is continually done, meaning that if your management team meeting cadence is naturally monthly, you commit and follow up on these Key Activities on a weekly basis, ensuring continuous progress between meetings.

Lastly, by keeping priorities narrow and focusing together building from top-down as one team we can both optimize for cross-functional synergies and keep each other accountable creating a more engaging and involved culture. It starts from the top, but is positively contagious to other teams looking at us for that leading example!

Johan: This depends on your baseline. If your organization is somewhat adept at goal steering you can consider an all across implementation from the get-go. The main benefit of this approach is the speed of acceleration.

If you however are new to the area of goal steering or have a feeling that you might encounter some cultural hesitancy a pilot is a good approach to build some internal ambassadors and know-how around the way of working before expanding.

Johan: The Nordic countries, and especially Sweden stand out in consensus-seeking before embarking on a change journey. On the other hand, once consensus is gained, the convention is to support the change stronger over time than for example more top-down conforming cultures such as the Eastern European cultures or the US.

There is for sure a style change needed to conform to the different cultures. However, some of the more traditional top-down cultures seem to be changing over time. If you look to the coasts of the US culture, there is a demand for a more bottom-up involvement and in Japan, there are big talks about how the younger generations refuse to conform to the traditional values and are putting big pressure on older managers.

I think you could write many books on the topic, so it is difficult to give some general insight here, and my personal experience is that where the company HQ is located also plays a massive role in the company culture.

However, taking a more pragmatic approach, values such as being clear on Why the change is necessary, not only for the company but also for your team members is always key. Providing focus to your team(s) on what matters always improves performance and reduces stress. Involving members in the “how do we get there” discussion seems to be universally engaging and tends to bring out smarter ways to the goals than senior management on average can produce, especially when you get into the details. And finally, as a manager to provide enough recognition and feedback along the way seems to hold value no matter the culture.

So yes. And No. Good luck!

Johan: For sure there are general hesitancy both for more products in general and especially if there is a feeling that I have to report the same activity in multiple systems.

However, this question mostly comes from non-customers to our experience, we seldom get it from real-life clients. The most apparent reason to my knowledge is that although reporting is a chore no matter how you look at it, there are a couple of things that dilute that feeling for the users:

1. 1. Most times the Key Activities you identify as most impactful to drive your Most Important Goal is not necessarily part of your everyday whirlwind and you don’t seem to either track or have system support to optimize, meaning that the percentage of users that actually end up “double-reporting” is exceedingly low.

       

   2. To look at Howwe as a reporting tool is similar to looking at a car and saying that I don’t really like the look of that spare tire. There are way more going on that are well appreciated by the end-users. From the way you are being involved in the company direction in the onboarding phase to the way that the word prioritize goes from meaning “one extra thing my managers wants attention on” to “this truly matters” and to the way that the average manager suddenly becomes way better at providing clarity, recognition and feedback are way more important to the user experience of strategy execution than the act of reporting.

       

   3. And oh yeah, the reporting app is super simple, so it takes less than a minute per week to report. This is difficult to know as an outsider of course, but really – it’s not that big of a chore.

Johan: We have loads of proven goals combined with highly impactful Key Activities honed by real teams in real life in our Howwe Library. This is one of the great advantages Howwe clients get over the average company embarking on this journey without Howwe.

But here are some general rules for great goals:

1. 1. No team should focus on more than two Most Important Goals at a time
   2. Each Most Important Goal should have a clear, measurable target and timeline
   3. Each employee can provide input on the Most Important Goal for their team
   4. Each MIG should ladder up to or influence the company’s overarching MIG

And on the opposite bad goals are either too many, too vague (i.e. we want to be a great place to work – how great, when do we need to become great, what part of great, etc?) or generally not aligned within the company.

Johan: Any action has consequences, the deeper question becomes what consequences you would prefer. To the extent there are some simple answers to the question, the “scientific consensus”* quite clear that there is more to win by creating clarity in what is most important versus letting the organization decide somewhat ad hoc and uncoordinated.

This does not necessarily mean that there are no negative consequences around clarity and focus. One area as the person asking the question points out might be open-mindedness and maybe agility to pursue opportunities arising along the way. In the Howwe way of working we combine long-term planning (typically setting the Most Important Goals) with shorter-term iterations on how to reach that goal (typically in a sprint process). 

Finally, if I may add a personal note, I think there is a bias towards thinking that whatever “pops up” is more important than it actually is. I, probably together with most of you, make new years resolutions. My most recurring one is to read more.

Even though I know that this gives me more life fulfillment than whatever else tends to occupy my time if I were to do a time study on myself, I tend to prioritize less consistently and less value-adding activities. So if I had to choose, I would rather stick to my plan than have too much freedom to follow more open-minded and opportunistic pursuits.

* There are multiple organizations that are driving this body of research, ranging from the economic & psychological university departments and to management consultants studying what techniques seem to bear the strongest effect on real-world improvements. In our CEO Forum page, we reference what research our different practices are based upon.