To thrive in today’s current economic conditions, organizations must adapt rapidly. In fact, the stakes for executing new and distinctive strategies to strengthen an organization’s position, improve efficiency, and build greater customer loyalty have never been higher – either adapt or die. However, if organizations and their leaders do not link strategy changes to the long-term compelling purpose of their organization, any change could quickly be perceived as a reactionary or “flavor of the month” strategy. The need for rapid change inherently creates a challenge – what should a leader do to successfully translate changes in high-level strategy into meaningful actions that inspire and encourage action from others?

In our last newsletter, we defined leadership as an “influence relationship between leaders and followers who intend real changes that reflect their mutual purposes” (Joseph C. Rost). This definition highlights the fact that leaders and followers share equal responsibility for ensuring that strategies are successfully executed. Although responsibility is shared, what is required from each group differs greatly.

High-performing leaders are able to lead others through the process of executing innovative strategies by focusing and building strength through these five key behaviors:

• Communicating goals and the ongoing progress toward those goals.
  The goal setting process is very fluid and requires constant communication from the leader. As goals change, it is vital to communicate three important things: what is changing, why it is changing, and how the changes will help the overall organization achieve success. Once new goals are established, revisit progress against those goals and celebrate successes as appropriate.
• Influencing those involved to continue toward overall progress.
  As a leader, you do not always have to have the answers to how changes in strategy will impact every member of the team. However, as the leader you must be able to engage people in action planning and the change management process by directly involving them in the process of determining how they can personally contribute to achieve specific organizational goals. Remember that the people who are most directly affected by the strategy should have an opportunity to identify the best ways to implement the new strategy within their job responsibilities.
• Maintaining a strong emphasis on results.
  High-performing leaders focus on results. In order to successfully deliver results, there must be clearly established metrics and measurements in place that help to determine what success and failure will look like. As changes in strategy are made at the organizational level, be sure to revisit your metrics and measures and adjust them as needed.
• Removing obstacles that hinder progress.
  There is nothing more frustrating for people than being asked to execute changes, but at the same time feeling powerless to act because obstacles hinder the work that needs to take place. As a leader, one of your biggest assets can be your level of seniority within the organization and the power it provides to remove obstacles hindering people from affecting change. Once a new strategy is announced and new goals are established, be sure to encourage your people to identify obstacles. Than do whatever is within your authority to remove them!
• Resolving issues and challenges quickly and fairly.
  With any strategy change, you can expect that issues and challenges will arise. Some of these issues can include overlapping responsibilities, redundancy of work, and process breakdowns. Your response to these changes will greatly impact how effective your team will be in achieving its new goals. Unresolved issues quickly halt momentum and rapidly erode trust. Be sure that as issues arise you address them quickly and fairly. Don’t leave today’s work for tomorrow!

The organizational dimension of leadership is critical to a leader’s effectiveness and ultimate success. To be a successful Organizational Leader, you must be able to lead your team through the process of translating changes in strategy into clearly understood and measurable actions.

For more information about Organizational Leadership or Five Star’s High-Performance Leadership Model™, contact Dan Hupp at 412-802-2500.

Interested in learning how to develop high-performance leaders in your organization? Sign-up for our free webinar on September 2.

Tags: Focused and Aligned Leaders, High-Performance Leadership Model, Organizational Leadership

This entry was posted on Thursday, July 30th, 2009 at 1:36 pm and is filed under Newsletters. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.