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Organizational issues are complex. Asking powerful questions is a critical step to getting results: results that not only solve the problem but allow everyone to move forward.
These are 'big' questions that people - especially people with something at stake - are asking. Put them together with our responses and you get a good idea of the work we do in helping organizations to tackle their tough problems.
What does it take for my staff to be more accountable for results, to me, and to each other? What does it really mean to be accountable?
Does the culture within your organization support accountability or compliance? How do you distinguish between the two. Sometimes organizations mandate action and call it accountability. To have staff be accountable to each other over time requires creating a culture of real conversations about accountability and commitments, with clear requests and promises.
How can I really influence my organizations when I am not the "leader"? How can I lead without authority?
Influencing requires individuals to be able to enroll those above and below them in the organizational hierarchy. Enrolling others is the ability to listen and to speak from a place of meaning, relationship, and possibility and to build the informal authority you need over time, by taking the "right" action. "Leading from the middle" is the ability to enroll others.
How can I get my team to be creative and innovative?
Creativity and innovation is needed to create a unique customer experience, create new work processes, and unearth hidden organizational assets. Creativity and innovation is at the heart of a sustainable organization.
Learning is a basic ingredient for creativity and innovation. Coaching - individual and group - allows for teams to become learners and to engage in the creative process.
How can we break the silos that have existed in the organization for many years?
Working across organizational boundaries and creating intra-organizational partnerships is an essential requirement for 21st century organizations. This means understanding the difference between formal authority and leadership. Exercising leadership requires us to cross these boundaries, to listen to those with whom we differ, and to find new ways to move work forward together.
What does leadership look like when nothing is constant or predictable? And can this leadership be taught?
The leadership models that are taught and valued in Western cultures are no longer sufficient to deal with the complex challenges found in most organizations. We need a new leadership model that brings people together with the understanding that teams hold the answers to organizational problems and set the context for effective team-work,. Everyone has the ability to engage in this type of leadership regardless of where they are in the organizational hierarchy.
How can I manage teams that are dispersed both in time and distance?
Leading teams that are dispersed (which could also mean that multiple cultures are involved) is a challenge for many leaders and organizations. From our perspective, the success of these teams lies in the ability of the people involved to have powerful, aligning conversations. Those conversations provide insights into what else is needed, from people with formal authority and from team members, to produce excellent results.
How can this organization generate solid performance in a matrixed work environment, where people have commitments to multiple teams and team leaders may not have formal authority over all the team members?
In search of more efficient ways of doing things, many organizations are turning to matrix structures to support collaboration and organizational learning. Leaders must to be able to generate alignment quickly and effectively. Alignment is achieved when team members can agree on what they want to accomplish and what constitutes success. That happens when all the incentives favor team-work over individual outcomes and there is an emphasis on team accountability and knowledge sharing.
What do I need to do with my organization before and after we engage in a strategic planning process?
Strategic planning is often a proxy for conversations we need to have, but don't. We say we need a plan when we actually need a conversation to discover and discuss our shared purpose and to identify and deal with broken commitments. The difficult conversations come first; before any plans. Then, the conversations come during the process. Your work isn't completed when you have plan. That is when it really begins.
We are stuck in low morale, cynicism, and resentment. What can we do to move out of this?
Often, cynicism, resentment, and low morale, come from people's negative assessments about the future of the organization and their role in it - assessments like:
- My future in the organization won't be any different from my past and someone or something is to blame for this
- The problems and challenges the organization faces won't change, no matter how many new programs or ideas are implemented. It is hopeless.
- When they are addressed at all, issues of trust and fairness are only dealt with at the margins. No one really cares.
Moving from cynicism and resentment into possibility and acceptance has to come from authentic conversations amongst all stakeholders about the assessments they hold. Leadership cannot mandate or force a shift from cynicism to possibility.
What does it really mean to be a learning organization? We've spent a lot of money on IT. We've got a portal other information management tools to handle our e-business, the supply chain, and HR. Why can't we learn from our experience and why won't people share knowledge.?
Leaders often believe that IT systems will transform their organizations. The premise is that if people have instantaneous access to information they'll do their work more quickly, more cheaply, and more efficiently. But IT systems are tools and are only as effective as the organizations that use them. Learning and sharing knowledge have to do with people and the culture. That is where transformation begins. Tools come last. We agree with author Rollo May, who notes, "Tools and techniques ought to be an extension of consciousness, but they can just as easily be a protection from consciousness.1
1 May, Rollo, The Courage to Create (New York: Norton and Company, 1975), page 60.
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