Categories
Leadership

Planning The Post Pandemic Reopening

As large companies in the US slowly reopen their offices, I wanted to write a quick tip to win as a leader of a company or a department.

As a leader, you need to know when to let people work and let people play.

Once your offices open up (between 10% and 30%) and you look to organise the safe first on-site or offsite.

Please think before you act, think before action is essential here.

First Comes Mentor Time

At the off-site (on-site), allow people to play first, then see the work bubble to the surface and then keep bubbling.

You’ll be surprised by the impact and reconnection that comes and then the will and desire to win together.

People First Approach

Many colleagues have lost their connections.
Many colleagues have got used to the transactional nature of video calls.
This may not need a hard reboot, but multiplayer and team-first connections need to be re-established semi organically.

It is worth keeping in mind, some of the strongest bonds would have been lost or broken in the pandemic, it is for those who lost this to build the actual bridge, you have to be willing to understand the subcultures and environment and repoint the company compass.

It is important to understand and guide your teams that despite the nostalgia for pre pandemic times, we will be operating in a hybrid office environment and this does mean that we have to be deliberate, intentional with everything, have more focus on those around us. No in office team vs digitally remote team hierarchy.

The buzz of an on-site or offsite needs to carried through to work, this will come from connected ideation, a long term project within a flexible framework and come from continued interaction. You will need to plant the seeds, water them and then let them flower and blossom.

People + Tech

A blend between voice, story format video with overlays and instructions, documentation and of course video meetings will help continue the connections and enable working relationships to rebuild and grow.

Then Coach Time

  • Bring forward the focus,
  • Your connective vision,
  • Co-build the plan,
  • Let your co-pilot and captain step up and lead.
  • Allow the team breathe, provide space and trust,
  • Then allow a couple of passion projects alongside an important long term project.

This is by all means not a guaranteed formula for success, however, this is a framework to help you rebuild your team’s connections and provided an ability to lead out of this global crisis.

Remember, “Leaders lead” so your behaviours and cues are key to winning.


Important Related Reads:

Get a free copy of the Hybrid Office Ebook

Read the future of the office, the office as an arena

Why the culture community manager is your most important hire of 2021 nad beyond.


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Categories
Leadership

5 Timeless Lessons From Industry Leaders

In the summer of 2020, I went on a leadership mission, I spoke to as many leaders from as many fields as I could. This was a way to improve leaders letters, it was a way to learn from leaders to improve the leaders and leadership teams I work with but to also share these experiences. 

The leaders I interviewed came from many different and diverse backgrounds, including banking and finance, military, teaching, traditional business owner, a Chief Medical Officer, co-founder of a large remittance company and experienced startup leader. 

I took away many lessons and I hoped to turn the series into a Focus leadership podcast (maybe in the future), I thought I should share five of the lessons I took away from the brilliant conversations so you could ponder or implement. 

Lesson 1: Military Leader

“Outcomes for the group is essential: the mission for the team, the objective for the unit, crystal clear task for the individual.”
This cycle has to be understood completely, with no fussy or blurry lines. This then has to be understood at the team, unit and individual level. Often it is life and death and the most vital pieces of information have to be clear, concise and as up to date as possible. 

Lesson 2: Head Teacher

“Always have an open mind”, always learn from other sectors, increase your reading, share and empower those around you with your learnings and take feedback from whoever it is. Staff, parent, governers and then walk that walk.
There is a lot packed into this but so many lessons to take away and apply. 

Lesson 3: Co-Founder Remittance Company

“Ask for advice – is not a weakness!” Many leaders truly believe asking for help is a weakness, it is not it is a strength, especially when those around you or seeking those in a better position will drive you and your business forward.  

Lesson 4: Chief Medical Officer

“Replace ego with empathy – Read between the lines (there is always an agenda) find out what is really going on and explore together.” 

Lesson 5: Serial Startup Founder

An essential job for the founder is recruitment, it is to create the right environment for the organisation to thrive by blending people, positions and passions. 

These five lessons are all actionable across leadership at any level, all of these resonated with me for different reasons but mostly because leadership is about being clear, understanding and delivering instructions, asking for help, replacing your ego with empathy and the culture you create impacts your team every day. 


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Categories
Leadership

Ghosting – The Real Business Issue

In the modern world of work, we have seen a number of behaviours from outside of the workplace creep into the business world. 

We have experienced the influence of chat apps like iMessage, WhatsApp and messenger have huge impacts on how we communicate. It has moved communications from clear and concise to long-running threads that often end in meetings to clear up the objectives and how to be successful. 

We have seen the influence of video, more specifically stories video format influence how we update each other in standups and on large projects and become a stable of engineering and product teams. Zoom, Teams and Meet have been essential to the majority of meetings, however, do we really need more video or do we need more directions, purpose and understand if the video function becomes a distraction. 

Unfortunately, behaviours like ghosting are becoming an unwanted but accepted behaviour that is definitely influencing relationships, company culture and performance. 

Ghosting is
“the practice of ending a personal relationship with someone by suddenly and without explanation withdrawing from all communication”.
– Oxford Lexico Definition. 

Ghosting was always a possible function of work, however, it was more specific to conversations or communication chains.
More recently it has become a pattern that is becoming more deliberate and defaults for colleagues and business partners. 

Over the last two years and coinciding with more electronic communication, ghosting has become a default for many people.

Ghosting is prevalent from a couple of activities, the first is when staff do not know the answer or how to answer a question posed and the second is when communication is harder than a simple response. 

Both of these are detrimental to business and reflect your people, teams and company’s reputation. 

This has to stop, this is a small part of the broken world of work many operate in. 

There are two ways to tackle bad behaviours:

1. Train all staff how to communicate when the information is not to hand or when the answer is not positive to the recipient 

2. Have dedicated templates created where your staff can copy and edit to their colleagues or external partners. 

Ghosting should never be an option, particularly in the world where we rely on electronic communications, however, as many are experiencing ghosting and having a negative impact on business performance, it is a business leaders duty to remove such behaviours, for personal development and the business performance. 

The simple message: identify the issue => train staff => remove the fear => remove bad behaviours and => improve how you operate as a business. 

Here are the big problems business face and how to address them.


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Important Related Reads:

Categories
Business Performance Leadership

Decision Document

In today’s broken world of work, we have never had the access to so many tools, to so many free resources to help us progress, or access to the best talent available, yet we are no closer to answering one of the fundamental issues in the business world.

In a recent and brilliant article, Eugene Wei really hit the nail on the head:

One of the most common weaknesses among managers and leaders is the illusion of transparency, though it is a problem for most people. It is the tendency to overestimate how much people know what you’re thinking.”
— Eugene Wei.

Thinking and communicating are two of the most important parts of being a leader and holding a leadership role, unfortunately thinking => discussing issues => communicating what, why and allowing others to build the how causes more problems often than competitors do.

Hard To Be A Manager – Harder To Be A Leader

Management has never been so hard, leadership is even harder, you have many challenges, you have faced 2020 and 2021 you were never prepared for or trained for and rather than communicating becoming easier it has become harder, we have too many communication channels and so little time to articulate clearly.

What makes a great leader is an essential read for the move to the office 3.0 – the arena and the move to full-time Hybrid Office. Being a leader now means being deliberate, clear and communicating in an inspiring way.

One of the reasons why managers fall short is thinking they have communicated to those around them and to their department or teams.
The likelihood is, you didn’t and if it is important you should bring it up regularly.

As a leader you are busy, you have many of the same conversations with those around you (management teams, leadership teams, board meetings etc) you fail to relay the message to your own team.
Your department then feels disconnected from you and core business decisions feel like you have bypassed your team.

I would estimate 80% of the time, poor or lack of communication costs Department heads their people and then their role.

Solution: The Decision Document

One solution Focus has created is to build an open decision document – this doesn’t have to be a document in format, this can be a notion page, a dedicated page on the internal wiki or it could even be a Trello board (I recommend against a kanban style board as people read them differently and is done actually done and completed?)

The decision calls out what the important decision was, what steps were taken and the date. The how has to be completed by the responsible team however it is essential any important business-wide decision is listed and these steps are followed.

Communication is still key to winning, explaining in the same format to the impacted teams is as important, but showing the chain of decisions and the process will help the company understand how you got there and the timeline connected.

As a leader, it is important to know when to take action and now is the time, if you are in the position, create the document and introduce it to the business, if not co-create with someone who is operationally strong.

Template Available Upon Request

email us for a copy of this template

When Knowing The Importance & Managing The Messaging

Bob Iger (the Disney Chairman wrote in his book Ride of a Lifetime) took to leading by press release as everyone internally realised the importance of the decision and they had to make it work, at a company of the size it is likely important however none of the decisions should be a surprise or surprising. The decision document will help you with this issue.

Reconnect Around A Canonical

If you feel disconnected as a leadership team, the decision document can act as the canonical place you reconnect and build as the rock of your company.

Opportunity For One Internally Champion

This is where the culture community manager can own and work with leaders to improve internal communications and centralise information flow into the centre of the truth within an organisation, a knowledge centre.

Introduce The Decision Document This Week

Be proactive and roll out the decision document in the upcoming week and introduce it to the business, you will be surprised by the impact.

Essential Hybrid Work Resource

The Hybrid Work Guide – A comprehensive 35-page guide to Hybrid Work and ensuring you and your business is ready for Hybrid.

Read our recommended hybrid work software and hybrid workplace tools.

Categories
Company Culture Leadership

The Best Teamwork Quotes

Something you will notice is how popular quotes are. Whether this is on social media or shared internally.

Some leaders love quoting others, others share the same quote over and over (like the famous Mike Tyson quote: “Everyone Has a Plan Until They Get Punched in the Mouth”) however here are the best quotes for teamwork and leadership.


“Talent wins games, but teamwork and intelligence win championships.”
–Michael Jordan

“Alone we can do so little, together we can do so much.”
–Helen Keller

“None of us is as smart as all of us.”
–Ken Blanchard

Related Read – What company culture really is

“Coming together is a beginning. Keeping together is progress. Working together is success.”
–Henry Ford

“The strength of the team is each individual member. The strength of each member is the team.”
–Phil Jackson

Related Read – Phil Jackson Eleven Rings Is Included In Our Must Read Recommended Business Books.

“A leader must inspire or his team will expire.”
— Orrin Woodward

“Together, ordinary people can achieve extraordinary results.”
— Becka Schoettle

“If you want something new, you have to stop doing something old.”
— Peter F. Drucker

“Good teams incorporate teamwork into their culture, creating the building blocks for success.”
— Ted Sundquist

Recommend Read – The 20 Good Manager Types

“Leading people is the most challenging and, therefore, the most gratifying undertaking of all human endeavours.”
— Jocko Willink

“Everyone is needed, but no one is necessary.”
— Bruce Coslet

“To handle yourself, use your head; to handle others, use your heart.”
— Eleanor Roosevelt

Recommended Read – The 25 Bad Manager Types

Must Read Presentation

Categories
Leadership

Proven Tips To Reduce Working From Home Stresses

Here are five proven tips that I have found that reduces working from home stresses for me and Focus’ clients.

Walk And Talk Meetings

Meeting dictates our mood, our delivery and our flow throughout the day. Get vitamin D, fresh air and new views to reduce down MRS and meeting anxieties.

Walk and talk meetings, turn one to ones into walk and talk meetings. These were great in the office and great out of the office. I personally like these when no one has to present. If you need to switch on the camera and have an iPhone leverage FaceTime audio and this enables you to switch on the camera.

In our leader’s letter newsletter; optimise your meetings, we touch upon meeting recovery syndrome (MRS) and why it is so important to vary and improve your meetings.

Schedule Pro

Communication fatigue is a battle we have always faced, never as challenging as with our remote-first, forced working-from-home situation we find ourselves in across the global. Scheduling will be a bit step to winning.

Use scheduling email features to clear 30 minutes of your day.
Emails take up hours per day, scheduling emails to send at the end of the day or the next morning will free up your time of unwanted responses or late pings.
If you are a leader you can leverage the internal out of office settings to notify those around you of your working hours.
Use scheduling in apps to prevent notifications from work apps.

Daily 30:15 Time Blocking

Time is the battle ground that everyone fights to win. Win by owning your time and using calendar blocking.

Block out the first 30 mins and last 15 mins of your day to plan and debrief your day.
The 30-minute morning session: Write a quick five most important actions to complete for the day ahead. This helps to clarify what is most important and a guide throughout the day.

Clients have said over the recent months that these 30-minute sessions help to structure writing a letter to their team.

In the evening, write down five points that are occupying your thoughts. These can be the most important projects, the people you want to pick projects up with, the people you want to proactively reach out to or the essential communications you need to send.

Remove Camera View

Being on camera remotely is a performance. It is challenging and a battle, reduce this stress down.

Hide your own camera/view on video calls and hide all non-video views. This will prevent you from looking at yourself and being interrupted by those who have called in and flashing through video calls.

When you run your own working from home retrospective, these are all tips that will help guide you forward as a team, a department or as the company as a whole.

Leave The Home Office

Working from home is new to so many professionals, it has become challenging to leave work. Learn to draw a line and create deliberate boundaries.

Block out the area of your living for work and close the station down, shut down the laptop, place on the chair out of view, place notepads, coasters, post-it notes etc on top of the laptop.
Clear divide helps to shut off and a clear space = clear mind.

In the very near future, in the future of work and the workplace we will likely see working from home (or remotely) take up 70% of your working and knowing how to draw the professional and personal line will be imperative.

Setting ourselves up for success in the Hybrid Office aka the Future.

If you would like to understand and plan for the future of work and the hybrid workplace, download our Hybrid Workplace Ebook Here.

Categories
Leadership

Business Lessons From Jeff Bezos

It is pretty telling when you speak of a few leaders people stop and pay attention.

Something I have noticed over the last five years is how much Jeff Bezos name ensures people stop and listen to the words you say.

From reading the seminal book The Everything Store, read each shareholder leader (PDF’s available here) and watching hours of Jeff Bezos interviews here are the lessons I have taken from Amazon and Jeff Bezos.

The Lessons From Jeff Bezos

Obsess about customers – never competition. This is vitally important for their success and how they have led all decisions to be made.
Faster and easier is a mantra Amazon has delivered on constantly and is why so many of us invest in Prime.

Build Vs Buy Vs Sell: AWS was created to power its own business, was proven to work and then power much of the web.

High Standards – Customer service was one area Amazon invested in early and frequently, if you have had ever had an issue you are refunded and given a free month of prime.

Long term thinking over short term thinking – this has been managed internally and with investors with “long-term market leadership considerations”. Remember Amazon is rarely profitable and that’s been to their advantage.

Flywheel – Whatever you add to your business should be a cog in your flywheel, if it doesn’t add value then it shouldn’t be added.
Prime Now, Prime Video, AWS etc all add incredible value.

Lead – Leaders should see risk as an investment and tackle head-on versus running away from the challenge.

Always Long Term – Take the right long term bets by seeing how technology has opened up pathways.
Jeff Bezos famously says Amazon have a ten-year strategy and executes on it, how far ahead is your company strategy?

Measurement – In many interviews, you will hear Jeff and other senior execs say how much they measure but also how you should trust your instincts and your gut.
“I believe in the power of wandering. All of my best decisions in business and in life have been made with heart, intuition, guts… not analysis.” — Jeff Bezos

Keep Pushing – Something that many businesses are guilty of internally is stopping pushing when they feel like they have won or are winning. Take the foot of the gas and you will be taking a step backwards.

Partnerships – Amazon knew the risk of not being able to expand their product lines. When they took on and expanded their third-party seller’s program it was a huge risk but they believed in their model and would keep pushing. This move has increased their marketplace model, their product SKU’s and now third parties completed 60%+ of the orders.

Leverage Everything – Amazon leverage other companies logistics. For example, existing quick shipping options created prime, this then created “prime expectations”.
Delivery companies are now being eaten alive by Amazon.

Test – A/B testing was always essential to take learnings from and drive industries forward. A/B test allowed new ideas to be tested quickly, this improve customers experiences.

Known To Leverage – Understand what you business is known for, play to these perceived strengths in the press and behind the scenes crave out other business areas you can leverage.

Culture = Essential – from the front door desks created to being frugal, this enables everyone to understand this is what your company represents.
If innovation is part of your subculture then innovation is expected and embraced.

“Successful Failure” – is something Amazon gave embraced time and time again, a failed fire phone led to dominating the e-book and e-reader market.

The slides included in this post are from an upcoming presentation I will be keynoting in January & February “the next normal”, email directly for a copy of the deck.

Learn from Jeff Bezo’s successor Andy Jassy with his communication masterpiece


Amazon Must Watch Video’s

Amazon Empire
– A great follow up viewing is this PBS documentary on YouTube

The Story Behind Prime
– The story of Amazon Prime being an engineers idea not from the c-suite.

The Everything Store
– Talks At Google

Related Recommend Read:

Categories
Company Culture Leadership

Rethink The Leader – Manager – Coach – Mentor – Operator Dynamic

Rethink The Leader - Manager - Coach - Mentor - Operator Dynamic

Each week in Focus’ newsletter Leaders Letters, we discuss leadership, what a leader is and is not and how to channel that inner leader on important topics.

2020 – 2021

Throughout 2020 there has been a number of recurring themes, one of which is your role within the company vs the job title you have.

Role Vs Job Title

There are a few core tiers of role vs job title that often stands out and is important to raise and for you to discuss.

Often we see a hierarchy, we see it by the org chart, the title you have or the role you play within the business. This org chart rarely suggests or shows the different roles you play and how you operate. Hidden Leaders often play multiple roles within your org, they might not a manager but can be a coach and a mentor alongside being a high level operator.

Many hidden leaders are not ‘a people manager’ and this is actually a bonus to their career and the people around. I dislike the term individual contributors as this is so limited to what some people offer and the impact they have on those around them and the service they bring company.

In leaders letter, fewer managers more coaches and mentors we recommended a way to rethink your company set up and question do you actually need more managers and more hierarchy, or does reshaping your business with more mentors and coaches actually make more sense.

The Impact on Company Culture

Hierarchies will often dictate decision-making processes, the flow of information or in some orgs who is the ‘ultimate decision-maker”, this impact staff happiness and what is your company culture.

Leaders Are More Than A Title

Leader – Manager – Coach – Mentor – Operator for many are defined tags or labels you have and associate into your title. For others, these are hard labels you have and enter into a tiering system.

For me, these are interchangeable and should be used by companies to help colleagues understand different layers of leadership and development.

I challenge many managers to list down which of these roles are the people within their team and those who could offer reverse mentorship to them or identify a reverse mentor within their business who would help both parties and the company to progress.

The Roles Explained

  • Leader – A leader doesn’t have to have a C or V title. You do not have to be the most senior to be a leader, you can set the example and drive behaviour forward whether you are inexperienced or the most experienced or most senior.
    Leaders come in many forms and it is essential you understand the true difference between a manager and a leader.
    A leader can be a good coach and a mentor providing they have the time to dedicate and the energy to provide true value to their colleagues. Some of the smartest leaders have reverse mentorship and provides tremendous benefit to the org.
  • Manager – Typically a title, you can be a manager on a project and be less senior but have an important role to play on a project and manage those around you. Project Managers often drive businesses forward and made important decisions over more senior titles.
    Managers can be extremely busy and many are not taught to develop their team members or their department, this is where coaches and mentors will be valuable members of the company’s development and evolution.
  • Coach – Coaching is one of the most difficult and most challenging but is the most rewarding activity of work when you see your colleagues grow.
    A coach although typically older is someone who helps individuals grow, improve colleagues skills and helps to nurture the business forward. Some of the best coaches in business are inside of your org, they are likely in other areas of the business but can help improve your skills and might actually be lower in rank and title but will coach you.
    Remember the best sports coaches did not have huge professional careers, they have the best approach and methods for improving others.
  • Mentor – Mentors are often unspoken of, at any point you will see many people mentoring others, this is most regularly informal and is helping colleagues to guide others without having hard written goals or targets.
    I am personally extremely passionate about mentorship, many managers are just too busy to help you, often you can arrange fortnightly or monthly mentoring sessions with more senior members of staff and gain huge amounts by discussing your work, your aspirations and growing your role and influence. Many organisations will help you arrange a mentorship programme if you have not organised a mentor programme consider how you will match colleagues together.
    Try not to make the mistake many businesses do by only organising this for the raising stars or standout performers.
    A mentor will provide your business with a large amount of benefit, they will be guiding force and help those around them as much or more than most managers.
  • Operator – A specialist operator is hard to come by, they are often stand out performers and often led towards a management role. This does not actually benefit the operator or the business, this is often down to conditioned ways of thinking. An operator can be a better coach or better mentor vs having to take on formal management roles.
    As mentioned above an operator can be far more than just an individual contributor and offers far more than a flat title as this.
    A high-level operator (many from a developer background consider this the only way to progress) will feel pressure to ask for a manager or a senior manager, consider how you help to shape their careers and help the team or colleagues around them gain the most from the operator.

Move Away From Flat Titles

Moving forward I challenge you and your business to move away from flat and ignorant titles and build out layers in which truly reflect the impact and influence colleagues have within the organisation.

Pay special attention to developing out who would make great coaches, mentors and leaders and building managers who can manage their time, benefit from reverse mentorship and built out succession planning and the next evolution of leadership within your organisation.

If you would like to understand and develop this out further, I recommended reading a related and worthwhile article is what is leadership.

Categories
Leadership

It Is Ok To Want To Move On As A Leader

There has been much made for many years around company loyalty, the job market and being a leader and looking to move on. 

Leader Loneliness

As a leader, you are under so many more pressures than your team and colleagues realise and will even know. 
You keep it bottled up and find one or two people you can vent or download on to.

Team Before Me

Many times as a leader you have to make calls that are best for the team.
Rarely are you given the opportunity to make the calls that are good for you specifically.

Obviously bad and inexperienced managers do put themselves first.

As a leader (not a manager) you make decisions to empower those around you and move towards the department or company targets. 

Often as a leader, it can feel like you are too busy to think about your career, you often end up neglecting opportunities to develop your own career, you tend to put those around you or the business first. When you get a chance to look up it can feel like you are going backwards. 

Realisation

There comes a time when almost all leaders have that realisation. You will often realise the company is just not what it was or going where you want it to go or it’s just not for you anymore. 

This can feel more daunting the higher up you go. Especially in more recent times with lockdowns and pandemics. 

Questions From Leadership Team

You might have experienced this first hand or likely have asked it as a leader…are you committed to the company?

There is also only so many times someone can truly disagree and commit. 

Knowing when it’s your time

When you realise it is your time to leave, you are actively making the decision to improve the company culture, often when we know we are looking we have the tendency do drop the ball or have passed to the wrong player. It is also completely fine to look to leave for a better company fit for you.

So a new year can be a fresh start, you can look to leave and as many won’t suggest it is good to understand the market, understand or remember your value or worth, remember in no rules rules, Netflix actively encourage you to go for other interviews and understand your value. 

Leaders Lead

Do not let questions from other leaders or do what people expect to hold you back. A leader has to lead, and typically it has to start with yourself. So yes, it is always to leave, even if you are the CEO.

The important thing to remember is to leave your company or organisation in a great place and set them up to succeed for as possible.

Categories
Leadership

Is it time for management pods?

Rethinking how it’s always been done is something I am a huge fan of. 

Why?

It can be an interesting way of trying to make a positive change within a stagnant organisation and encourages teams to challenge how things are done or review poorer performing elements of the business and optimise. 

Making a change in organisations and going against ‘the way it’s always been done’ can be a very long-drawn-out process and often one that is fought back against from dominance leaders. 

In many leadership team developments sessions, these are core pieces of feedback that come back from the leadership team. 

Pride, ego and an old school approach are the other most common pieces of feedback that you will hear. This often leads to poor performing leadership teams that filter through the organisation. 

No one deep down likes to be challenged or change but it is essential for business and personal growth.

Swarms and SWATS 

In recent years we have seen the move towards swarms and SWOTS, where you create a specific goal or problem to be solved and that cross-functional group does everything to complete that mission. 

I am a huge fan of swarms if rolled out correctly, two ways to win with swarms are you have to right written rules and agreed on principles to roll out a swarm and make the move towards this model. 

Swarms are great as the model is built on co-ownership, with disciplines owned by internal experts of the swarm and collaboration has to happen in order to complete the goal, it is very rare that the Product person can get success in a swarm without the Marketing partner developing a great product marketing offering and offering valued opinions on brand positioning and the CTA that works in these situations. Likewise, a designer will need to work with the right development partner to ensure the new element works seamlessly. 

SWATS are typically more short-term, it can be for very specific issues or problems that need to be solved and often your core team can stay together but experts are brought in. 

This works well for shorter periods of time.

There is often a parallel to the military, policing and sports with SWATS and was borrowed from these worlds. So order, communication and execution are paramount pillars to success.  

SWATs work particularly well in growth companies that know how to tackle smaller but important projects to compete with large competitors or within newer Growth Departments in larger organisations.  

Time For Management Change? 

In management, there are a huge number of issues that are time-sensitive, time-restricted items that just never get prioritised or egos get in the way, or most typically old ways of doing things that are just routine or we do it this way here. 

This causes micro fractions that escalate over time, many teams will ignore this until something seeming mundane happens it can then blow up.

Often informal groups or cooperations appear in management teams, these happen for numerous reasons, typically alignment around: 

  • A common goal
  • An agreed social commonality 
  • An agreed move towards taking over more ownership 
  • Or in some cases a way to keep or hoard power. 

In more recent times we have seen management become harder, managing a team can be more challenging, teams have reduced but the goals are still aggressive and as managers, we have experienced many more emotions ourselves and with our teams. 

Remote management is a whole new ball game for many leaders, less in-person time means it is harder for them to understand their teams mood, to understand cues from individuals or groups working together, and picking up on individual anxieties or how an individual may be feeling can be challenging to truly pick on.

When we shift to a fully hybrid workplace these managers should have the right muscle memory and skills to help less in-person time work, but is there a support and learning network set up to share these learnings. Unlikely.

With remote work and lower levels of transparency and clarity, business strategy is being challenged more than ever as the strategy has to be clearer and more brought into.
Leadership team members struggle to widely support a strategy when they are not fully brought in or were not involved in developing the strategy. 

Introducing The Pods Concept

All of the above challenges are not easy factors but factors that can be worked upon and collectively can be addressed with collaboration, transparency and support groups or as small pods. 

Why a pod?

A pod instinctively protects each other and is formal, this enables smaller groups of managers and leadership to protect each other, share experiences and discuss problems they might be encountering.  

The further up the totem pole, the more lonely it can become, especially having to make more difficult decisions and challenging outputs and results. 

Pods are going to be harder to roll out if you and your leadership team have pairs that have strong alliances already formed, I would recommend connecting pods of people together by having 2-3 random leaders connected and work together for six months. 

As a leadership team or a solo leader you will have to make the difficult decision to break up pairs and mini-groups, embrace and encourage pods.

The essential parts to pods are you connect and regroup with the larger management team and report on learnings, lessons and takeaways and take time in leadership meetings to collectively learn from experiences and form bonds. These have to be formally discussed and discussed as a wider leadership team. Keeping the learnings from the pod to your pod goes against why you need pods.

These meetings should be treated as important discussions and learning sessions, you will learn about each other, understand different pressures and align your departments together by the bonds you build.

Importantly, these bonds will also help your teams to connect and develop relationships cross-functionally. 

Something that is key every six months; rotate the pods.
Why?
This keeps sharing up to the maximum and ensures you have a blend of problems you can tackle in different ways. 

If pods are strong they will proactively look to continue the meetings, and the learnings and collectively improve the business.

Pods will be a step towards better leadership team performance and ensure you can create an environment and company culture of sharing and development. 

I hope you and your leadership team make time to discuss the pod methodology and make the time to roll this out into 2021 and beyond.

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