Malaysia Corporate Management Control - Transformation

MALAYSIA CORPORATE MANAGEMENT CONTROL MONITORING TO SUCCEED

4 Vantage Point | Malaysia Corporate Management | Change | Succeed |

MANAGEMENT VANTAGE POINT – 

CHANGE IS THE KEY WORDS TO BE AHEAD

One thing is inevitable and that is “change”. There are no magic hand not magic words, when one realized that we simply have to innovate in order to being submerge by competitors. Industry structure shift and those who fail to see the changes early and fail to innovate are those who will be hurt the most.

Leaders need a better vantage point to see what is going on. Change management gurus have have headed up the boardrooms to develop breakthrough strategies and introduce game changing strategies to steer the company in new directions. Some have been more successful than others and some attributes to successful changes to leaders who had the ability to see the big picture and determine industry shifts that were going to change the rules of the game.

The likes of Bill Gates and Steve Jobs were able to usher in the era of personal computing in the 80s through their forward thinking perspectives. For  another example, the airlines industry is close to 100 years old and the industry is still continues to shift on both extremes from the highly differentiated Virgin Atlantic to the reconstruction caused by the budget airline segment led by the likes of Malindo Air and Air Asia.

The ability to see the big picture and go beyond what everyone else is thinking has been the determining talent that has led to the prosperity of innovative companies, many of which were able to thrive in periods of volatility and challenge. The role of leaders in having to identify changes that will affect their organization and industry for better or for worse cannot be understated. The ability to see the big pictures is key talent of any strategic leader.

The importance of having a vantage point is that it allows the leader to step back and look at the bigger picture. It allows the management to see what is happening in the world outside the organization and its impending effects to the current strategy. It allows the leader to get out of their own processes and go deeper into the employee and customer experience. This is an ability that we would like to call “seeing the forest and the trees”.

The former notion is that a leader does either-or. Either he focuses only on the big picture (forest) or he sees them for the trees (internal processes). There is a danger of being too much of either. When you only see the bigger picture, you might find yourself in a position where you believe you have motivated people on the new strategy, only to find months later that nothing seems to be moving.

On the other hand, if a leader is too caught up with the details, processes and procedures, there is a great danger that the organization might not respond quickly enough to changes in the industry and customer demands.

1. SITUATIONAL APPRAISAL AND SCENARIO ANALYSIS

Use big picture perspective and engage your team in looking at the facts together and have a shared appreciation to determine a broad strategy. Develop a broad sense of vision and direction amidst the sea of competition. See the future through a telescope and build a navigational roadmap.

2.SHARED PERSPECTIVE & VISUALIZATION FOR EXECUTION & STRATEGY

In this case you are not using your own lens but that of your Cross Function Team (CFT). These give a leader a chiastic perspective across the organization. This helps the leaders anticipate barriers to execution.

3. HAVE A DIAGNOSTIC MINDSET

Sometime a leader needs to take a “deep-dive” into their organization to identify constraints to execution. These constraints could be motivational or systemic. They could also be source based.

At this point a leader needs a lens similar to microscope to get to the root causes of problems and deploy measures for corrective measure.

4.CONTROL DASHBOARD

Have a dashboard for navigating the strategy. Build a system for measuring progress and milestones. Have the necessary indicators for strategic traction that measure finances, learning and growth, customer perspectives and internal processes. Use a balanced scorecard perspective.

The good news for the leader is that he does not have to be omnipresent to see the forest and the trees. He needs only to have the right perspective at the right given time and if he chooses to specialize in certain aspects, the true leader recognizes the need for the other perspective and give way to empower others to formulate and execute strategy. Gone are the days that one leader does all. New age leadership demand more collaboration and broader cross-sectional perspective to make things work. This demands a certain level of leadership from all of us and we cannot have a zero sum perspective of power and influence.

Having a leadership vantage point makes us realize that strategy goes beyond the self or the leader. And while it may take a visionary to cast direction, it takes a whole crew to navigate a ship to its destination especially through trouble waters. Use the right lenses and get the right perspective.

Contributed by : The Star Newspaper - recorded for self reading as News Paper comes and Go. Once capture in my blog, whenever reading back, this is refresh one mind.