Immerse Vs Actual

The title of this write-up, “Immerse vs Actual”, is essentially cautionary. It is a timely call on business leaders to immediately make a critical choice if they have not done so already, for the survival and growth of their organisations.

The question is: do you want to be a successful leader in today’s intellectual game of business? Lead with impact and perform at your best or do you want to continue in your total immersion in conventional ways and reliance on legacy strengths? If you choose the latter, you will pay an expensive competency penalty. You will tether under pressure and considerably lose prospect for growth.

As a leader, you must therefore confront the “actual”, the new reality and “what is presently existing, uncertainty, debilitating challenges and unexpected turns. It is obvious that you can no longer follow the predictable path.

You must become your organisation’s strategist; the critically needed strategic warrior that must use strategic thinking as his new playbook and stop being rigid. Stop reacting and take control of the situation. Intelligently sift through the different options, organise, analyse and plan with pattern recognition. Your adaptive plans must be brilliant, novel and unique.

Recently, an organisation became the touchstone of the “actual”. It created unprecedented demand for its brands by breaking them down into useful bits and tailoring these bits to satisfy utility everyday needs. It “exploited” the brands that it aligned with the versatility of these everyday needs and thereby greatly excited consumers. The result was an unbelievable great positioning. What followed were great results and eye-popping growth. The company successfully leveraged people insights and unbelievable amount of data from the plethora of media platforms.

Today, this company has become the most valuable company in the world through unprecedented demand that was generated from need-based products and services. It used “utility” products milestones to greatly and successfully propel its fortunes.

Nigeria’s Aliko Dangote recently stressed the need for organisations to drill deep into the versatility of brands and match discoveries with day-to-day needs. Oil, for instance, he noted, has several utility values both as finished products and raw materials. Organisations should experiment with drilling down from the point of view of day-to-day “usefulness”. That is, drill down from “practical beneficial use”.

Utility or what the product (or service) does, affordability and what the brand is saying or communicating, will definitely galvanise interests of consumers and thereby “blow-up” growth and market share.

We must rekindle the entrepreneurial spirit in organisations. The leader must do it with courage, passion, uniqueness and energy.

The leader must metaphorically examine his environment and master the situation. Anticipate and follow-up on identified patterns and drive great execution with trusted teams.

Pattern recognition enables leaders to move faster with sure-footedness. The leader uses them to master his strategies and understand his team members better.

The leader discerns what will happen before it happens with unique perception, comprehension and projections. These identified patterns become his execution cues and the dependable fuel for new knowledge and experience.

With pattern recognition, you can model the best in terms of your planning. You recognize the useful patterns, and apply them, you therefore see what others and even your competitors do not see. Pattern recognition gives plans meaning and purpose. It saves organisations from the dangers of templates and conventional knowledge.

As mentioned earlier, the leader as strategist becomes impactful. His authentic style makes him innovative (and obviously also creative). He adapts the usual predictable path. He rethinks the plans based on situational patterns. He decodes situations and takes strategic steps forward. He is aways reinventing himself and his organisation’s models of churning out beneficial outcomes. Challenges and setbacks are pivotal to his growth momentum.

I would like to suggest and prescribe “capability meetings” instead of the usual stereotyped budget-achievement weekly or monthly meetings.

These meetings must enable cross-functional alignment. Innovation thrives on cross-functional alignment. It must be all-embracing with product/service teams as well as marketing and operations teams.

When we hold meetings around capabilities, it smoothens execution. Teams also collaborate more effectively and bottlenecks as well as solos are better managed.

I have mentioned the critical role of the strategic leader in this new “actual” dispensation. I also emphasised utility as the new currency. Focus on utility must however run with rekindled innovative entrepreneurship.

Let me conclude with relevant and energised coaching, a veritable way to strengthen the leadership muscle.

The leader of this multi-skilled mosaic must help others succeed. It is his duty to create positive and supportive work environment. He must be passionate about genuinely developing greatness in individual team members, and of course, the organization.

He must always challenge team members with formal and informal coaching to step up and accelerate performance. Colleagues must be helped to perform at their best and grow their careers. They must be energised and re-energised to deliver highly beneficial values. They must take full ownership of performance and there must be constant progressive shift in contribution levels.

The coaching style must differentiate between advising, mentoring, teaching and coaching. Colleagues must be made to grow their capacity to solve problems through exploration that enlightens. They must imbibe the skills of communicating with purpose and learn how to showcase determination to achieve organisational goals. The coaching approach should also be used to give feedback and very useful advice.