Leader’s Workplace

TODAY’S workplace is characterized by willingness to question the status quo, make the difference and deliver highly beneficial value. The workforce is expected to be daring, innovative, enthusiastic and filled with energy and imagination.

The workplace must drive excellence and ensure enablement, effectiveness and efficiency. There must be strong problem-solving pipelines, so the leaders and managers will not miss out on vital details. Purpose-driven determination and hard work inputs must correlate directly to value outputs. Value must flow from KPI-input perspective and the workforce must be culturally as well as tenaciously aligned to driving beneficial value. In this challenging time, leaders must shift human capital to business value, distill experience and insights, and methodically direct the workforce to the business table. Every employee must contribute to the success of the organisation through a mental shift that delivers growth and profitability.

Workplace culture is the personality of the organisation. It showcases how employees think, act, interact and do their work. The culture must therefore mirror a can-win attitude.

Leaders in the workplace must be experts in decision sciences, effectively managing group dynamics and psychological biases. The leader must ably execute the dynamic framework for interpreting, analyzing and leveraging employees’ motivation and customer behaviour. He must work with insights to consistently cope with trends and challenges and maximise workforce contributions to organizational success. His choice workplace architecture must always strengthen performance and imbue outcomes-driven mindset.

Success is the sum total of collaborative efforts that are creatively executed everyday. The leader must drive objectives with tasks and keep improving without neglecting basic things. Workplace success is the triumph of cooperation and creativity that grows the system and engender professionalism. Trust relationship lubricates the workplace.

The atmosphere of the workplace must be that of passion for excellence. Leaders must set high expectations. Do not just congratulate your colleagues for a “Job well done” also discuss what can be done better. Challenge yourselves for new heights and treat people with dignity as well as respect. It takes the entire workforce for the organisation to succeed. So, nothing must get in the way of the job to be done.

Organisations must always shape better performance for each employee. We must always strive for the optimum spot and tailor objectives and strategy to each employee because two employees (for instance) may have different skill sets and areas that the organisation must improve upon. Leadership development is the process which helps expand the capacity of the individual employee to perform and regularly improve on performance.

Let us examine levels of value delivered by employees in the workplace.

Demonstrating proficiency is only the first step in measuring the value of an employee. Implementation is the first level of value. You cannot limit yourself to your technical knowledge. It delivers least influence, least impact and least visibility.

The workplace must unify the four (4) P’s with employees, namely; people, processes projects and policies. They must increase their value by articulating thoughts, ideas and positioning themselves with value-delivering authenticity. Do not stop at just directing and controlling activities, also let your impact excellently influence customers and subordinates.

What makes the difference between effective and ineffective organisations is total effective task performance. That is, personal and group goal accomplishments.

Do you know that in this era of uncertainty in the marketplace, individual employee’s interactions with customers (at different levels) leave impressions with customers and you want these to be good ones? These interactions are known as the customer touchpoints. Each customer touchpoint is an opportunity to reinforce the brand (or even organizational) value and engage customers in meaningful and beneficial ways.

A game changer in elevating organizational success is for the human capital to become a strategic partner in delivering tangible business impact. Every employee is an ambassador of the promise the organization made to always deliver value to customers. The workplace must therefore impact customers, impact business strategy and impact growth as well as profitability.

Even in business to business sales or marketing, meaningful customer engagement with the organisation generates new sales leads, help reconnect and grow loyalty with existing customers and of course, increases profitability.

It is worthy of note that there is a powerful synergy between employee satisfaction and customer satisfaction. Also, empathy imbued in employees as well as engaged employees deliver improved and revenue-generating customer satisfaction. (the formula is EX equals CX).

Let me conclude with scenario thinking and decision making in the workplace. Scenario thinking enables decision makers to think through different sets of ideas and assumptions. Leaders’ collaborative engagement with the workforce is very vital in scenario thinking for wiser decisions. A “consequential” leader with a strategic character will find scenario thinking very useful in addressing challenges. It is also an invaluable resource for execution in not only achieving organizational goals but also turning strategic goals to reality.

Four disciplines or frameworks effectively guide execution: the leader should implement high priority objectives by focusing on critical goals; identifying and acting on key activities that drive success; engaging scoreboard (or whatever means) to track progress, and establishing regular plan of accountability meetings to review progress and make necessary adjustments.

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