Mother nature ripped a hole in your strategy. Government flip flops hacked it bigger. Then the wonderful variety of individual human responses, alongside an uncertain but hoped for recovery made that hole a shape-shifter.
What if we actively welcomed problems as a way to grow rather that fearing and avoiding them? What if we built a problem-seeking attitude into our teams?
Not in some glib LinkedIn-inspirational-quote kind of way, but actively?
I was due to take a leadership team I was supporting to a strategy retreat in a stunning venue in Spain. I arranged for regional food to be cooked on site, giving work to skilled but unemployed locals, and bought equipment to use.
Then bats happened.
Covid hit.
I rewrote the sessions. Rather than 3 days out, we did 8 weekly shorter bites. We made use of the time between to actually start implementing the strategy even as we were creating it.
Client feedback? “The energy felt by the leadership team was tangible despite being run remotely. With the Beyond the Quarter approach we have a clear path to work towards as a leadership team”.
We did miss out on the sunshine, wine and bonding.
But the problem made us create a new and effective strategy service.
We’re still facing problems today. Aside from an uncertain recovery, we have war in Europe, escalating supply chain costs, and the biggie – accelerating climate change.
We need to reframe problems from something that happens to us, to something we seek out and grow from. Business as usual won’t cut it.
{Oh – and the venue, as in these pics, is now available again – meaning we can do strategy at the venue or remotely. A new option coming out of crisis. PM me if that might be a thing for you!}
Will 2022 be another year of a strategy at best vaguely met? Of being a CEO unable to step back from the day-to-day to do the things your company needs to meet it's ambitions? Of having a purpose and values that don't directly connect to everything you do? We're looking for an intimate beta group of CEOs (10 to 40 employees) to join us on this upcoming webinar to talk through our Build on Purpose framework for making strategy, purpose and values happen.