Our Leadership Tools series is an occasional publication outlining tools and techniques of particular value in enhancing sustainable business resilience. For more details and questions on their application contact us at Leading Green on hello@leading.green
The challenges in leading your business’s sustainability forward through our current turbulent financial times or within other disruptive market events cannot be underestimated. It is an ability that clearly requires leadership skills, management strength, strategic insight and support in managing stress. At Leading Green, our work requires us to work at the active edge of organisations, providing developmental support and training that gives assistance as you and your management team move forward into the next ‘normal’ phase of the business.
The risks associated with disruptive change, maintaining liquidity, balance sheet management and, returns on immediate investments cannot be underestimated, all senior managers need to understand this and environmental sustainability leaders are not exempt from this requirement. However, you are also in a position to help deliver value into the organisation by addressing uncertainty through building up organisational and market resilience, a future-fit direction for others to follow, and the foresight necessary to maintain an edge (profit/value) over competitors and new sector entrants.
Looking ahead and trying to guess what may be forthcoming in an uncertain future, and then betting on its occurrence is a critical component of any leadership role. In fact, it can be argued it is the CEO’s primary task in which they are supported by other members of the senior leadership team. It is pointless to struggle with the present if past marketplace assumptions are no longer valid, and it is the adoption of a future strategy that will define long term development (or survival!). Whilst both will require attention and immediate decisions making, our natural bias is towards the threat of ‘Now!’, and a human bias to ignore the real risk that threatens on the horizon. We have remarked many times in these blogs that sustainability leadership demands taking a longer term view and perspective on business trends, in an extended crisis event you as the organisation’s sustainability leader are one of the people best tasked with framing a coherent future that others can follow and drive towards.
There is no magic business crystal ball to be bought on eBay, you can only focus on what is known and can be done today. Don’t delay framing a new sustainability strategy until tomorrow as this may be too late or place you behind competitors, nor delay matters until all immediate risks are dealt with. Again, it may be too late for your business’s long-term strategic survival. Make the time available in your week to look at the problems from today’s evidence and knowledge base.
Why?
Because once you understand the direction you want to travel in, only then can you start to identify and analyse the risks, and how you can positively influence your own future. This is Strategic Foresight Planning’,
Our Leading Green strategic sustainability planning framework incorporates Strategic foresight planning within its route map principles and the tools we utilise dependent on organisational need. Like many leadership tools, it is based on common sense, structured decision-making and a formula that follows a logical sequence. It also helps us guide you through the process, retaining your decision-making and knowledge of the marketplace or sector, assisting you to embed your own decisions and necessary changes.
Every strategic planning process begins with framing a set of powerful strategic questions – open-ended questions, which are critical for the organization to resolve as part of its strategic plan going forwards. The worst question to ask is how ‘How do we get back to business as normal, yet this is the most frequent desire of a previously stable business leadership team. Sounds easy enough to achieve? Yet too often boards and senior leadership teams fail to give sufficient time and thought to ensure their strategic questions are well-defined.
So what makes for a good strategic question?
There is often a suite of 4-5 strategic questions to be asked, and the obvious reactions to their power are in the way they stimulate fresh thinking, generate energy in the team, it challenges old assumptions and previous bias, need resolution or open up questions the team may know little about? However they are framed, at least three must focus around:
So time taken at frame your questions, their value is on challenging the rational bias to remain static, promote a wider worldview for exploration and identify knowledge gaps in now redundant strategy.
From the experience of CSBR Global’s senior partners, time spent in this phase is rarely wasted, rebuilding both the senior leadership team’s cohesion and energy.
Like a radar system, this should really be a formally structured and continuous activity across any organisation which has plans to be successful beyond the immediate term. It encompasses mapping of the trading territory and business environment, conducting a thorough stakeholder analysis, exploring the unfamiliar, and looking backwards to learn from the past. More particularly, it involves:
• looking ahead – beyond usual timescales;
• looking across – beyond usual sources;
• gazing beyond – moving from a single ‘expected future’ to a range of alternative ‘possible futures’;
• considering – implications for today’s decisions; and,
• promoting – a sense of ‘resilience’ and ‘adaptability’ in strategy.
Alternative Futures. It is crucial to identify the driving forces of change affecting the organisation’s place in the world. It is important to look for turning or tipping points, to embrace divergent ideas, to prioritise convergent views, and to construct alternative futures. These ‘scenarios’ should be plausible and surprising, structurally different, internally consistent, useful and challenging. They help to create a better learning organisation.
Having challenged some accepted assumptions, posed relevant “what-if?” questions, identified likely implications and possible unintended consequences, and thought creatively about the longer-term, this process seeks to concoct from the various scenarios a chosen ‘preferred future’ for the organisation.
The attitude of imagining ahead and planning backwards is the opposite of conventional planning but is central to our philosophy. It involves: thinking strategically to provoke constructive and reflective conversations; spotting areas of strategic choice, and evaluating any proposed strategy along multiple dimensions. Vitally, it demands contingency plans for unexpected surprises.
Invariably, we encourage those organisations and individuals we are working with to:
• creating an Action Plan with a sense of urgency;
• determining ‘milestones’ on the path towards a ‘preferred future’;
• establishing an ‘intelligence system’ to keep the radar scanning;
• effective communication of the results to stakeholders; and
• inculcating strategic thinking within the organisation.
Frequently, our last question to the client is: “What are you going to do first, and now?”
Apart from the goals of capturing materiality, producing a strategic plan to guide your organisations into the future, and giving your colleagues confidence in your ability to adapt and manage both tangible and intangible risk. There is leadership value in drawing other teams into your sustainability visioning and strategic thinking, allowing them to input different perspectives into a future forming risk and to develop a common interest in resolving matters.
At Leading Green, we provide leadership development support and consultancy services to organisations seeking to develop their internal environmental sustainability leadership culture, purpose and value brand, in a way that brings out the best in responsible organisational behaviours.
Come and talk to us?