EVERY LEADER IS ON A JOURNEY
Think about the value of a high-performing team and how that team supports your leadership journey, especially as an organization grows and changes – and consider the impact that change has on an organization’s culture and the demands on you as a leader.
Every leader, including myself, is on that journey. We continue to learn and develop and try new things and use our experiences to share with other leaders: colleagues in different organizations. In that interaction with friendly competitors and customers, we learn and see what’s working, and what isn’t working, as the business landscape changes, the world changes, and the environment that we play in changes.
So, being static, doing what you’ve always done, I don’t believe is the key to success. Of course, having principles that aren’t changing, having those things that are important to you and your values, these are foundational and should be unchanging unless something significant has happened.
The point is that, periodically, let’s say every few years based on your rate of growth, some change in complexity – perhaps growth that lessens your everyday involvement in the organization, means that you increasingly rely on a high-performing team. Fine tuning how that team operates takes work.
It is important for you as the leader to be able to influence and direct a culture that was pretty clear when you were a very small team of say 5 to 10 people. If you have grown to 50 people, 100 people, a thousand people, that culture looks very different. And that is why the team that you’ve assembled, the leadership team and frankly the entire organization, needs to be validated and sort of refreshed if you will. And that can involve updating your core values as some things may be changed, added, or subtracted.
Oftentimes what I’ve seen in organizations that have a lot of success is that their values and other cultural elements like rules of the game or business purposes work to help your team do what amounts to operationalizing the culture.
So, the leadership journey continues. You’re going to continue to learn skills and continue to build your skills. The culture needs to be refreshed and looked at as you grow – and that all affirms that the importance of good leadership. A strong organization will support your skills development, help you communicate more effectively, and see your strategy communicated throughout the organization to people who are then held accountable.
Your responsibility to model this culture of accountability to your leaders helps them do the same thing with their teams. Remember that everyone has a different personality, and a different background, so the fun part of the game, I think, is the human part – and you see it as you interact with and lead this complex group of humans.
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