Now it could be my reticular activating system (you know when you’re buying an electric car you suddenly notice they’re everywhere) on hyper alert, but since writing my white paper on Inflection Leadership last month, I’m noticing more and more leaders talking about the big shifts they’re experiencing and they’re naming these shifts as the inflection points. I joked that Obama had clearly been on my LinkedIn feed when he mentioned it this week!
This month alone I’ve spoken with numerous leaders across multiple sectors whose businesses are struggling to navigate major market uncertainty driven by policy decision delays. Boards are sharpening their focus and the ripples are felt across the business. Some of my clients are in acquisition mode, making the most of uncertain times, others are hunkering down. Most are questioning their approach which is fabulous. They should do! None of this is set and forget – neither the role you take up nor the strategy you adopt.
It’s fair to say most businesses and teams I work with have a strategy. Far fewer are aligned on how to deliver it. Inflection points expose this gap – fast.
It’s at precisely this moment that team realignment is critical. While it starts with bringing the team together at some form of offsite to align around the WHAT they’re here to deliver and the HOW they’ll come together to do that, it’s bigger than this one initiative. Continual team realignment is an Inflection leadership discipline. And it’s not about surface-level agreements either. It’s about aligning how you work together – what you tolerate, what you prioritise, how you hold each other to account, how you build capacity.
I encourage you to give this some thought in your weekly reflection time and as always, if you want to talk through where you’re at, just reply to this email and we can make a time to chat. Things are changing and you have decisions to make!