A lot has changed in the world
from a year ago when I started this series of
articles (link to
Attitude article) and nothing has
changed. The third most important
issue raised at the chamber dialogue session was
flexibility of management.
The need for flexibility is no different now
than it was prior to the financial crises. In an
article posted by Harvard Business Publishing, the
question posed to leaders given all the turmoil in
the economy was "what kind of leadership do we
need now?" The most common responses were;
"adaptive, flexible and innovative" leadership:
(http://blogs.harvardbusiness.org) The
question is, are we willing to be
flexible? I will
address three areas of flexibility; leadership,
management and humanistic, that I believe will
support companies to be better organizations in
the future.
Leadership
Where is your business going? Being
open to seeing different possibilities for your
business is vital especially when a major shift
occurs in the economy. One of my clients
doubled the size of his business and cultivated an
environment of a high performance team over a one
year period. Within the next six months he
had to adapt to the market realities and laid
almost everyone off, except for a few core
staff.
What was his
vision? Maintain a core group of people,
operate the company at break even and be ready for
when the industry comes back. What to
do with the extra capacity? He worked on
developing a training school for the key skill set
where it was most difficult for him to
hire people. It was his flexibility of
thinking that allowed him to be adaptive and
innovative setting himself up to succeed in his
vision of the future.
Management
How do we need to be flexible with our
people? Each person that works in your
organization or on your team is unique.
People can be categorized by generation, gender,
nationality, personality style, thinking style,
etc. At the end of the slicing and
dicing people are unique and yet the
same.
People want to be
treated as if they matter and what they think is
important. For you as a manager to
deal with all of these differences requires
flexibility, adaptability and the willingness to
be innovative with your people to assist them to
bring out the best in themselves. The skill you
will use most is communication. Your biggest
personal challenge maybe the frustration you
feel because people are not the same.
Humanistic
Then there are the catastrophes that
happen in people's lives, that in business, we
would often like to ignore.
Catastrophes can range from the death of a loved
one, changes in relationships, illness and the
happy catastrophe of a baby to mention just a
few. These catastrophes are part of
the humanness of our lives. Having
gone through my own relationship transition this
past year, I am intricately aware of it's impact
on my ability to be highly productive (or not as
the case may be) and hence the negative impact on
my business productivity.
As
managers you will be faced with people who are not
as productive for a period of time due to a
personal catastrophe. Are you personally
equipped to be flexible and can the work be
adapted to support people through their
transitions?
It
is companies like these where the best people want
to work and bring their talent. As the
leader of these really good people, not only
will your company survive in a difficult market it
will excel in a flourishing market because you
have captured the heart of your people.
Wishing you flexibility to
springboard you forward;
Jacque
