Stories from our work · 5 min read
When you're already winning
Few leaders ask for help when the numbers are good. That is what made this one unusual.
Leadership teams · Strategy · Capability · Culture insight · Field Advisors
Their leadership team, in a multi-billion-dollar company, was doing really well. It was delivering results. By most of the measures anyone looks at, there was no reason to change a thing.
But the leader had started to notice something the scorecards did not show yet. The market was shifting. The conditions that had made the team so successful were not going to stay the same. And a quiet, uncomfortable question had begun to form. Is a team that is winning today ready for the market that is forming in front of it?
The hardest time to ask
It is much easier to ask hard questions when something has gone wrong. Most people can see the problem, and few argue about whether to act. Asking the same questions when things are going well takes a different kind of nerve. Successful teams have every reason to believe that what worked will keep working. Nobody enjoys hearing that it might not be enough.
The leader asked anyway, while there was still time to prepare. That was where we came in.
Looking inward first
Before the team looked out at the market, we helped it look at itself.
We started with a culture read of the team, to bring some of its problems, challenges and opportunities into view up front. A team can deliver strong results and still carry friction, blind spots and habits that will not suit a different market. Better to find them while the stakes are still low.
We sent in experienced advisors, alongside smart technology Field Advisors, to gather perspectives. Then we analysed the sentiment and insights coming from the team and from its market. That gave everyone a picture built on what people were actually saying and what the market was actually doing, not on assumptions made at the top of the table.
The real conversation
With that evidence in front of them, the team could have the conversation it needed. How is our world changing? What opportunities are opening up? What capabilities do we have, as individuals and as a top team? And what would it take, on what timeline and with what resources, to stay as successful as we have been?
From there, we helped them work through an implementation plan. It had two routes running side by side. Some capabilities the team would need to bring in from outside. Others it could build within the people it already had.
A private word
There was one more piece, just for the leader.
People at the top of a successful team do not always hear what is getting in the way. Things are going well, and few people want to be the one to spoil it. So we gave the leader a set of insights on some of the challenges the team was experiencing, and on how they could work better together. Plainly, and in confidence.
Why we tell this one
The best time to get ready for change is before you have to. This team was already winning. Its leader wanted to make sure it kept on winning in a market that was changing around it.