In my professional career, I have focused on things that are truly fascinating, yet not easy. Sometimes called ‘soft’, they are difficult to measure and model, still they have an enormous impact on organizational performance and competitiveness. Interested? More below.
Leadership
I have always been interested in the practical side of leadership. Of course, we are all inspired by great business leaders such as Steve Jobs, Jack Welch or Richard Branson, but it often turns out that inspiration remains just that and does not translate into our real-life effectiveness. In other words, being awed by Walther Roehrl’s race-driving technique does not improve our own driving skills. Therefore, in my leadership workshops, I focus on practical solutions and provide my clients with proven tools to develop their leadership competencies – the ones anyone can use, irrespective of their function or seniority.
Moreover, leadership lessons can be found everywhere, including some counterintuitive sources. My workshops include case studies such as Cosa Nostra’s organizational culture change by Bernardo Provenzano, root-cause analysis of Challenger’s and Columbia’s tragedies and leadership styles of the greatest Himalayan climbers. Practical leadership can be inspirational as well!
Decision-making
The traditional approach to decision-making was based on a simple assumption: the quality of a decision results from competencies and experience of the decision-maker, as well as from the quality and completeness of the data he or she has. This approach worked well for many years. If a decision was based on a thorough analysis of sound information from trusted sources and made by a seasoned, competent professional, in the majority of cases, the choice was optimal. Thus, what an organization needed, was a good system that gathered and analyzed data, as well as the appointment of the most experienced executives to make all the key decisions. However, recent years brought a surprising turnaround. We witnessed shocking stories of the world’s leading, successful business people, who were making disastrous decisions, even though they were using the same approach, tools and data sources. We saw so many heroes of the past going down, together with their companies, burning billions of dollars of their clients and partners.
This is what I concentrate on in decision-making so as to help my clients to avoid the traps set by what is called “the new normal” – a world of permanent, relentless change, where markets are volatile and “black swan events” abound. There are practical ways to improve the way we choose and decide; this is also the subject of my book, published in December 2014.
Talent Management
When McKinsey coined the expression “war for talent” in the late 1990s, many thought it was an exaggeration and another trend that would quickly pass. It turns out, however, that we live and work in a world in which – as Kjell Nordstrom and Jonas Riddestrale put it – ‘the winners are the ones who have ideas and no capital, not the ones with capital and no ideas’. Competitive strategies of companies are more and more often based on human capital and a company’s ability to attract, motivate and retain top talents in the market. Talent management is no longer just a trendy novelty, it has become one of the key challenges for many market players.
Bad news: in this area, it is so easy to make a fundamental mistake and design a system that will produce negative effects. I have seen many companies, in which the employee turnover figures among the key, high-potential people INCREASED after the launch of a talent management program. One of the reasons is fairly simple – in business organizations, we are quite good at measuring employee performance “here and now”, but when it comes to identification and assessment of his or her potential to develop, and building an appropriate career path, we are often helpless. Then, disappointed and demotivated people leave the company, often joining a direct competitor. Having delivered more than 30 projects on talent management in Central and Eastern Europe, I am glad to share my experience.
Organizational Culture Modelling
This is another difficult topic, as it refers to a phenomenon, which is as hard to measure as leadership, and managing intangibles has never been easy. Notwithstanding, organizational culture impacts on the performance of a team or a company to a great extent.
I have designed and delivered more than 50 projects aimed at organizational culture change, often in combination with a parallel leadership development program. There are three interrelated elements, pivotal to the success of such an undertaking: strategic adequacy (do we promote behaviors and attitudes that support our strategy?), operational adequacy (do processes, structures and systems in the organization support these behaviors and attitudes?), and communication adequacy (do our employees know the strategy and values we want to promote?).