Improve your credibility. First, understand the Today to Plan for Tomorrow

Joining a leadership role in a company can be nerve-wracking, especially when there is an expectation from you to continue the good work that has been happening or transform the business and make this better from the crap that people are going through. No matter the situation, the approach is pretty consistent – understand the TODAY and plan for TOMORROW.

You cannot plan for TOMORROW if you don’t have a complete and honest understanding of TODAY, which then requires wearing a hat that does not smell of “executive entitlement” but one that gives the people the feeling of a “shop floor worker” so that they are more than willing to share incidents from their work-life and help present a picture that will help you develop the roadmap for the future.

I used the below presentation with a customer who wanted to transform their business and move it from a mediocre operations department to a high-end operations powerhouse – sharing the same for your utilisation.

Let’s look at Today – every leader needs to understand the business as it is today. Who are the stakeholders, the partners (vendors) and the customers? Where does the revenue flow in from and how are we doing there? What is the feedback from our customers and how does that relate to what the employees are saying on the ground – etc etc. I hope you are getting my steer.

Once you know the situation today, you by and large have a broad structure of the portrait that you will be drawing. You however still don’t have a complete picture and need to complete a further deep dive into understanding and planning for the future. This requires a much more detailed analysis where you will need to use a lot of team members, and departments and follow a structured approach around communication, governance and accountability.

Transformation is not such a complicated process. The 4 pillars continue to be people, process, tools and technology, underpinned by a solid culture. A well-rounded focus on all these attributes will ensure a future safe organisation which is nimble, frugal yet lethal.