CREATE. DEFINE. ENGAGE. ENABLE
For any organisation wanting to survive and thrive in the 21st century, there are 5 organisational elements that must be strategically defined, aligned and developed before an organisation can perform optimally.
These are the things we are famous for.
PURPOSEFUL FUTURES
A clear, meaningful and future-proof vision is the pre-requisite to achieving effective strategy, smart decision-making, robust leadership and productive engagement.
WHY IS THIS IMPORTANT?
Many organisations have a vision, mission and values poster and everyone can see them. But how much is really understood about the critical value of this? Do organisations get the significance of it in decision-making or engagement throughout the business for example? A ‘token’ or out-dated vision can be catastrophic. The most important reasons for creating a meaningful and inspiring vision are:
- The most effective and successful strategic plans are derived from a clear vision, mission and purpose – it is the question everyone in the organisation should ask themselves about everything they do, every day – “will this help to…… bring inspiration and innovation to every athlete” in the case of Nike for example? Doing things that don’t contribute to the achievement of this makes organisations ineffective.
- It is essential for effective organisational strategy and development – how do you know how to budget, plan, resource, develop, organise, etc. if you don’t know, or don’t believe in, the raison d’etre of your organisation – all decision-making will be fundamentally flawed.
- Employee engagement will never be achieved unless people are really clear on, and inspired by, WHY you are asking them to do things and we all know what the impact low engagement has on morale and productivity.
- Every organisation needs to future-proof their business – one of the most critical considerations of this is the latest research showing that our future generations are just not interested in the numbers, its all about the higher purpose.
TELL-TALE SIGNS
You know this area may need attention in your organisation if:
- Engagement or morale is low
- Mobilisation of strategy is slow
- People seem to have difficulty making decisions, or make bad ones
- Leadership is weak
- Work/ roles are duplicated
- Complaints of high workloads/ long hours exist
- Performance is poor
HOW WE CAN HELP
Some of the approaches we use to help clients with this kind of problem include:
- Strategic planning facilitation/ workshops
- Performance/ organisational development optimisation programmes
- Co-creation and engagement workshops and facilitation
- Commercial thinking programmes
- Executive diagnostics and coaching
THE TALENT CYCLE
WHY IS THIS IMPORTANT?
Turning a vision into reality can only be done through people. People mobilise everything. There is little point having a Harvard-standard strategy unless you have an informed, engaged and capable team of people who want to see the organisation succeed and thrive.
Organisations invest inordinate amounts of time, money, focus and energy on researching new technologies, products and services, competitor analyses, innovation, office space, car fleets, etc. but relatively little on attracting, recruiting, developing and retaining the talent that will ultimately provide the desired ROI on those things. Is the talent cycle in your organisation closely aligned to your strategy? Is it working effectively? How do you know?
TELL-TALE SIGNS
You know this area may need attention in your organisation if:
- Performance/ productivity is low
- Key roles are empty and attracting top talent is difficult
- Attracting and retaining top talent is difficult
- Attrition and/ or absenteeism is high
- You spend more money on recruitment and decruitment than you do on development (in norm circumstances)
- You struggle to identify potential talent in the workforce and internal promotions are rare
- Levels of client satisfaction are low
- Levels of engagement are low
- Roles are duplicated or there is a lack of clarity
- You invest significant amounts in development but see little return on your investment
HOW WE CAN HELP
Some of the approaches we use to help clients with this kind of problem include:
- Employer branding diagnostics and solutions
- Talent attraction and recruitment solutions
- Assessment solutions
- HR strategy & policies
- Induction/ on-boarding processes and materials
- L&D strategy (design and delivery)
- Organisational development design & implementation
- Talent management solutions (e.g. talent reviews, succession planning)
- Capability frameworks
- Renumeration & reward strategy and solutions
- Engagement solutions (strategy, surveys, solutions, etc)
- Performance management (process design, implementation & training)
- Decruitment solutions (policies & solutions, outplacement, exit interviews, etc)
GROWTH CULTURE
To achieve real behavioural change, don’t talk about behaviour. Develop the right kind of beliefs and emotions about the organisation and its vision.
WHY IS THIS IMPORTANT?
So how do you take that vision and strategy off the poster and bring it to life? How do you mobilise the talent you have? Defining and developing the right kind of behaviours to create the right kind of culture in which your vision-aligned strategy can be achieved, and your people can thrive, is a crucial, yet often over-looked or mis-managed element of organisational effectiveness.
Cultural incongruence (e.g. the hiring or developing of specific behaviours that are suppressed or discouraged by the organisation in some way) is one of the most common corporate mistakes – it breeds confusion, lack of trust, disengagement, disillusionment and discontent – not the best recipe for a happy and productive workforce.
Cultural evolution (change and transformation) requires so much more than a few awareness workshops and a behavioural framework. Providing teams and individuals with the strategic golden thread of WHY and HOW and then helping them to develop the right kind of beliefs and emotions – that fuel and drive the right kind of behaviours – about the organisation and its vision is the key to real cultural change.
Great leadership also plays a key part here too, not just in terms of being essential role models but also in the way that the vision and expectations are communicated and managed, constructive behaviours are encouraged, unhelpful behaviours are addressed and creating ‘clearings’ for people in which they can deliver easily.
TELL-TALE SIGNS
You know this area may need attention in your organisation if:
- Engagement or morale is low
- Blame is the default defence
- Personal accountability is low
- Pride and/or confidence is low
- Conflict exists between teams and individuals
- Systems, processes, people are inhibiting desired behaviours
- Inappropriate/ destructive behaviours are tolerated
- Sickness/ absenteeism levels are high
HOW WE CAN HELP
Some of the approaches we use to help clients with this kind of problem include:
- Belief systems workshops
- Engagement profiling and development
- Emotional Intelligence development
- Leadership Development
- Change Management Development
- Performance Management (incorp. Behaviours) design and development
- Behavioural framework design and development
- Cultural change/ co-creation/ exploration workshops and road shows
- Internal Consultancy Programmes
- Train-the-Trainer/ Facilitation skills
EMOTIONALLY INTELLIGENT LEADERSHIP
People are driven by emotion. Leaders need to know how to tap into that energy and channel it in the most effective way to get the best out of people.
WHY IS THIS IMPORTANT?
Great leadership is the conduit of strategic delivery and an effective talent cycle. Translating vision and strategy into action through people is the primary job of a leader but doing that well and effectively is an art to be mastered and its purpose and value should never be underestimated. You can have the best vision, strategy, defined culture and people in the world but without great leadership to mobilise them into high performance it is worthless.
At Ascensio, we believe that leadership starts with that of oneself ergo everyone must be a leader. ‘What’ and ‘Who’ they lead may differ but when we refer to ‘Emotionally Intelligent Leadership’ we are referring to every individual and every team within an organisation. We see it as everyone’s responsibility to demonstrate great leadership and teamwork in the way they organise and manage themselves to deliver, the way they deliver within and through teams and in the traditional sense where they have ‘management’ responsibility for others.
Why Emotionally Intelligent Leadership? Simply (but very scientifically), we humans are driven by emotions. They fundamentally influence and fuel our thinking, beliefs, motivation, decision-making, behaviours, actions and outcomes – everything we need to be successful at work. Every people problem a leader has to deal with will have emotion at the heart of it. Likewise, every opportunity a leader faces will require emotion to mobilise it.
Every person is individual, unique and diverse in their emotional make-up. To effectively work with others, for the effective application of knowledge and skills, to know how to relate to, motivate and engage yourself and others into action in an ever-evolving and challenging environment requires strong emotional intelligence competencies.
TELL-TALE SIGNS
You know this area may need attention in your organisation if::
- Levels of stress-related behaviours or absenteeism are high
- Levels of engagement, morale or confidence are low
- Performance/ productivity is poor
- Levels of personal accountability are low
- Relationships and collaboration is poor
- There is a culture of silo or survival mentality
- Attrition or sickness rates are high
- There is a culture of blame or a lack of focus and energy
- Poor/ inappropriate behaviours and/ or performance are being tolerated
- The focus is on ‘control’ rather than ‘outcomes’
HOW WE CAN HELP
All of our proposed leadership development solutions are strategically aligned and contextualised to the client organisation and have clear and measurable success measures in place to prove ROI. All of our programmes are designed using accelerated learning techniques for easy and effective recall and our development methodologies are designed using vertical techniques which reduces the dependence on the facilitator and develops the thinking capability of the learner.
We use an innovate and scientifically-proven array of products and services to meet our clients’ needs. By way of example, here is a selection of just some of the modules we have used recently within leadership and team development programmes:
- Agile Thinking (series 1-5)
- Leadership Branding
- Leader Modes
- Situational Leadership
- Performance Optimisation
- Levels of Engagement
- Co-creation
- Visualisation
- Performance Coaching
- Relationship Versatility
- Emotional Intelligence (series 1-5)
- Resilience
- Communication versatility
- Gravitas
- Influencing skills
- Belief Systems
- Political Savvy
- Commercial thinking
- Team branding
- Indoor camping
- Forest 24 (scouting for adults)
- Leading Change
- Conflict resolution
- Individual and Group Coaching
- Managing Performance
- Management development modules
- Team development modules
HEALTH (RESILIENCE, STAMINA, CAPACITY)
WHY IS THIS IMPORTANT?
Perhaps you have free fruit and even an on-site gym but you still have issues with morale and sickness. Increasingly, employers are recognising that the emotional, mental and physical health of their workforce goes way beyond any benefits derived from any altruistic benefits.
The hard business case for investing in wellness is clear. If the positive impact of ‘top-line’ indicators were not enough to induce action, e.g. increased productivity, high levels of engagement, retention and attendance for example, the increasing bottom line costs of poor organisational health and wellbeing can be significant, e.g. the cost of recurrent recruitment/ temps, injury and illness compensation claims, employee liability insurance, etc.
Developing awareness and knowledge in employees on how they can really take care of themselves to improve mental, emotional and physical health will significantly improve the resilience, stamina and capacity of your workforce.
TELL-TALE SIGNS
You know this area may need attention in your organisation if:
- Levels of energy and/ or engagement are low
- Levels of sickness/ stress/ absenteeism/ attrition are high
- Aggressive, anxious or passive behaviours are apparent
- High levels of conflict exist bewteen teams and individuals
- Complaints of workload or long hours are common
HOW WE CAN HELP
Some of the approaches we use to help clients with this kind of problem include:
- Health audits and assessments
- Stress audits
- Bespoke consultancy solutions
- Health in a box
- Route to health solutions and workshops
- Health and safety services
- Facility services (consultancy solutions)
- Health development workshops
- Awareness world cafe events
