Brenda: It really sets the foundation for all of the other best practices. The second one we want to hear about is that the way it’s named is Creator of Collaboration and Innovation. Jeannine, I’d love to hear more about what that means for you.
Jeannine: Well even when I hear your saying it Carollyne the first thing that just comes to mind is global competition now for any organization, any leader requires constant innovation. Having the vision that Lee just spoke about is for me kind of sets the launching pad. Not all the time does it provide the urgency for consistently reaching towards the stars. For me, this particular practice helps do that. It provides for that sense of excitement and urgency. The reason, sometimes if folks come up and come to work is to want this kind of environment in which to contribute.
It reminds me of several years ago we were working with a high-tech service company that demonstrated this particular best practice very, very well. Their president as was culturally expected led by command and control. He would scream. He would call names. He would point fingers, do everything that’s typical of ultimate command and control leadership.
All of the visions were expected to take their goals, their sales goals and their service goals higher and higher every single quarter. They had to reach higher hills and this was just the way that he would try to motivate them to climb the hill and take the hill. However, it wasn’t working consistently. Yes, he would get the results he wanted in the short term but for the long, sustainable group it just – the group president, the division leaders actually were being changed out almost consistently as if folks gave their heart and soul and burned out.
When this president was introduced to Legacy Leadership, he required that all of his executives, all 21 of his direct reports actually learn the model and the methodology. One of the things he focused on here was this best practice two. He actually required then that as his direct for themselves begin learning a different set of leadership competencies and way of being in the world, that they actually create in their division a cross-functional collaboration with other areas. What began to happen is that they had two things significantly different. The siloed functions began to realize that they really didn’t have a common vision. They didn’t have that common direction and no one including the president had been holding that.
In stepping back here he became a creator of not only the expectation but the day to day cultural expectation that collaboration across function is going to add to more innovation. He was showing up differently in the meetings requiring or requesting them to. It felt very strange at first for these execs. Obviously, when you’re comfortable in a command and control military type environment what the president was asking was something completely out of ordinary for them.
But within a couple of fiscal quarters what their sales, their customers and their internal clients began to tell them, leaders, those execs that were comfortable in staying really made a major and we’re hoping lasting impact on the culture of that organization. It took one person, that president to say, “What I’ve been doing I’m willing to say isn’t working and I’m going to commit myself then to creating an environment where not only is collaboration ideal it’s required and let’s see how that impacts our innovation on sales and service.” Really quite phenomenal to see.
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