People
It has been observed and found based on research that leaders and executives in an organization miss on connecting with their counterparts of other teams and also under prioritize giving constructive criticism and feedback to their team members. These are two of the many major reasons why successful leaders hired do not meet expectations and their team do not deliver. I strongly advise such leaders to be confident about their skills and be mindful about disservice to other leaders by not acknowledging the intricacies involved which are multifold cutting across functions and also not directing their team to address their shortcomings and weaknesses.
I recommend having initiative-specific leadership meetings which would touch upon financials, business benefits and customer goals to hear and buy-in all. Similarly leaders shall make it an easy process of having periodic and more often two-way constructive feedback with their teams to improve their leadership style and teams to adapt to the new odds.
Experience
Experience is what you feel and not what you know and leaders always want to make this mistake to associate metrics to business outcomes and also do not accept change with innovation. Research shows that these are more often becoming gray areas as metrics does not guarantee fulfilling financial objectives and a pleasant experience to customers. I strongly advise to have one goal-multi benefit agenda for leaders to have total experience achieved which is pumped with innovation in every aspect of the organization and at every level of the hierarchy.
I recommend leaders to continue to look at experience metrics for reporting and other purposes but rely on financial statements, customer feedbacks and colleague recommendations as authentic data sets to evaluate every piece of the whole experience suit. It is crucial for leaders to start recognizing the need to have a single AI enabled board to interact and propose actions for fostering every experience they have to offer to their stakeholders.
Innovation
If you do not innovate you sink into a world of irrelevance but if leaders are successful in creating a culture and granting incentives making it conducive for innovation it is observed and on record that they lack preparation and framework besides an unproductive bureaucratic approach. I would strongly advise these leaders to implement an approach which in entirety is autonomous in their respective organizations with prior budgets sanctioned and required approvals.
I recommend leaders to let the process of innovation have a framework which ranks collaboration at the top and allow team members to execute without fear. Leaders should emphasize on arrangements around business value in alignment to the vision and the mission of the organization to ensure efforts are justified without regarding results as good or bad. To support such a framework leaders should explore AI platforms for idea generation and driving innovation.
Operations
Organizational leaders set a goal for streamlining business processes on the lines of their department which does not take care of the rest of the teams as well as hardly achieve quality and customer delight. Approach of managing customer by customer based on SLAs is detrimental in delivery value to your customers. I advise leaders to focus not just on reducing costs by optimizing business processes but also let it cut across every department for adding benefits to their own business and delight to the customer.
I recommend every leader to participate with their operations team to understand their role in streamlining production and support processes to gear up for being cost efficient and making productive decisions at the same time. Leaders should focus not just on process but also on people as we all know that people would do the job and process would enable them.
Customer Success
It has evidently confirmed that many organizations treat all their customers in just the same way and do not focus on customer’s outcomes post onboarding. This compromises the relationship with the customer resulting in logo churn outs. I advise CS leaders to build relations on displaying very good understanding of their business objectives and outcomes and be their success partners in their benefit realization process.
I recommend CS leaders to lead from front and set up KPIs which are approved by their own management and mutually agreed with the customer. Segmenting the customers and addressing their different programs and issues with the most suitable management templates is the only way for firms to mutually grow with their customers. This will increase chances for CS leaders to bring leads to sales for cross and up sell while improving bottom lines for both.
Programs
Most of the leaders are focused on results and do not bother about controls they would need to work with to achieve expected outputs. They also heavily rely on the software but largely miss on the processes they should follow to build their capability or to add value to their customer. My advice to them is to bring measurable methods to deliver heavy duty programs in an attempt to have a controlled environment as much as possible.
I would recommend leaders to stop heavily relying on online tools and focus on the conspicuous level of uncertainty a program and its projects has to offer so that they can direct their efforts towards reducing those various risks to deliver the product or a service or a process using mutually agreed processes, controls and performance indicators. Every leader should treat every program as a separate entity, recognize its strategic value and know its aligned to company vision and mission.
Products
These days agile has become more of a jargon than a framework to apply in your product deliveries but that does not give agility to such leaders who have semblance of having agile methodology used by their teams. Digital world largely works with agile concepts but it is proven that leaders often make the mistake of creating big teams and prioritize products over customers. My advice is to break into small teams who can interact and deliver faster with ownership not clutched into bureaucracy.
I recommend agile leaders to realize the potential a small has to deliver small features or parts of bigger features more often. The essence of agility is not about adding features but to add value to your customers and would only be possible when leaders stop being autocratic and let the delivery teams focus on customers rather than focusing on products of your own and programs of the customers.
Digital Transformation
There is nothing to do with technology but leaders often knowingly add engineering and technical leaders and team members to the DX teams to lead and execute. Leaders do not pay attention to more than 85% probability of failure for such initiatives which has its source from human related challenges. I advise these leaders to have a check and reshuffle their DX steering and execution teams to have OB leaders and emphatic leaders from process and product teams who may have to fill those gaps which are blockers for the success of a DX program.
I will advise leaders to start spending more time on financials and experience stories, avoid using technical jargons as much as possible to easily connect with the other leadership and ensure more effort to support behavioral change, making the user acceptance their priority.
Every strategic PROGRAM should be viewed as a STARTUP, Every STARTUP is a PROGRAM to manage, So have your NPV timely calculated, Or else it would soon be a NPA.
