As you contemplate your next activities in your new evolving startup, business unit or innovation cell, you may have lost some sleep. You wonder what the next set of narratives and efforts shall be, to get your team aligned, not just vertically yet even more so horizontally.
The mission could be well defined and the vision articulated in just a few sentences. Now the real question of Operational Risk Management (ORM) remains.
How effective will we execute the activities across our entire domain expertise, so there is exceptional horizontal communication, coordination, cooperation and continuous team context?
You see, they may understand the hierarchy. They can see it on the organizational chart you created and e-mailed to everyone. They might even have some grasp of the particular area of specialty or expertise that each department or "Line of Business" has for the delivery of their product or solution.
Now think about the "Waves" of discourse that exist in the environment that you are operating in today.
What is the current state of the setting or conditions that you will be executing your duties and tasks to achieve the mission this hour, this day or this week?
Getting your team "Horizontally Aligned" is the real mission. Think about it. How does your organization provide context between business units, innovation cells or your particular product or solutions, to enable you to begin to achieve the shared mission?
On almost every successful journey, those individuals who are traveling across terrain, in the oceans or in our digitally-based stratosphere, there is utilization of some kind of navigational tools. Whether it be the compass, a GPS or even the Domain-Name-System (DNS).
Yet what are you using to navigate your own organization? What visually oriented ways are you providing context to your employees and other stakeholders so they can be more effective?
Begin the exercise with your team, by asking each of them to bring their own "handout" to the next quarterly meeting. The handout should encompass their current business unit purpose, market approach and how it fits into the larger mosaic of the organization.
What is the likelihood that each person will end up bringing the same type of "handout"? Will each bring a document full of words. A document full of numbers. Or will someone bring a map? Is it one page, or many?
If your team ends up with all three and there is not any single method or tool that has created the handout, you will now understand why you are currently experiencing these significant "Waves" in your organization. You are simply not in horizontal alignment.
It all begins with a map. Now the question is, what kind of maps?
This is your first moment of contextualization. You have clearly demonstrated that everyone is out of synch with each other on their understanding and perception of how the mosaic looks and "works" in your organization.
The Take Away.
Once you think you know and understand the vertical and horizontal set of solid and dotted line relationships in your organization, take a step back.
Now as you look at your new single journey map, realize that all these people and locations or processes or hubs are not equal. Regardless of rank or title, their influence or "Powerbase" of each, is a completely different factor in your "Waves of Discourse"...
The mission could be well defined and the vision articulated in just a few sentences. Now the real question of Operational Risk Management (ORM) remains.
How effective will we execute the activities across our entire domain expertise, so there is exceptional horizontal communication, coordination, cooperation and continuous team context?
Context noun
con·text | \ˈkän-ˌtekst
Definition of contextAs the manager, leader, chief or key executive in your organization, what are you doing to provide your team continuous context? How are you implementing the narratives and the tools to enable the development of and rapid understanding of contextualization for your team?
1 : the parts of a discourse that surround a word or passage and can throw light on its meaning
2 : the interrelated conditions in which something exists or occurs : environment, setting the historical context of the war
You see, they may understand the hierarchy. They can see it on the organizational chart you created and e-mailed to everyone. They might even have some grasp of the particular area of specialty or expertise that each department or "Line of Business" has for the delivery of their product or solution.
Now think about the "Waves" of discourse that exist in the environment that you are operating in today.
What is the current state of the setting or conditions that you will be executing your duties and tasks to achieve the mission this hour, this day or this week?
- The "Waves" of change in "Location 1" are no doubt quite different than the change going on in "Location 2", such as the weather. That is why you have multiple tools and methods to constantly observe the geographic anomalies that are occurring in these places, in almost real-time.
- The "Waves" of change in the team supply chain for energy, data, fuel, resources and communications speed is continuously being monitored by sensors, that are both automated and human-based.
- The "Waves" of change of the target market are continuous and requires substantial resources and analysis to gather, synthesize and report a contextual understanding of the current state of the environment.
Getting your team "Horizontally Aligned" is the real mission. Think about it. How does your organization provide context between business units, innovation cells or your particular product or solutions, to enable you to begin to achieve the shared mission?
On almost every successful journey, those individuals who are traveling across terrain, in the oceans or in our digitally-based stratosphere, there is utilization of some kind of navigational tools. Whether it be the compass, a GPS or even the Domain-Name-System (DNS).
Yet what are you using to navigate your own organization? What visually oriented ways are you providing context to your employees and other stakeholders so they can be more effective?
Begin the exercise with your team, by asking each of them to bring their own "handout" to the next quarterly meeting. The handout should encompass their current business unit purpose, market approach and how it fits into the larger mosaic of the organization.
What is the likelihood that each person will end up bringing the same type of "handout"? Will each bring a document full of words. A document full of numbers. Or will someone bring a map? Is it one page, or many?
If your team ends up with all three and there is not any single method or tool that has created the handout, you will now understand why you are currently experiencing these significant "Waves" in your organization. You are simply not in horizontal alignment.
It all begins with a map. Now the question is, what kind of maps?
This is your first moment of contextualization. You have clearly demonstrated that everyone is out of synch with each other on their understanding and perception of how the mosaic looks and "works" in your organization.
The Take Away.
Once you think you know and understand the vertical and horizontal set of solid and dotted line relationships in your organization, take a step back.
Now as you look at your new single journey map, realize that all these people and locations or processes or hubs are not equal. Regardless of rank or title, their influence or "Powerbase" of each, is a completely different factor in your "Waves of Discourse"...
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