RoundMap® : Framework 4 Pillars of Long-Term Success

 

Empowering Transformation: The Four Pillars of Long-Term Success

 

In a world where change is the only constant, RoundMap® is a beacon of transformative success. We are excited to introduce our four-pillar framework, a compass guiding businesses toward a bright future that is sustainable and inclusive. 

Selecting a feasible and viable business model is a crucial first step toward achieving initial success. However, to sustain growth over time and truly thrive in today’s dynamic business environment, a deeper, more holistic approach is required. This is where the four pillars of sustainable growth come into play, serving as a comprehensive guide for long-term prosperity.

The Four Pillars

Pillar #1 - Bolster Vitality

Organizations with high vitality are characterized by their remarkable adaptability, resilience, and proactive approach to change. These businesses are agile, able to respond to market shifts and embrace innovation swiftly. They exhibit a balanced mix of operational efficiency and strategic foresight, ensuring long-term growth and sustainability. High-vitality organizations are also known for their robust stakeholder engagement and collaborative culture, which fosters a sense of shared purpose and collective success.

F. Scott Fitzgerald: “Vitality shows in not only the ability to persist but the ability to start over.”

 

The RoundMap® framework, emphasizing whole-system thinking and transformative approaches, suggests several critical aspects to bolster business vitality:

1.                Holistic Systems Thinking: This involves understanding and managing the business as an interconnected system. It means recognizing the interplay between different parts of the organization and how they affect each other. By adopting this perspective, businesses can identify more effective strategies, anticipate the impact of decisions across the system, and foster a more resilient and adaptable organization.

2.              Stakeholder-Driven Leadership and Collaboration: Prioritizing stakeholder engagement and collaborative leadership is crucial. This means focusing on customer needs and expectations and considering the perspectives and contributions of employees, partners, and the community. Collaborative empowerment helps in breaking down silos, facilitating cross-functional teamwork, and ensuring that decisions are made with a comprehensive understanding of their impact.

3.              Continuous Innovation and Adaptability: In a rapidly changing business landscape, continuous innovation is critical to staying relevant and competitive. This involves fostering a culture of creativity, encouraging experimentation, and being adaptable to change. Innovation should be cyclical and continuous, allowing businesses to evolve in response to emerging challenges and opportunities.

4.             Purpose and Impact-Driven Strategy: Aligning the organization’s actions with a clear, purpose-driven strategy ensures long-term sustainability and success. This involves setting profitable goals that contribute positively to society and the environment. It’s about creating value that transcends financial gains, focusing on long-term impact and sustainability.

5.             Trust, Transparency, and Collective Success: Building trust and maintaining transparency are fundamental to the RoundMap® approach. This includes open communication, ethical business practices, and a commitment to shared success. By valuing trust and transparency, businesses can foster stronger relationships with all stakeholders, leading to a more cohesive and successful organization.

These aspects focus on immediate success and ensure the organization’s long-term sustainability and adaptability in a complex and dynamic business environment.

Pillar #2 - Design for Impact

 

Impact can be defined as ‘having an effect on, change or benefit to the economy, society, culture, public policy or services, health, the environment or quality of life.’ Organizations that design for impact strategically focus on creating significant, positive changes in their industry and community. They are distinguished by their forward-thinking vision, aligning their business goals with broader societal and environmental objectives. These organizations prioritize sustainable practices and ethical decision-making, ensuring that their operations contribute positively to the world. This approach goes beyond profitability, encompassing a commitment to social responsibility and a drive to leave a lasting, beneficial legacy.

Stephen Covey: “What you do has far greater impact than what you say.”

Designing for impact within the RoundMap® framework involves:

1.                Integrating Systems Thinking: Designing for impact requires deeply understanding how elements within and outside the organization interact. Systems thinking enables this by considering the complexities and interdependencies in business operations. It helps identify leverage points in the system where changes can have the most significant and beneficial impact.

2.              Stakeholder Engagement and Co-Creation: Engaging a wide range of stakeholders – including customers, employees, partners, and the community – in the design process ensures that diverse perspectives are considered. Co-creation with these stakeholders can lead to more innovative and inclusive solutions. This approach also helps align the organization’s strategies with stakeholders’ needs and expectations, increasing the likelihood of achieving a positive impact.

3.              Sustainability and Long-Term Orientation: In designing for impact, it is crucial to consider the long-term consequences of business decisions on the environment, society, and future generations. This means prioritizing sustainability in all aspects of the business, from product design to operational processes, ensuring that the business contributes positively to the ecological and social systems it interacts with.

4.             Adaptive and Resilient Strategies: Adapting to changing circumstances and returning from challenges is essential for sustained impact. Designing adaptive strategies and building resilience into the organization’s structure and processes enable it to navigate uncertainties and disruptions effectively. This adaptability ensures the business remains relevant and impactful in a rapidly evolving landscape.

5.             Continuous Learning and Improvement: An impactful design process is never static; it involves continuous learning and improvement. This can be achieved through regular feedback loops, data-driven insights, and a culture encouraging experimentation and learning from failures. By continuously refining strategies and approaches, the organization can enhance its effectiveness and deepen its impact over time.

These aspects ensure that the design process contributes to the long-term success and sustainability of the organization, making a lasting positive impact on its stakeholders and the environment. 

  

Pillar #3 - Harmonize Strengths

 

Organizations that align strengths are characterized by their emphasis on leveraging the diverse talents and capabilities of their team members. They focus on identifying and harmonizing the unique skills and strengths within their workforce, fostering a culture of collaboration and empowerment. These organizations believe in the synergy that arises from a well-aligned team, where each individual’s strengths are recognized and utilized for collective success. This approach enhances innovation, efficiency, and employee engagement, leading to more cohesive and effective operations. 

Peter Drucker: “The task of leadership is to create an alignment of strengths so strong that it makes the system’s weaknesses irrelevant.”

 

Harmonizing strengths within the RoundMap® framework involve:

1.                Identifying and Leveraging Individual Competencies: Recognize and utilize each individual’s unique skills and talents within the organization. This involves creating an environment where individual strengths are acknowledged and effectively aligned with team and organizational goals. Encouraging personal development and aligning individual talents with strategic objectives can significantly enhance performance and innovation.

2.              Fostering a Strengths-Based Culture: Cultivate a corporate culture focusing on strengths rather than weaknesses. This approach, rooted in appreciative inquiry, involves recognizing and building on what the organization does well. By emphasizing positive aspects and successes, you create an environment of positivity and motivation, which can drive higher engagement and productivity.

3.              Strategic Alignment of Organizational Resources and Capabilities: Ensure that the organization’s resources, including human, financial, and technological assets, are aligned with its strategic goals. This means strategically deploying resources where they can have the most significant impact and ensuring that all parts of the organization work cohesively towards a shared vision.

4.             Effective Communication and Collaboration: Encourage open and transparent communication across all levels of the organization. This fosters a sense of unity and ensures that everyone is on the same page. Collaboration is crucial in bringing together different strengths and perspectives, leading to more holistic and practical solutions.

5.             Continuous Learning and Adaptation: Promote a culture of continuous learning and adaptability. Adapting and learning from experiences is crucial in a rapidly changing business landscape. Organizations should learn from successes and failures, adapt strategies, and continually evolve to meet new challenges and opportunities.

By focusing on these aspects, businesses can harmonize their strengths effectively, leading to increased efficiency, innovation, and overall success.

Pillar #4 - Cultivate Empowerment

Cultivate Empowerment focuses on creating an organizational culture where empowerment is not just a concept but a practice. It’s about building structures, like Consentricity, that support shared understanding and empowered action, ultimately leading to a more dynamic, innovative, and effective organization.

Myles Munroe: “Leadership is not about control but service. It’s not about power but empowerment.”

 

Cultivating empowerment within the RoundMap® framework involves:

1.                Fostering a Culture of Trust and Transparency: Creating an environment where trust and transparency are paramount is essential for empowerment. Employees and stakeholders should feel confident in expressing ideas and concerns without fear of negative repercussions. This includes open communication channels, transparent decision-making processes, and a clear demonstration of ethical practices.

2.              Encouraging Autonomy and Decision-Making at All Levels: Empowerment enables individuals at all levels of the organization to make decisions relevant to their roles and responsibilities. This involves delegating authority and encouraging autonomy, allowing people to take ownership of their work and contribute meaningfully to the organization’s goals.

3.              Providing Opportunities for Personal and Professional Growth: Empowerment comes from growth and development opportunities. This includes continuous learning, training, and development programs that help individuals enhance their skills and knowledge. It’s important to align these opportunities with the organization’s objectives and the individual’s career aspirations.

4.             Recognizing and Valuing Contributions: Acknowledging and appreciating the efforts and achievements of individuals and teams is crucial for empowerment. Recognition can be in various forms, from formal awards to informal acknowledgments in team meetings. This recognition reinforces the value of each person’s contribution to the organization’s success.

5.             Building Collaborative Teams and Networks: Empowerment thrives in a collaborative environment. This means fostering teamwork, encouraging cross-functional collaborations, and building networks within and outside the organization. By working collaboratively, individuals can learn from each other, share insights, and collectively solve problems more effectively.

By focusing on these areas, organizations can cultivate a more empowered workforce that fosters innovation, resilience, and sustainable success in a complex and dynamic business environment.

 

The 12-Step Evolution from Relevance to Significance

 

The following list delineates the transformative journey of an organization from being merely efficient and profit-oriented to becoming a leading, purpose-driven entity with a sustainable and significant presence. This progression encompasses financial success and adopting a cyclical and holistic approach that ensures relevance and meaningful impact in the future. 

Each stage in the list marks a strategic shift towards more integrated and responsible business practices, fostering resilience, innovation, and empowerment. The ultimate goal is to achieve significance in the marketplace by championing values that resonate deeply with all stakeholders, thus setting the organization apart:

1.                RELEVANT: Organizations ensure their offerings meet current demands and trends. Staying relevant involves closely aligning products and services with market needs and expectations.

2.              DISTINCTIVE: Distinctiveness is achieved by differentiating offerings, creating a unique value proposition, or adopting innovative business practices that set the organization apart.

3.              TRUSTWORTHY: Cultivating trust through consistency, reliability, and ethical behavior. This includes transparent communication and fulfilling promises made to stakeholders.

4.             FULFILLING: Creating a work environment where employees find meaning and satisfaction. This includes providing opportunities for growth and acknowledging their contributions to the organization’s success.

5.             EMPATHIC: Demonstrating a deep understanding of and response to the needs and emotions of stakeholders. Empathic organizations build strong relationships and foster loyalty.

6.             ADAPTIVE: Developing the agility to respond quickly to changes in the market, technology, or stakeholder needs. Adaptive organizations thrive in the face of disruption and uncertainty.

7.              INNOVATIVE: Fostering a culture that encourages new ideas and continuous improvement. Innovative organizations are at the forefront of creating novel solutions to challenges and opportunities.

8.             RESILIENT: Building the capacity to recover from setbacks and adapt to adversity. Resilient organizations are robust and can sustain their operations and growth despite challenges.

9.             IMPACTFUL: Making a positive difference that goes beyond the organization to benefit the community and environment. Impactful organizations commit to social responsibility and sustainability.

10.           ALIGNED: Ensuring that all aspects of the organization, from its strategy and operations to its culture and stakeholder interactions, are in harmony with its core purpose and values.

11.             EMPOWERED: Providing team members at all levels with the autonomy, resources, and authority to make decisions and take actions that drive the organization forward.

12.           SIGNIFICANT: Achieving a level of influence and importance ensures the organization’s relevance in the future. Significant organizations shape their industries and contribute to setting the direction for future development.

Each step builds on the previous, creating an upward trajectory toward becoming an organization that excels in its current market and shapes its future landscape.

At RoundMap®, we believe in the power of collaboration, innovation, and holistic growth. Join us on this journey of transformation, where we don’t just adapt to change – we lead it, together.

Let’s embrace these pillars and build a future that’s not just profitable but purposeful and impactful.

Knowledge comes by taking things apart. But wisdom comes by putting things together.

John A. Morrison

 

https://tinyurl.com/55snh3mc

Deming's 14 Points for Management

 

The 14 points are a basis for transformation of [American] industry. Adoption and action on the 14 points are a signal that management intend to stay in business and aim to protect investors and jobs. Such a system formed the basis for lessons for top management in Japan in 1950 and in subsequent years.

 

The 14 points apply anywhere, to small organisations as well as to large ones, to the service industry as well as to manufacturing. They apply to a division within a company.

1. Create constancy of purpose toward improvement of product and service, with the aim to become competitive and to stay in business, and to provide jobs.
2. Adopt the new philosophy. We are in a new economic age. Western management must awaken to the challenge, must learn their responsibilities, and take on leadership for change.
3. Cease dependence on inspection to achieve quality. Eliminate the need for inspection on a mass basis by building quality into the product in the first place.
4. End the practice of awarding business on the basis of price tag. Instead, minimise total cost. Move towards a single supplier for any one item, on a long-term relationship of loyalty and trust.
5. Improve constantly and forever the system of production and service, to improve quality and productivity, and thus constantly decrease costs.
6. Institute training on the job.
7. Institute leadership. The aim of supervision should be to help people and machines and gadgets to do a better job. Supervision of management is in need of an overhaul, as well as supervision of production workers.
8. Drive out fear, so that everyone may work effectively for the company.
9. Break down barriers between departments. People in research, design, sales, and production must work as a team, to foresee problems of production and in use that may be encountered with the product or service.
10. Eliminate slogans, exhortations, and targets for the workforce asking for zero defects and new levels of productivity. Such exhortations only create adversarial relationships, as the bulk of the causes of low quality and low productivity belong to the system and thus lie beyond the power of the work force.
11. a. Eliminate work standards (quotas) on the factory floor. Substitute leadership.
    b. Eliminate management by objective. Eliminate management by numbers, numerical goals. Substitute leadership.
12. a. Remove barriers that rob the hourly paid worker of his right to pride in workmanship. The responsibility of supervisors must be changed from sheer numbers to quality.
    b. Remove barriers that rob people in management and engineering of their right to pride in workmanship. This means, inter alia, abolishment of the annual or merit rating and management by objective.
13. Institute a vigorous program of education and self-improvement.
14. Put everybody in the company to work to accomplish the transformation. The transformation is everybody's job.

References

• Dr W Edwards Deming, 1982 & 1986, Out of the crisis: quality, productivity and competitive position , Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.

https://www.stat.auckland.ac.nz

Change resistance and response

 

Context

In my previous post, issues encountered by various of my non-profit clients were identified as catalysts for application of an empathy mapping response, in order to gain greater insight into the underlying causes of resistance to change initiatives.

The issues and circumstances were summarised as follows:

– a CEO dealing with resistance to cultural changes required in the organisation
– a manager dealing with a director seemingly undermining her work
– a team leader meeting reluctance by some team members to help share the load of carrying out new procedures necessitated by COVID-19
– a recently appointed manager charged with implementing a substantial ‘improvement’ program facing resistance by a long-serving team member (with connections on the governing board) to changing ‘the way we do things around here’

As mentioned in that article, gaining empathy by itself is not sufficient, and implementing a course of action based on insights from the empathy mapping exercises is a necessary next step. So too is an understanding of the organisational context (strategic and operational), and the likelihood that there will be a mix of legitimate and problematic views informing the particular instance of resistance.  Almost invariably, the resisting party will hold a firm belief in the ‘rightness’ of their position.

Change types

A comprehensive typology of change is a far bigger subject than an article such as this can do justice to, however a partial survey of the types of change which could be involved may be helpful to readers contemplating development of relevant responses.

The ‘change selector’ header image offers a sample (arguably over-simplified) of the types of change you could be faced with, including the possibility that the change initiative you have in mind qualifies for more than one of the categories illustrated.

This selection of change types is a subset of the categories discussed on the Management Study Guide website, and does not claim to be complete.

Forms of resistance

Also illustrated in the header image is a selection of response or resistance types, and these too could be seen in combination in some circumstances. Situational leadership considers a range of factors before determining the most suitable response and appropriate next steps.

Image source: https://www.kenblanchard.com/Products-Services/Situational-Leadership-II

Response approaches

Numerous models have been formulated by experts in various fields following reflection on the nature of change processes and the perspectives that may inform selection of the most appropriate approach. The sample of 9 models in the infographic below illustrates just some of these perspectives, including those of:
– corporate strategists
– policy, advocacy, or campaign personnel
– project managers
– boards of directors
– professional development planners and trainers
– line managers
– behavioural psychologists
– counselors, mentors, coaches

The quote from George Box (“All models are wrong, but some are quite useful”) is offered to remind us all that human beings rarely engage with change in a simple, linear, step-wise manner. The image below of the stages of grief model compared with ‘my experience’ is funny – mainly because it’s true (in my own experience).

Source: https://hilarymurdoch.wordpress.com/2017/12/09/stifled-grief/grief/

A similar ‘messiness’ is likely to apply to human experience of each of the other models illustrated; indeed, with any change model you look to apply.

Seeing the different emphases and purposes of these models highlights the importance of taking into account the mindset and ‘filters’ (especially cognitive biases) employed by the protagonists in the change scenario.

Resistance to a strategic change which arises from concerns about collateral damage to stakeholders would obviously require an entirely different response than resistance to a procedural change necessitated by public safety concerns (such as have been triggered by COVID-19).

Outcome focus

Regardless of the type of change involved, the form of resistance, the context in which the resistance is manifested, and your insights from use of empathy, your selection of a suitable response to change resistance will benefit from focusing on best outcomes, and wherever possible seeking a win:win result.

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