I remember a few years back when I was President of a Fortune 200 corporation doing a start of year interview piece. I was asked for a phrase that would capture what I hoped we would achieve that year. I chose “we got rhythm”. We had been through a great deal of change, and it was important to pivot quickly from looking inwardly to focusing externally on our customers and consumers. After all, change is designed to strengthen performance in the market.
This got me thinking, how many businesses find – and most importantly – stay in their groove? The latest layoffs and reorganizations seem to pop up daily on CNBC headlines. Each new leader seems to reprogram the way their business works. Read the P&L’s of the serial restructurers and their declining stock prices – they will claim savings programs sometimes, many times in excess of their actual profit development. The leaky bucket drains costs and capabilities making it ever harder to grow. Yet almost all will agree profitable organic growth is the most value creating lever most companies can lean on.
As leaders do we consider the opportunity cost of each intervention, reorganization and new initiative for how the change ripples through the organization? Or are we just focused on the change narrative and the call to greater action? My favorite sport is soccer but whichever your sport, imagine if the coach rewrote the playbook three times a season. Imagine the confusion in the players eyes in the locker room. Imagine how many people would be adapting and doing things for the first time rather than playing to their strengths. As you reflect, you will remember a time when that was the reality for your team. It will have been painful. It will only have changed when a new vision was set and consistency enabled a refocus on quality and progress towards getting fundamentally better not cheaper.
So amidst the demands of today’s volatile markets what can we do to better embrace consistency and continuous progress? There is opportunity in every situation and growth is the acid test of resilience and relevance. The most common pitfall is tactical solutions to strategic opportunity. Strategists are cursed with starting at the end and looking backwards to today’s reality. Leaders that only promote urgency are simply focusing on what is right in front of them. Once the blinkers are on you make choices that can inadvertently weaken what made you successful and miss the real opportunity around you. Topical and tactical management means a different priority can come along far too often. Business interventions are most often needed when growth dried up. You lost relevance in the market. You didn’t adapt. Restoring growth means a deliberate, consistent and long-term view on where the opportunity lies and a phased, practical path to compete for that space. Prize clarity on the opportunity and consistency of focus unlocking it. Start with manageable wins and make leaps over time, nurturing capability development. If you do need to reset, do it once and do it fast. That way you can get back to the main opportunity as quickly as possible. As the leader, create stability to help your team get a little better every day. Winning teams win multiple championships. A culture of winning is built when it’s a daily habit. Don’t ever lose sight of what winning means. Progress on what matters will always bring in the P&L.