Future-Proof The Organisation

This article is part of our Mentor-Coach Reading List series. Join the mailing list to receive this and more.

Future proofing the organisation is the focus of this reading list selection, exploring how you can go beyond disruption for a thriving and enduring organisation. Purpose, people, customers and creativity are key.

SETTING THE SCENE

An empowered organisation is one in which individuals have the knowledge, skill, desire, and opportunity to personally succeed in a way that leads to collective organisational success.- Stephen Covey
A good transformation process will develop emergently, allowing people to come to recognize they will be better off individually and collectively as a result of transforming themselves.- Aaron De Smet, Arne Gast, Johanne Lavoie, and Michael Lurie of McKinsey
The first responsibility of a leader is to define reality. The last is to say thank you. In between, the leader is a servant.- Max de Pree
What we need to do is always lean into the future; when the world changes around you and when it changes against you - what used to be a tail wind is now a head wind - you have to lean into that and figure out what to do because complaining isn't a strategy - Jeff Bezos
A satisfied customer is the best business strategy of all.- Michael LeBoeuf

QUESTIONS TO CONSIDER

How should leaders navigate this moment?
What does leadership look like in an era where turbulence and disruption are the norm?
What does an organisation that thrives during such unstable times look like?
How can a company build and sustain success for decades to come?
Are we missing better, and even bigger, opportunities to innovate and grow, when we disrupt?
How can companies more thoughtfully pursue their growth and innovation strategies in a way that better balances business and society?
How will you maintain your customers’ commitment when you’re struggling to create a culture of dedicated employees who build and strengthen relationships with those customers?
Do you have teams of leaders or networks of leadership teams?
Are you helping people experiment and learn?
Are you thinking boldly enough?

Happy reading and stay curious!

Here is more information about the Series 20 selection of books.

Centennials: The 12 Habits of Great, Enduring Organisations (Penguin, June 2023) by Alex Hills. Start-ups rarely survive their second birthday. Even established firms average a life of only fifteen years. So how can a company build and sustain success for decades to come? Based on thirteen years of groundbreaking research into a clutch of organisations that have outperformed their peers for over 100 years - from NASA to the New Zealand All Blacks, from Eton College and the Royal College of Art to the Royal Marines and the Royal Shakespeare Company. Hill looks at the way they analyse success and failure to their approach to finding the best people and the brightest new ideas. In so doing, he identifies the strategies and habits to build a promising enterprise into an enduring, great organisation.

Scaling People: Tactics for Management and Company Building (Stripe Press, July 2023) by Claire Hughes Johnson. What drew me to this book was the review in The Economist where it was described as " … long on tactics and pragmatism, short on guff … What a relief, then, to read a book that breaks the mould. It lands with an intimidating thud. It looks and feels like a textbook. It is full of exercises and templates. And it is unapologetically practical in its focus.." This book is a guide to company building, operating structures, and scaling the most important resource it has: its people. It offers guidance on crafting foundational documents, strategic and financial planning, hiring and team development, and feedback and performance mechanisms ― which can be applied to companies of any size, in any industry.

Creating the Organization of the Future: Building on Drucker and Confucius Foundations (Emerald Publishing Limited, July 2023) by Bernard Jaworski and Virginia Cheung. The purpose of this book is to help leaders and decision-makers successfully navigate their organizations through the stormy seas of the present, into the future. In the first section of the book, the authors demonstrate how executives can make five direction-setting ‘big choices’ for their firms. These five big choices are: defining the purpose of an organization, building a mission statement, setting an organization’s vision, crafting organizational values, and shaping the firm’s culture. In the second section, the authors tie these five choices to the foundational thinking of Drucker and Confucius. Here the concepts, principles, and real-world practice of Eastern and Western leadership are shown here to combine to compelling effect.

Leading through Disruption: A Changemaker’s Guide to Twenty-First Century Leadership (HarperCollins Leadership, July 2023) by Andrew Liveris AO, the former Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of The Dow Chemical Company and former Executive Chairman of DowDuPont. With a focus on resilience and agility in a rapidly changing world, he presents a variety of powerful tools that will enable boards and organisations to tackle any problem quickly and responsively, with an eye to creating a more equitable, sustainable future.

Beyond Disruption: Innovate and Achieve Growth without Displacing Industries, Companies, or Jobs by (Harvard Business Review Press, May 2023) by W. Chan Kim and Renée Mauborgne the authors of Blue Ocean Strategy. Disruption dominates innovation theory and practice. But disruption is destructive ― displacing jobs, companies, and even entire industries. Are we missing better, and even bigger, opportunities to innovate and grow? With three decades of research, the number one global-bestselling authors of Blue Ocean Strategy W. Chan Kim and Renée Mauborgne reveal another way to innovate and grow ― nondisruptive creation. Just as Blue Ocean Strategy redefined the essence of strategy as creating not competing, Beyond Disruption redefines and expands the existing view of innovation by introducing a new approach ― nondisruptive creation ― that is free from the destructive displacement that happens when innovators set out to disrupt. Kim and Mauborgne reveal the distinct advantages of nondisruptive creation to business and society, showing how this bold, new approach to innovation allows companies to grow while also being a force for good. With examples that cut across all sectors of the economy and a practical framework for guiding innovation efforts.

Culture Shock: An unstoppable force has changed how we work and live. Gallup's solution to the biggest leadership issue of our time (Gallup Press (31 May 2023) by Jim Clifton is chairman and CEO of Gallup and Jim Harter, Ph.D., is Chief Scientist, Workplace for Gallup. We are seeing a structural change in how and where people work and live. One thing we now know for certain: Nothing is going back to normal. How organisations adapt to this culture shock will determine whether they thrive or even survive and whether productivity will go up or down. The immediate danger is that most employees will now operate more like independent contractors or gig workers than employees who are loyal and committed to your organisation. The risk grows as your workforce’s mentality continues to shift from my life at work to my life at home. It may become nearly impossible to create a culture of committed team members and powerful relationships at work. How will you maintain your customers’ commitment when you’re struggling to create a culture of dedicated employees who build and strengthen relationships with those customers?

ArticleS THAT Are WORTH READING

New leadership for a new era of thriving organizations (May 4, 2023 | Article | McKinsey Quarterly) By Aaron De Smet, Arne Gast, Johanne Lavoie, and Michael Lurie. This is an article that explores how to ransform leadership to transform organizations. Five leadership shifts can unleash an era of sustainable, inclusive growth for companies looking to outperform in this era of disruption. The emergent journey of leadership transformation invites senior leaders to embrace and apply new principles and practices personally, within their teams, and throughout their organization. By demonstrating new mindsets and behaviors, they are able to draw on reservoirs of organizational energy, passion, and ingenuity; enhance and accelerate the whole enterprise portfolio of performance and transformation initiatives; and unlock new levels of value for customers, employees, investors, and other stakeholders.

TENSIONS, DILEMMAS and PARADOXES Useful guidance about tensions, dilemmas and paradoxes by Wendy K. Smith and Marianne W. Lewis, authors of ‘Both/And Thinking: Embracing Creative Tensions to Solve Your Toughest Problems’

CHANGE LEADERSHIP Coaching Conversation: how do leaders bring about and cope with systemic change in a more thoughtful way? The accelerators and reversals; opportunities and challenges - for businesses, their teams and themselves?

LEADER AS STRATEGIST The ‘leader as strategist’ fine-tunes how to apply strategic thinking to strategic process and strategic choices; to articulate and link back to the core purpose for the management of change. They understand the ‘what’ and ‘how’ of strategy.

Future-Proof The Organisation

SETTING THE SCENE

QUESTIONS TO CONSIDER

Happy reading and stay curious!

ArticleS THAT Are WORTH READING

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