DELIVERING BUSINESS CHANGE IN A NEW WORLD Henley Business School April 2012.
Since 2008 – What is the challenge & what is needs changing to cope? The following extracts have been quoted from the report.
1. Judgement – to manage paradox we have to work
out what to do when nobody is telling us what to
do. Having a more system-thinking perspective
to drive our context. We need to make decisions
when we do not have all the data we would like to
have, trade off conflicting needs and do it as close
to source as possible.
2. Tolerance of ambiguity – we need to be
comfortable working with shades of grey and an
absence of certainty, to engage with macro data
and to act when needed, not when convenient.
3. Flexibility – we need to balance governance with
necessary uniqueness, consider exceptions in a
more directional way and understand and resolve
conflicting points of view from the standpoint of
the business rather than our own role.
4. Pragmatic commercialism – being less
perfectionistic, always using an impact-versuseffort mindset, managing risk where risk needs
to be managed most, and being comfortable that
achieving and evidencing a reasonable result
quickly may be better than driving for a perfect
result that never happens.
These capabilities are often in short supply and hard to
find quickly, and that we can find it hard to react to
some of the challenges outlined above. Even the use
of external contingent leadership cannot always deal
with the internal adaptation required.
Icebreaker comment; the underlying issue here is creating a proactive thinking culture. Most corporates over the years have tended to drum this thinking out of their employees, leaving people to wait to be told what to do, with the resulting lack of motivation, through diminished learning, interpersonal relationships along with the direction they need to operate at their best. This people side is exactly why icebreaker run our professional development program based on developing executive coaching skills in an interim change / turnaround scenario as these skills are not available off the shelf naturally or inherent in an executive interim either.
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John Webster has been recently appointed icebreaker Chairman. John was a banking CEO at 35, and is still going strong 40 years later! His experience as a CEO has included over 100 MBI/ MBO deals from £2m to £1bn and supported over 1000 SME business start ups, an expert in Venture Capital, Executive coaching and Private equity, he has trained over 100 chairmen. John who now lives in South Africa is an active fixed wing and hot air balloon pilot, paraglider pilot, league tennis player and bridge enthusiast. John keeps us ahead of the pack leading our professional development program and is available to the icebreaker team as required on assignment in his capacity as an exceptional coach!
David Mitchell BCOM (HONS), FCA, FCT, MIFT joined icebreaker last year; a leading turnaround professional with main board level experience in Manufacturing, Engineering, Property & Construction, Facilities Management, Automotive, Chemicals, Healthcare, IT, Telecommunications & Media. Either as CRO, CFO, FD or Adviser across listed and private equity backed businesses in both the UK and Europe. Past Board Member Institute of Interim Management, Runner-Up in inaugural IIM Awards 2009, Member of all Major UK Banks & Big 4 Accountants Turnaround panels
