Great leadership is where their is a clear strategy, clear product lifecycle and all the programs fit the strategy for 12 months ahead.
In the absence of the clear strategy and plan, it seems to be that you just keeping coming up with ideas and execute rapidly in order to deliver the target number.
The customer needs are completely ignored as its all about what the company needs to make the numbers. The customer and employee experience is unbearable: conflicting priorities, messages, lack of clarity on how things fit together, poor lifecycle execution, no listening to the customer needs and air of desperation as one program cannibalises another. The poor customer overwhelmed looks to alternative providers to work with.
In the absence of a solid strategy, poor leaders resort to “busyness”, the Leader utilises Pray and Spray which is costly and unproductive.
How do you know if you are hiring or working for a organisation and leader that has this is their kit bag? Ask people who have worked for the leader and organisation, was their an annual plan of programs or where they created on the fly throughout the year?
As a people leader in a Pray and Spray organisation, these are the tips for protecting your team and customers from the chaos:
1. Make it clear to the leadership that your customer can only run with three key initiatives at once, when we have fired off 15, each will pick out three as they have not got the capacity to consume it all.
2. Communicate to your team that they are not expected to take on all 15 and every new initiative and get the customer onboard, just pick up to three only.
3. Hold the initiators responsible for the ongoing success, support and reporting, to prevent them having the time to create more initiatives, without execution of the ones in train. its a bit like kids on a football pitch, all chasing the ball.
4. Get the initiators in front of customers so they can hear first hand the chaos they create, and get them to listen to the customer.
Angela Lovegrove 