spotlight

thriving to win

Leaders who play offense create competitive advantage

Executive leaders who play offense are more likely to navigate their companies through challenging times and come out ahead as the economy turns around. I call this approach “thriving to win,” rather than “managing to survive.”

In a defensive mode, leaders focus on reducing risk, paring costs, downsizing, reorganizing and restructuring — all critical challenges to address. However, if these become the “only” or predominant strategies, other important strategies and programs to sustain healthy, high performance could be sidelined or benched.

These investments in developing healthy, high-performing cultures can be quickly damaged if not addressed during challenging financial times. As a result, leaders may find that their companies have stayed afloat but have lost precious ground with their cultures slipping into insecurity, mistrust and protectionist silos.

Leaders who make boldest bets outperform peers, according to global CEO study

Companies that thrive during tough economic times stick with a game plan that is fundamentally sound, but elevate the game by building a critical advantage. This is supported by findings of IBM's 2008 Global CEO study of more than 1,000 CEOs and leaders of institutions to define the “Enterprise of the Future.”

The study found that leaders who are making the boldest plays are outperforming their peers. They:

• anticipate more change, then embrace and manage it better

• see opportunities in changing market conditions instead of challenges

• are repositioning their businesses to capture those opportunities

The key traits CEOs identified that will be needed for future success include being:

• eager for change, (developing a learning mindset) including shaping and leading market trends
• innovative to surpass desires of increasingly demanding customers and to make business more successful
• willing to radically challenge the business model, shift the value proposition, overturn traditional approaches and even reinvent the company and industry

These traits all require a healthy, high-performance culture and a leader with a thriving mindset. Why are these important?

1. Leaders who remain focused on and invest in creating a healthy, high-performance culture during turbulent times of change are more able to keep the team at the top and employees throughout the organization engaged, energized and aligned around changing strategies.
   
   
2. Thriving leadership balances three highly researched psychological states of mind: vitality, a learning mindset and purpose and direction in leading organizations successfully. Our groundbreaking global 1000 leadership study of this thriving mindset at work has proven that 75 percent of leaders who learn and live at the highest state of thriving levels consistently perform in the top 25 percentile of their peers. We also know that leaders who lead from the effective balance of the thriving principles will produce a healthy, high-performing culture 80 percent of the time, regardless of external business or environmental factors.

Summary:

Leaders who want to create strong offenses during turbulent financial times can leverage the principles of thriving to “shadow” the healthy, high-performance culture, which is resilient, innovative and clearly focused on what it takes to win. Once leaders have “battened down the hatches” to weather the financial storm, learning, utilizing and leading through the thriving principles will create the necessary leadership and culture to play effective offense.

Jim Hart is President and CEO of Senn Delaney.