The most enduring change initiatives — those that drive real results — are based on leaders’ assumption that they are seeing only part of the picture and thus need to learn more. These leaders ask hard questions and engage in trade-offs as early as possible, talking with those who raise concerns not to gain their compliance, but to improve, refine, and pressure test the proposed change.
"Strategy is a framework to guide critical choices to achieve a desired future,” said MIT Sloan senior lecturer Donald Sull in a new MIT Sloan Management Review webinar....
[A] strategic vision must be detailed enough to lay out a clear vision while being broad enough to allow for flexibility and adjustment....
An ideal strategy provides enough guidance to empower workers to make trade-offs, formulate goals, allocate resources, prioritize activities, and clarify what people are committing to do. At the same time, it offers enough flexibility to allow people to seize opportunities and adapt as needed....
Take American Airlines versus Southwest Airlines. American has goals like “be an industry leader” and “look to the future.” Inspiring but vague. Southwest, on the other hand, has initiatives like “fleet modernization” and “growth of Rapid Rewards program.” Precise and defined.
Engaged teams are productive, enthusiastic, and focused. But how can managers keep a pulse on their team when these are very subjective traits to measure?
Engaged teams and employees often:
Confide in and show trust in their leadership team
Identify problems and take on challenges proactively
Work with a win-win mindset
Provide better performance on day-to-day tasks
Work with purpose and reevaluate priorities without instruction
Challenge priorities and push back on assignments when they don’t see the value of them
Collaborate with team members (and other departments) with a positive attitude
On the other side, disengaged teams and employees do the following:
Shuffle responsibility from person to person
Approach projects with a defeatist attitude
Prioritize individual work over teamwork
Fail to speak up or contribute during team meetings
Come to one on ones without any agenda items
Fail to follow through on commitments
These are the telltale signs that something has gone awry. Yet, managers may not have the visibility to identify these signs early when managing remote and distributed teams.
Our job is to cover the news, but our mission is to spread truth and to stop misinformation.
Some things don’t have two sides. Facts are not up for debate. And when the president of the United States, from the White House, tries to tear down one of the bedrocks of American democracy, a fair and free election, that is no longer news. It is propaganda.
This is not censorship. There is no mandate that we air everything a political leader says. That is state-controlled media. His remarks weren’t about political differences but undermining Americans’ confidence in the democratic process.
We simply chose not to use our platforms to amplify this dangerous message, with the potential to incite violence, in real time when it was impossible to provide facts and context simultaneously. We covered the speech carefully and fully afterward.
