07 Jan New eyes for new insight

Fresh perspectives can change your organisations future.

Is your organisation performing as well as it should? Alternatively, why are you performing as you are? One of the difficulties in answering these questions is the difficulty of self-criticism or critiquing your own work. Even when we believe we are self-critical, we can only see ourselves through our own eyes, and we rationalise our efforts based on our pre-existing biases.

New eyes come from two sources, one external and the other internal. External review is helpful as a catalyst. An external pair of eyes has a different set of assumptions and a different bias – and so they see things or question things that you did not see or did not think to question. But external review is limited in value as it is still left up to you to take two steps based on external review.

The first step is to decide whether the conclusions reached by external review warrant action. Often this step fails, as the insight reached by the external reviewer is explained away before any action decision. However – in some cases the external reviewer might stimulate a decision to act.

Then the second step is required – to act and sustain action over time to make the changes that are born from the insight. Very often, this step fails – as the will and discipline to pursue an “unnatural” path weakens over time as the effort of doing something that someone else suggested is far greater than the effort required for “What comes naturally to you.”

In individuals, we know this as the efforts of all our teachers, and our parents, and various people who influence our lives only have a limited effect on the changes we can bring about in our lives. Organisationally, Boards of Directors, external advisors and professional consultants face tremendous challenges as they work to influence executive teams.

Our advice is to commit to the old Socratic adage “know thyself.” This is not an easy thing to do. For individuals, mastering your skills and personality can be challenging. For executive teams in organisations to master their team and organisational “culture” is even more challenging. Three sets of questions are useful to organisations in our opinion:

1. Who are we as a group, relative to a set of possible groups? Experiencing something like the Enneagram helps individuals and teams (and groups of executives) “see themselves” in a particular way and understand how the nature of the group might be changed. Groups have a personality, and it influences the way your organisation sees the world. Some groups are driven to take risk, others to avoid it. Some groups are driven to detail, and others avoid detail (both of which carry operational consequences).
2. What are we doing, relative to a possible set of actions? Experiencing a strategic review across several strategic frameworks helps organisations to see how their personality drives certain strategic choices. Risk averse groups may never grow as quickly as they could – and risk takers might burn capital on too many poorly conceived plans.
3. How are we organised, relative to a possible set of ways to be organised? Does structure follow strategy or executive personality? Experiencing a structural review helps organisations see how they are organised relative to other possible ways of being organised, and to decide whether they are personality or strategy driven. Entrepreneurial groups might organise around a strong leader, control-oriented groups organise around process and policy, highly individualised groups organise around professionals. These ways of organising may be personality driven rather than strategy driven.

These three reviews are interesting on their own, and fascinating when combined. The combination helps leaders to reframe their story about why things are they way they are – and that reframing produces “new eyes” – not the new eyes of the external consultant, but the new eyes of internal insight. This is a strong source of “new eyes.” When the executive team see for themselves and understand what they are seeing in new ways they can achieve an internal shift – then commitment to sustained action is more likely to achieve positive change. The change might be to abandon foolhardy projects or to adopt a few seemingly “crazy” projects – depending on the new insight achieved.

You can get a fresh perspective on who you are (as individuals and an executive team), on what you are trying to achieve (through your goals and strategy), and on how you are organised. That fresh perspective can bring you fresh insight. WorldsView Academy advises on strategy, leadership, organisation design and team effectiveness. Each of these is useful on their own, and powerful in combination. We also have a powerful suite of strategy, leadership, and team development programs. Talk to us about your dreams and frustrations for the road ahead. We would love to talk to you.