by Peter A. Arthur-Smith, Leadership Solutions, Inc.®

“Successful organizations grow in a helix, self-renewing fashion; not through a simple S curve”

Midway through SuperGuard’s current quarterly operational growth cycle, post Green Light Day, Christine sat down with Harry the company’s Visionist. They discussed SuperGuard’s annual strategic growth cycle, in light of very positive developments at Vanguard’s current client trial. So far, the client was really happy with Vanguard’s team professionalism and Operation Center monitoring.

Christine felt that Harry’s Strategist team should already be “thinking about” and “preparing for” its next strategic moves. These are two vital components of Strategic Streaming ahead of its third all-important “execution” element. So they devoted their time to an outline discussion about what should happen next.

It included calling for a Periscope Time session on the earliest possible Monday; thereby that would initiate a long weekend for Strategist members to be fully mentally prepared for the occasion. Enlightened leaders (EL2s) are expected to “think hard” just as much as “work hard.” Do you encourage such thinking, too?

Harry agreed to put some “thinking about,” bulletized notes together to help ready his Strategists for a productive discussion. When that Monday morning came, they all appeared refreshed and full of anticipation. Christine reintroduced them to EL2s Intrinsic Strategic Growth Helix – see above. Intrinsic because it builds upon its own innate forces and doesn’t have to be extrinsically contrived by using restructuring, downsizing or mergers. All three of these are typical growth modes within conventional management (CM) systems.

Done right, intrinsic growth can be viewed as fostering constant self-renewal growth. It’s based upon educating your staff to embrace organic renewal rather than driving them to pursue disruptive measures; as mentioned in the prior paragraph. It’s all part of creating stimulating environments where leaders and frontline staff “want to” rather than feel they “have to” participate and contribute.

Of course, their firm, SuperGuard, is a traditional, quality, guard service started-up many years prior. It had contended with various growth crises along the way; be that financial, people related or somewhat losing its way. Its recent adoption of Vanguard occurred to rebuild momentum and find an intrinsic – or an organic, internally generated growth option – as a way forward. In this case, it turned to a Blue Ocean option with its propriety, elite guard services – Blue Ocean because there was no clear evidence that other competitors were moving in this direction.

SuperGuard’s new Vanguard approach is based upon offering elite guard and monitoring services, in combination with high-tech equipment and highly skilled operatives, to provide security over large areas. Assuming success, fairly rapid growth will be paramount before too many other security companies weigh into this particular marketplace. Several potential clients were already willing to further trial-run this fresh security concept. So Christine proposed to Harry and his Strategists that they already start orchestrating two business “pods”: one focused on SuperGuard “traditional” security services, the other on elite Vanguard security ones. (NOTE: “Pods” are EL2s designation for mono-focused business domains compared with conventional management’s (CM’s) use of units or divisions; i.e. based upon WWII military, command-and control jargon.)

After some healthy debate regarding the pros and cons of moving in this direction, the team concurred that it made good sense. It also agreed that Dan, the company’s current Operationist, should orchestrate the “traditional” security guard business – now to become known internally as SuperGuard Traditional – as its interim Pod Visionist. That responsibility would be additional to his current Strategist activities. Additionally, Roger, the firm’s Expansionist, should act as interim Visionist for the Vanguard Pod, since it’s an expansionary activity. It would also be additional to his current company strategic-growth activities.

This envisioning and strategic clarity session was pretty well complete after a healthy morning of Periscope Time thought and debate; otherwise known as “thinking about” within Strategic Streaming. The debate worked well due to intense listening all-around. Harry acted as synergizer and orchestrator of ideas rather than as a “boss” who had all the answers. Ultimate solutions became the team’s intentions and not just Harry’s dictates. Now they were more than ready for an early light but rewarding lunch to celebrate progress so far.

In fact, they decided to sustain momentum while it lasted. Hence after lunch, they would break off until around 3.00pm – see Dan Pink’s book “When” – to take care of all their typical Monday issues, and then return to pursue a “prepare for” session. This will be covered in Phase 2 – Position and Pathfind – “Christine Observes SuperGuard’s next Organization Evolution.”  ______________________________________________________________________________

Author, Peter A. Arthur-Smith, Founding Principal with Leadership Solutions, Inc., is based in New York, and author of Smart Decisions: Goodbye Problems, Hello Options. He has drafted a potential new publication, People Count more than Numbers: Enlightened Leadership Re-visited that offers a slew of fresh leadership concepts and practical models. Feel free to follow author at: Linkedin.com/in/peter-arthur-smith-2115722/

© 2022 Leadership Solutions, Inc –MALRC. All rights reserved