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

“Compabilities are a combination of people’s competences and capabilities: where competences = gained know-how and capabilities = innate talent-skills.”  

Here are five members of the six SuperGuard Vanguard test team that volunteered to meet with Dan – SuperGuard’s Operationist – and Christine for his first briefing session. He used the opportunity to ask them who the sixth team member might be. One name came up three times out of the five people present, so he pledged to approach that individual shortly. Since the person nominated was a current male guard, Dan reached out to him pretty quickly after their briefing session was over. Hopefully he would be flattered at being proposed by his colleagues.

In the meantime, Melissa, SuperGuard’s Promotionist, held a brainstorming session with her sales team about the SuperGuard Vanguard idea – Vanguard because it would be the initial trial team to test the marketplace. Christine looked-in on this session, too, as she had chatted through Melissa’s meeting approach just a day or two before that. Between Melissa and the seven sales team members present – including their sales team leader – they listed nine possible client/prospect names; six were already clients and the other three were potential ones.

They agreed that whichever “pair” of salespeople – since Melissa’s sales people worked in “pairs” – already worked with any of the nominated, current company clients; that pair would be the one to initially sound out their SuperGuard client on the Vanguard concept. The pairs subsequently picked-out one each of the three potential clients to approach. Their sales team leader then led a discussion on a potential sales pitch with the three pairs. Melissa and Christine were impressed with what they came-up with after about 45 minutes of spirited debate. The hunt was now on for at least three Vanguard test-case possibilities.

When it became Dan’s moment to meet with his full team of six Vanguard team members – two to work in the company’s operations center and the other four as on-site guards; he had already primed them in advance to think about appropriate client related issues to enable SuperGuard Vanguard be successful. He knew they all had the talent to do this. Besides, by priming them in advance, they would have so much more to contr-ibute at his meeting. Such a pre-assignment would also build their level of enthusiasm and commitment, too.

With all six members present, he split then into their designated pairs, because they had self-chosen complementary pairing-partners beforehand – one pair for weekday SuperGuard out-of-hours coverage, one for weekend coverage, and the other for Superguard’s Operation’s Center. He initially invited each pair to discuss their pre-meeting ideas for about 45 minutes and list their thoughts on a common-to-all flipchart sheet. Based upon prior input from Christine, Dan rotated among the three pairs to offer encouragement and suggestions.

At the appointed time, they were back together to discuss their overall joint listing. It inspired several questions and further suggestions among the group. Dan popped a couple of additional ideas into the mix, too. Then it came to prioritizing the issues for the client-facing pairs and the operation’s center pair. Through confidential balloting, by means of folded-up paper slips, their listing revealed an interesting consensus.

For the weekday and weekend pairs, three issues rose to the top – specialized equipment and uniforms, special guard education and “back-up” coverage. The latter item referred to a desire for having stand-by individuals in case of sickness, family emergencies, vacations, or unforeseen circumstances. Unsurprisingly, the Operation’s Center pair pretty much came up with the same three items. Dan was especially happy that they had picked the “back-up” item, since it would help define the overall success of their Vanguard test. So he then asked the six present for company nominees, who he could approach within their operation’s domain. The appropriate pairs would be included in any initial back-up person initial briefings. They came up with 3-4 nominees in each instance to allow for “turn-downs” and to have more than one stand-by per pair.

It was agreed that finalist back-ups/stand-bys would join their respective pairs for Vanguard team education sessions. Here, at Christine’s suggestion, Dan encouraged them to utilize In-Team Discovery sessions, because they were a familiar activity from other company settings; as an alternative to conventional training. An In-Team Discovery session enabled the weekday and weekend pairings, plus their back-ups, to meet as a total group to discuss, list and prioritize all the key factors/issues they would need to know to professionally fulfill their roles. After prioritizing them, they then split into random, complementary sub-pairs to start preparing a Socratic talk on a designated topic. Why Socratic? Their talk would become a series of Socratic, searching questions that would enable their colleagues to experience discovery-learning – a great way to digest and readily remember key aspects of every talk.

The Operation’s Center pairing did the same with their back-ups. They also split into sub-team pairs to bone-up on their assigned topic and then give Socratic talks in pair-rotation over the next couple of weeks – 1-2 hours per session. Dan would sit-in on these whenever he could. In the meantime, Maureen, the company’s Provisionist, set-about purchasing the appropriate equipment and uniforms. Melissa’s sales team made positive progress with its Vanguard client prospects. Based upon all this progress, which Harry had been kept attuned to, he requested an early meeting of SuperGuard’s six Strategists to discuss Green Light Day.

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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, Constructive Leadership Disruption: Embrace Five ‘New Organization World’ Opportunities! that offers a slew of fresh leadership concepts and practical models. Feel free to follow author at: Linkedin.com/in/peter-arthur-smith-2115722/