by Peter A. Arthur-Smith
“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 and Melissa, the firm’s Co-Visionists. (NOTE: Only “ideal” ventures grow like an S curve; real ones grow in spurts as shown by the adjacent helix.) So far, their first clients were really happy with Vanguard’s team professionalism and Operation Center monitoring.
Christine felt that their Strategist team should already be “thinking about” and “preparing for” its next strategic moves. These are two vital components of any Strategic Streaming (StS) ahead of its third all important “execution” element. So they devoted time to outlining what should happen next. Such an activity would help spot when SuperGuard should “reinvent” itself and when it should pursue “strategic growth.”
It included calling for a Periscope Time session on the earliest possible Monday, hence that would be preceded by a long weekend for Strategist members to be fully mentally prepared for the occasion. Enlightened leaders (ELs) are expected to “think hard” just as much as “work hard.” Do you encourage such thinking among your key team members, too?
Harry agreed to put some “thinking about,” bulletized notes together to help ready his Strategists for a productive discussion. When that Monday morning arrived, they all appeared refreshed and full of anticipation. Christine reintroduced them to ELs Intrinsic Strategic Growth Helix – see above. Intrinsic because it builds upon its own innate momentum and doesn’t have to be extrinsically contrived through use of restructuring, down- sizing or mergers. These latter three modes are typical re-sets within conventional management (CM) systems.
Done right, intrinsic growth can be viewed as fueling constant self-renewed growth or expansion. It’s based upon educating your staff to embrace organic renewal rather than driving them to pursue disruptive man-made measures – those re-sets mentioned previously. 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 its way; be that financial, people related or somewhat losing direction. Its recent adoption of Vanguard services occurred as a means of rebuilding momentum and finding an intrinsic – or organic, internally generated growth option – as a way forward. This became a Blue Ocean, novel option through building propriety, elite guard services – Blue Ocean because there was no clear evidence that 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 value-added security in overly large areas. Assuming success, fairly rapid growth becomes 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 ELs designation for mono-focused business domains compared with conventional manage-ment’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 their “traditional” security guard business – now to become known internally as SuperGuard Traditional – and act as its interim Pod Visionist. That would be additional to his current leadership responsibilities. Additionally, Roger, the firm’s Expansionist, should act as interim Visionist for the Vanguard Pod owing to its expansionary nature. It would also be added to their current company’s strategic-growth activities.
This envisioning and strategic clarity session was pretty well complete after a healthy morning of Periscope Time and its inherent thought and debate; otherwise viewed as “thinking about” within the Strategic Streaming (StS) concept. Debate worked well owing to intense listening all-around. Harry acted as synergizer and orchestrator of ideas rather than a “boss” who had all the answers. Ultimate solutions became the team’s intentions and not just Harry’s dictates. Now they were ready more than ever for an early light but rewarding lunch to celebrate further dynamic progress.
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,” which advocates bearing in mind our typical dead-spot between 1 and 3 pm. Such a break allowed them to take care of all their typical Monday issues, at a distance, “back at their offices – at home or for real,” and then rejoin their second Periscope Time session that would focus on “prepare for” activities within Phase 2, CYCLE 2.