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- Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
- Kategorie: Fachliteratur
- Sprache: Englisch
"The 7 Conversations is a unique model for organizations to grow and innovate in a team-based way with a powerful transformation accelerator." --Penny Pennington, Managing Partner, Edward Jones An actionable blueprint for transformational business journeys from Growth River founder Richard Hawkes Leading transformation in teams, businesses, and organizations is complex, and leaders are expected to know how to do it. Navigating the Swirl provides the clear thinking required to navigate this challenge. In Navigate the Swirl: 7 Conversations for Business Transformation renowned growth and strategy leader Richard Hawkes delivers a simple and powerful framework that any team can apply to overcome the most common leadership challenges to growing and scaling companies, known as "The Swirl." In this straightforward book, he draws on decades of experience guiding teams to implement strategic change at companies like Edward Jones, GENEWIZ, Hitachi, Pfizer, Johnson & Johnson, Mars, and Chicos. You'll learn: * To understand and lead disruptive change in a complex social system - your company * Ways to visualize and diagnose the essential working parts of a company * How to apply an integrated toolset for teams to lead organizational change and business transformation * How to create transformational journey maps that leaders, teams, businesses, and companies must apply to unleash growth potential and agility * How networks of teams should work together to develop each other's leadership and to manage and accelerate change Written as a practical guide for business and team leaders, Navigate the Swirl: 7 Conversations for Business Transformation belongs on the desks and in the hands of every purpose driven leader.
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Seitenzahl: 407
Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2022
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Table of Contents
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Foreword
The Framework of Transformation
An Organization-Wide Approach
How We're Transforming
Growth River's Valuable Contribution
Acknowledgments
A Note to the Reader: How to Use This Book
Introduction: The Swirl
PART 1: Framing the Conversation
CHAPTER 1: Understanding Organizations
Leading Social Systems versus Leading Mechanical Systems
The Art of Alignment
CHAPTER 2: Understanding Businesses
The Importance of Visualizing Shared Work
The Business Triangle
The Engine of a Business
Note
CHAPTER 3: Understanding Growth
Growth Moves Through Stages
Growth Happens in Three Domains
What Limits Growth? Understanding Constraints
Two Types of Performance Improvement: Horizontal and Vertical
Note
PART 2: The Evolution of an Enterprise
CHAPTER 4: The Four Stages of Enterprise Evolution
Stages of How, Not What
CHAPTER 5: A Business Is Born
CHAPTER 6: A Leader Steps Up
Avoiding Stage 2 Bottlenecks
CHAPTER 7: A 5:30 Wake-Up Call
“To Win We Had to Change”
Bureaucracy Is Not the Answer
Notes
CHAPTER 8: A Complete System of Roles
A Matrix Structure
The Changing Role of the CEO: From Executive Leader to Enterprise Architect
Straightening the Spaghetti
Why Roles Matter
Architecting a Complete System of Capabilities and Roles
Unleashing Strategic Intelligence
Notes
CHAPTER 9: Leveraging Creative Tension
A Complete System of Roles Leverages Creative Tension
The Natural Creative Tension in Business Triangles
Depersonalizing Conflict
The Natural Creative Tension in Enterprises
Leading Through Creative Tensions
Banish the Scourge of Functionitis
A North Star for Resolving Creative Tensions
CHAPTER 10: High-Performing Teams
Teams at Work
Understanding Teams
The Building Blocks of High-Performing Teams
Shared Language
Secret Agents of Transformation
Notes
CHAPTER 11: Toward a Flat, Agile Organization
Enterprise Evolution Shouldn't Be Rushed
PART 3: The Seven Conversations
CHAPTER 12: Organizations Evolve at the Speed of Conversation
Setting the Stage for the Seven Crucial Conversations
CHAPTER 13: Conversation 1: Activating Purpose
Effective Decision-Making
The Law of the Lid
Note
CHAPTER 14: Conversation 2: Driving Focus
A Shared Transformational Journey
CHAPTER 15: Conversation 3: Shifting Mindset
Building Trust
CHAPTER 16: Conversation 4: Specifying Capabilities and Roles
CHAPTER 17: Conversation 5: Streamlining Interdependencies
Analyzing the Performance System
Aligning Between Teams
CHAPTER 18: Conversation 6: Aligning Strategies
Four Metrics for Competitive Advantage
CHAPTER 19: Conversation 7: Implementing Initiatives
CHAPTER 20: An Invitation to Transformation
Closing Reflections
Glossary
Learning a Language
Setting the Stage for the Seven Crucial Conversations
Glossary of Terms for the Growth River OS
Index
End User License Agreement
List of Illustrations
Chapter 1
FIGURE 1.1 The Art of Aligning People as Vectors
Chapter 2
FIGURE 2.1 The Four Business Capabilities Around the Business Triangle
FIGURE 2.2 Example of the Business Triangle
FIGURE 2.3 Chronos and Kairos
FIGURE 2.4 The Business Triangle in Action
Chapter 3
FIGURE 3.1 Transformational Change and the Three Domains of Change
FIGURE 3.2 Breakthroughs Happen When Primary Constraints in Systems Are Reso...
FIGURE 3.3 Identifying the Primary Constraint in a Throughput Process
FIGURE 3.4 Example Capabilities Mapping Around the Business Triangle
FIGURE 3.5 Horizontal Improvement
FIGURE 3.6 Vertical Improvement
Chapter 4
FIGURE 4.1 The Evolutionary Stages Clock Is a Visualization of the Four Stag...
Chapter 7
FIGURE 7.1 Organizational Structure Evolution from Stage 2 to Stage 3
FIGURE 7.2 5:30 on the Evolutionary Stages Clock
Chapter 8
FIGURE 8.1 The Radiant Love Organizational Chart at Stage 2
FIGURE 8.2 The Radiant Love Organizational Chart at Stage 3
FIGURE 8.3 The Radiant Love Enterprise Map
Chapter 9
FIGURE 9.1 Creative Tensions
FIGURE 9.2 Creative Tensions Around the Business Triangle
FIGURE 9.3 Creative Tensions in Enterprises
Chapter 12
FIGURE 12.1 Transformational Change and the Three Domains of Change
FIGURE 12.2 Example Gap Analysis Against the Seven Crucial Conversations
Chapter 14
FIGURE 14.1 Uncertainty Before and After an Event Horizon
Chapter 16
FIGURE 16.1 Vertical and Horizontal Creative Tension in an Enterprise
Chapter 17
FIGURE 16.1
Glossary
FIGURE G.1 The Art of Leading Alignment
FIGURE G.2 The Business Triangle
FIGURE G.3 Centralized versus Distributed Leadership
FIGURE G.4 Example Decision Analysis
FIGURE G.5 The Evolutionary Stages Clock
FIGURE G.6 Example Enterprise Map
FIGURE G.7 Uncertainty Before and After an Event Horizon
FIGURE G.8 The Business Triangle in Action
FIGURE G.9 HPT Connectors
FIGURE G.10 Vertical and Horizontal Improvement
FIGURE G.11 Chronos versus Kairos Meetings
FIGURE G.12 Creative Tensions
FIGURE G.13 Straightening the Spaghetti
FIGURE G.14 The Business Strategy Canvas
FIGURE G.15 System of Teams in an Enterprise Team Matrix
FIGURE G.16 Operational Purpose Statements by Team Type
FIGURE G.17 Team Charters and Organizational Purpose Statements
FIGURE G.18 The Seven Crucial Conversations and Three Domains of Change
FIGURE G.19 Vertical and Horizontal in an Enterprise
FIGURE G.20 The Bullseye for Shared Work
Guide
Cover Page
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Foreword
Acknowledgments
A Note to the Reader: How to Use This Book
Introduction:The Swirl
Table of Contents
Begin Reading
Glossary
Index
End User License Agreement
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“The 7 Conversations is a unique model for organizations to grow and innovate in a team-based way with a powerful transformation accelerator.”
―Penny Pennington, Managing Partner, Edward Jones
ACTIVATE YOUR PURPOSE
ALIGN YOUR TEAM
ACHIEVE YOUR GOALS
NAVIGATE the SWIRL
7 CONVERSATIONS for BUSINESS TRANSFORMATION
RICHARD S. HAWKES
FOUNDER, GROWTH RIVER
Copyright © 2022 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc. All rights reserved.
Published by John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, New Jersey.
Published simultaneously in Canada.
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Hawkes, Richard S. (Change leadership expert), author.
Title: Navigate the Swirl : Seven Conversations for Business Transformation / Richard S. Hawkes.
Description: Hoboken, New Jersey : Wiley, [2022] | Includes index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2021059924 (print) | LCCN 2021059925 (ebook) | ISBN 9781119868798 (cloth) | ISBN 9781119868811 (adobe pdf) | ISBN 9781119868804 (epub)
Subjects: LCSH: Organizational change.
Classification: LCC HD58.8 .H389 2022 (print) | LCC HD58.8 (ebook) | DDC 658.4/06—dc23/eng/20220113
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021059924
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021059925
Cover Design: Wiley
Cover Image: © ricochet64/Getty Images
For Christina, the love of my life.
Foreword
by Penny Pennington, Managing Partner, Edward Jones
On January 1, 2019, I became the managing partner (as a private partnership, this is our corollary to a CEO) of Edward Jones—just the sixth one in our firm's 100-year history. The age and endurance of our firm is just one dimension of the moment we found ourselves in—we were a new leadership team, stewarding a storied company into the future.
Our firm was doing extremely well when I began my tenure. Edward Jones had experienced remarkable growth for decades. After starting with one financial advisor in 1922 and growing to 100 financial advisors in the early 1970s, the firm reached the milestone of 1,000 financial advisors in 1986, then added its 10,000th in 2008—and has nearly 19,000 financial advisors as I write this. In terms of number of financial advisors, we are one of the two or three largest firms today.
By almost any measure, the firm has been successful. Edward Jones is listed on the Fortune 500 and is the largest privately held financial services firm in the industry. We serve 7 million clients and care for $1.8 trillion of their assets as of the end of 2021. Our more than 50,000 associates consistently rate us highly as an employer, leading to 22 consecutive years on FORTUNE's “Best Companies to Work For” list.
At the same time, I was acutely aware of the fact that we are on the verge of unprecedented change—and it's change that was already underway before the COVID-19 pandemic began. The investors we meet with are often looking for more than traditional financial advice; what they're seeking looks more like advice about holistic financial wellness. They're interested in a very human-centered approach that is quite different from the way financial advisors have traditionally worked.
What this all means is that the role of the financial advisor must evolve—and the value of their role has changed. Clients are placing even more value on having a personal relationship with their financial advisor than ever before. Fortunately, at Edward Jones, that's been our competitive advantage from day one. We've always put our relationships with our clients at the center of what we do. But other firms have started to see the value in it, and they're working hard to close that gap.
In addition to these pressures, there are other elements of change creating great impacts for us. Regulatory changes are rightfully requiring us to serve our clients and their best interest. The economics of our business model are also under pressure—the transaction of purchasing securities has become a commodity and is nearly a free good. Competitive forces have lowered the breakpoint at which clients can purchase certain products. These pressures have an impact on revenue and compensation. Perhaps your business and model are undergoing the same kind of metamorphosis.
With all these factors in play, it was clear that our firm was at an inflection point. To me, it also meant that the conditions were ideal for transformation, and for putting conditions in place for our firm that would allow us to continuously improve over time. It's important in this context to recognize the difference between change and transformation. Change occurs in linear, predictable, and incremental ways—a change to a digitally enabled value proposition, for example. Transformation, on the other hand, is more vertical. It's often about multi-stakeholder (rather than single-stakeholder) impact, and it fundamentally impacts the purpose, culture, leadership, strategy, capabilities, and operating model of a company simultaneously. Transformation is riskier and more unpredictable than change.
Companies transform for one of two reasons. One, they're in a crisis; or two, because they get to—they see that the journey and the effort will be worth it, and they're excited by the possibilities. They recognize that transformational impact can improve not only the commercial enterprise, but also lives and possibilities. Edward Jones is firmly in the second camp. When you have a vision of the impact you want to have, you can either bring that vision down to fit your current reality or you can pull reality up to meet your vision as it was intended to be. Here again, we're in the latter group.
We're pulling reality up to our vision, and we're doing it from a position of strength. We began a change journey not as a discrete event with beginning and end points, but one that creates sustainable conditions for the firm to continuously improve and increase our impact over time—in fact, to quicken the pace of growth and innovation.
The Framework of Transformation
Every transformation must start somewhere—but it's not always easy to know where to start. We saw our initial challenge as identifying the future state we wanted for our firm, and the key competitive advantage that would endure through and beyond our transformation. As we began the work, we considered our purpose, culture, leadership, and capabilities, which helped us identify the gaps between where we were and where we aspired to be. We asked ourselves how we could future-proof our firm.
This exercise was, and is, a deeply human endeavor. We were considering the transformation of a beloved and impactful enterprise, one that tens of thousands of associates and millions of clients take very personally. Our mindset, our relationships, and the ways in which we collectively agreed to lead into the future, became fundamental to the work we were doing.
I believed strongly—and still do—that having a strong organizational purpose is the key to unlocking that organization's human potential. It provides a framework that everything else can be built upon. A worthy purpose unleashes the human spirit. It galvanizes people, and that's critically important, because the “how” of transforming from one thing to something else is hard. In fact, it flies right in the face of a deep human desire—to get good at something and stay good at it by relying on the things that helped you get good at it in the first place.
For a transformation to be successful, it needs to be purpose-driven, leader-led, and team-based. Those may sound like abstract or lofty words, but they become tangible and actionable when you put them to work in a large organization with a long history of working a certain way.
In our case, having some outside perspective proved to be very helpful—and confidence-boosting. We began working with Richard Hawkes and his team at Growth River to help us clarify the approach we wanted to align around in our multiyear journey. The Growth River Operating System, and in particular the Seven Crucial Conversations, are all built upon a specific way of thinking about teams and organizations, a unique model for understanding businesses, and a particular perspective on how organizations grow and innovate in a team-based way. Richard and his team helped us understand these foundational concepts, which helped set the stage for our journey.
It's also important to note that the Growth River team helped us develop a common vernacular that's proven very helpful in how we approach situations. I've likened it to the language of accounting—everyone knows what a debit or credit is, for example, and we agree on what we're talking about when we use those words. I can't stress enough how important it is to establish a common language around transformation—it makes it easier for us to have meaningful conversations and ensure that we consistently understand each other.
In our case, we've developed a dialect that's unique to Edward Jones. It's connected to our culture and rooted in terminology we've used for a long time. We have added a language associated with a common understanding of how a high-performing team works in concert.
With this language in place, we can have conversations that build more trust with one another and can deeply engage on topics that are critical to our transformation. The language and behaviors of a high-performing team are not intended to make things easy—they exist to make challenging work more productive while unleashing the spirit of the terrifically talented people you have on your team. Richard's team helped us recognize the importance and power of our language and helped us establish a baseline for it. From there, it has become uniquely ours.
An Organization-Wide Approach
Growth River also helped us unlock the full potential of teams within our organization. The theory behind it is simple: we're able to do much more as a team than we can individually. Companies are not machines. They are social systems made up of individuals who themselves have a purpose and thirst to succeed and have impact. High-performing organizations are comprised of constellations of high-performing teams.
Teams are high-performing when they bring together all the necessary perspectives—in other words, the necessary elements to form a system of roles that enable a team to be in it together—to achieve the purpose of the enterprise, the business, and every person on the team. I've learned to never underestimate the power that this concept of role definition can provide in terms of clarity and focus. Defined roles unlock the human potential within teams and then across teams, ultimately lifting the entire organization.
Our leaders and associates lean into this philosophy, advocating for a particular set of priorities that are critical for our future success. They take ownership of that perspective because they know it will ultimately create the impact on our clients, colleagues, and communities that we want to have.
It's an approach that works because we are organized around a shared purpose. That purpose is to partner for positive impact to improve the lives of our clients and colleagues, and together, better our communities and society. It's a purpose that guides everything we do. Every decision is made, and every action is done, through the lens of our purpose. It's our “why.” It reinforces the notion that our firm does not exist only to help people build wealth. We're more than that. We help people achieve things they might never have otherwise thought possible. We help them connect to their own purpose and bring it to life. Our purpose is the wellspring of our culture, leadership, business strategy, capabilities approach, and operating model. It demands that there be a logical connection among all those dimensions of our approach to growth and innovation.
For us to be able to serve our purpose throughout our second century in business as well as we did during our first, we must transform. Our purpose demands it.
It's equally important that our transformation be leader-led. Our leaders need to live and champion the mindsets needed for our transformation to succeed—their habits of thought and action need to always be in alignment with our goals and our desire to fulfill our purpose. But you don't just “tell” someone about this. Living it out, together, through shared experiences and a journey of discovery and learning, unleashes an ardor for the future that inspires leaders to engage others as they navigate the uncertainty of changing and learning. It's challenging, but it's worth it—the opportunity cost of not changing, of not adapting to the forces impacting our industry and our business, is too high.
How We're Transforming
As we build on our history and pivot toward the future, the conditions are right for our transformational journey. And we're once again working to stay ahead of the conditions of the stakeholders we seek to serve—the changing needs of investors, a new regulatory environment and pricing and competition pressures, the demands of talented associates, and the needs of our communities in order to be places where people can thrive.
Choosing not to change in our circumstances is also a fixed-mindset approach—and we're choosing to take a growth-mindset approach. That's critical to creating future innovation, staying relevant, and enhancing value to our clients, colleagues, and communities.
Exploring approaches like Agile, Lean, and Design Thinking has proven useful to us in our transformation, as these concepts have helped us recognize what vertical change might look like at the level of processes and operations. In that respect, they really can be quite powerful. The Seven Crucial Conversations referenced in this book, however, are designed to enact vertical change at the level of the social system itself. Resolving constraints at the social-system level is a unique and powerful type of transformation accelerator—the kind that has the potential to move an entire enterprise forward.
Perhaps the hardest part in any transformation is knowing where to start. It can feel like a daunting task, especially for a large, complex organization. It's too easy to start with the “whats” of change—what systems, what process, what talent, what technology. Importantly, Richard and the Growth River team helped us identify a strong starting point—with leadership and with culture, where a deeper understanding of and alignment around the need for transformation must take root and be shared. As Richard himself describes it, “Leadership and cultural agility are the launchpad for all successful transformational change journeys.”
Once that learning culture is well established, then an organization and its leaders are able to move onto clarifying roles and identifying the capabilities the organization needs to develop—or not. Only at this stage can leaders begin the work of connecting the right people with the right work and giving them clear accountabilities and responsibilities.
From there, the transformation can progress to establishing strategies and building the right customer experience—which in turn accelerates the organization's ability to activate the operating system of developing, selling, and delivering its product or service within the context of the company's unique competitive advantage.
On paper, this all sounds straightforward, doesn't it? But believe me, in practice, it's not. The work of getting through this progression is the messy middle that requires equal parts IQ and EQ—knowledge and empathy—for the transformation to succeed. It also helps to have a good dose of stubborn determination to journey on through the learning.
In our case, we made significant changes to the structure and style of our leadership. We moved from a top-down directive leadership style to a distributed leadership approach in which we've spread decision-making out across a number of groups—seeking to put decisions closest to where value is created. This approach creates a team-based way of working that's supported by functional areas and is fueled by distributed intelligence and innovation.
Specifically, the most fundamental change we've made is to alter our leadership structure. Previously, we had two committees, an Executive Committee and a Management Committee, through which every major decision was funneled. Now we have a series of forums, each with their own clear roles. This revised structure allows us to move decision-making closer to those who are directly responsible for the work, and ultimately closer to our branch teams and clients.
In this new format, leadership is distributed; each forum comprises a group of leaders responsible for solving the complex challenges we face as an organization. And because different people are responsible for different aspects of our complexity, we have to trust each other. And we do. In that way, team-based leadership is clearly a journey into the interior of each leader, and the alignment of each of those humans to the worthy ambition of the entire enterprise.
Within these forums, the job of leadership is to create alignment—which is not the same as creating agreement. Alignment requires that all participants in the adaptive social system choose to move in the direction of growth. The key is being adaptive and always pointing to growth and innovation—not stagnating around yesterday's value, but discerning tomorrow's value and organizing to create it in sustainable ways that are fit for market.
The key for us will be to ensure that everyone in the Edward Jones organization—all 50,000 of our associates, including me—is going full-out in their role. Transformation is hard; it takes all of us pulling in the same direction. None of us has the luxury of sitting back and allowing “others” to do the heavy lifting. Each of us gets to be an active participant.
That approach is one that must take root at the senior leadership level first, and from there, it can make its way through the entire organization. Our leaders set the example and actively help others develop the mindsets and behaviors we all need to orient ourselves and enhance our ability to live out our shared purpose. We are the “lid” on our organization's success and growth. Whatever becomes available to us in our learning journey and our relationships becomes available to everyone else. It's how we lift the lid and enable our organization to achieve more. (The opposite is also true—if we can't build healthy, productive interdependencies among us in leadership, no one else should be expected to either.)
Growth River's Valuable Contribution
As we've embarked on our transformational journey, the Growth River team has played a fundamental role in the work we've done. I often refer to them as our Sherpas on our path to becoming a high-performing organization. That's because, while they guide us and provide much-needed expertise and perspective, the work is still ours to lead and to own. Richard and his team have consulted with us, but they have also deeply engaged with our teams, offering feedback and truly being in it with us.
Growth River's core tenet, that teams and organizations can achieve so much more than individuals can on their own, is one we fully believe in. The people of Edward Jones create more positive impact for our clients, colleagues, and communities when we're all pulling in the same direction. The Seven Crucial Conversations help us work in a social system and help us move with more agility and confidence as we continue to transform over time.
I consider Richard to be more than a consultant; he's a friend and a fellow traveler on the road to make businesses more useful to all our stakeholders. I'm honored that he asked me to share my thoughts about his approach. I hope his ideas are helpful to you as you consider your own steps toward transformation and work toward unleashing the potential of your organization—and of your greatest asset, your people—to benefit your own clients, colleagues, community, and society.
Enjoy the book!
Penny
Acknowledgments
This book is the product of decades of innovation, application, and reflection among a group of thoughtful, caring, and generous leaders. You know who you are. Please accept my gratitude for enabling me to capture our shared insights. My hope for this book is that you will be able to point to multiple places in it and say “I shaped that, and I know it is true and pragmatic.”
To our clients—Alex, Amy, Andy, Bob, David, Gary, Joby, Josh, Julie, Kristen, Laura, Mary Ann, Mark, Marty, Michael, Nigel, Paul, Penny, Randy, Rich, Stacy, and Steve—thank you for giving me and my team the opportunity to create value with you and for you.
To my business partners—Robert, Everett, Deece, Bob, and Sri (in the United States), and Eb and Steffen (in Germany)—thank you for teaching me so much on our shared journey to unleash value in ourselves and others.
To my incredibly talented writing partners—Carter Phipps, Ellen Daly, and Joel Pitney—thank you for investing yourselves in translating the powerful ideas in this book into conversational language that is a pleasure to read.
To those of you who have contributed to the long and winding evolution of our company, Growth River—Marsha, Ted, Tom, Tim, Cristo, Sylvia, Steve, and Dan—thank you for the time together.
To those of you who contributed to my personal and professional learning journey—Ben, Mike, David, Bob, Sam, Howard, Klaus, Thom, Robin, and Jazmine—thank you for your support and coaching.
To Growth River associates—Andrea, Aya, Emma, Fran, Jeannine, Jenn, Louise, Nina, and Samta—thank you for helping us build a great team.
To animal friends—Adele, Blue, Brandy, Cinnamon, Gaspar, Katie, Lisa, Lyla, Muffin, Trinity, and Uxmal.
To my daughters, parents, siblings, and extended family—Emma, Isabelle, and Sophie; Dabby, Dudley; Andy, Jenny, and Tim; Abe, Amy, Avery, Barbara, Bo, Benjamin, Cassie, Chaz, Chris, Genevieve, Hannah, Harry, Herb, Hildegard, Holly, Janet, Joby, John, Karl, Katrina, Lily, Lorraine, Lynn, Maisie, Mattie, Mary, Matty, Meg, Mimi, Phoebe, Reilly, Sam, Wade, and Zack—thank you for your steady love. I hope this book fuels your dreams and possibilities.
A Note to the Reader: How to Use This Book
The objective of this book is to plant seeds for a shared language, one that enables team members to work together in a deeply human way to evolve and grow companies. For these seeds to take root requires working through the three parts in this book in sequence. If your objective is to apply the Seven Crucial Conversations to plan a major transformational initiative, such as a breakthrough strategy, cultural transformation, or organizational redesign, use this book to create a context for key stakeholders to understand your plan.
This book has been many years in the making, and I'm delighted that it is finally in the hands of readers like you. It has been designed to share what I call the Growth River Operating System—a tightly integrated set of concepts, frameworks, and processes to guide teams and organizations on a transformational journey of growth. I use the term operating system because it is the best term that I've encountered to describe the systemic nature of this methodology—the way it provides a platform for ongoing growth and transformation in multiple dimensions of the organization. However, unlike a new OS on your computer, it's not just a package you can install with a click and a reboot. It is much more dynamic and requires ongoing engagement and participation. What I hope to provide you with in the pages that follow is a framework to understand the journey, and a shared language to describe the work you do, the potentials you see, and the challenges you face. I will highlight the key milestones on the journey to higher performance and offer processes for getting teams and businesses aligned. At the heart of this approach are the Seven Crucial Conversations referenced in the book's subtitle.
That being said, you might expect to turn the page and start with conversation 1. But that's not how this book is structured. Indeed, you might be surprised to find that the Seven Crucial Conversations don't appear until Part III. This is because those conversations are designed to take place within a particular framework. Parts I and II provide critical context for the conversations, inviting everyone—whether you are an enterprise leader, or a team member at any level of the organization—to take in the big picture, to step back and understand the broader journey of enterprise evolution.
I'll start with some fundamental questions that anyone serious about organizational change must grapple with. Part I: Framing the Conversation, asks: What is an organization? What is a business? And what does it mean for organizations and businesses to grow and transform? Considering these questions will provide critical shared language, models, and frameworks for the journey ahead.
Part II: The Evolution of an Enterprise, takes readers inside that journey from the perspective of the organization as a whole—starting with the formation of a business and moving through the four stages of enterprise evolution by which it can grow and transform into a large, complex, agile enterprise. In this journey, we zero in on the particular stage where many of today's companies get stuck, and analyze the confluence of factors that come together to create a transformational tipping point that I suspect will be familiar to many readers. I'll introduce new ways of thinking about roles, capabilities, business models, strategies, and teams that can help to anchor you in a higher stage of organizational evolution.
In Part III: The Seven Crucial Conversations, we will turn our attention to the building blocks of the organization—teams. The Seven Crucial Conversations are a transformational template for creating and sustaining a high-performing team—covering leadership, culture, roles, strategies, implementation, and more.
You may be tempted to jump right to Part III, but I'd encourage you to work through the book in sequence. No matter where you sit in your organization's system of roles, you'll benefit from taking in the big picture and considering the journey as a whole as well as engaging more deeply in your particular team and accelerating its journey to high performance. So let's begin! First, I'll invite you to consider an experience that may be all too familiar. I call it the Swirl …
Introduction:The Swirl
“We're failing and we don't know why.”
“We seem to be succeeding, but we have no idea how.”
“Our industry is changing so fast, we don't know how to keep up.”
“We're doing the same things we've always done, but it's not working for us anymore.”
“We're moving quickly, but we're not sure if we're going in the right direction.”
“There are so many competing priorities, we can't seem to make decisions fast enough.”
“Everyone is working hard but we're tripping over each other.”
“We're stuck. We don't seem to be going anywhere.”
Do these sentiments sound familiar? Most people in business are on intimate terms with some—or all—of these frustrating experiences. While they might sound like different, even contradictory, states, in fact they feel quite similar. And nothing captures that common feeling quite so well as one metaphor I hear again and again: the Swirl.
Imagine being lost in a churning river, thrown around by the rushing water. You might feel like you're being tumbled down dangerous rapids; you might feel like you're being spun around in a dizzying whirlpool; you might feel like you're entangled in rocks and roots and are hardly moving at all. There's a vague, uncomfortable feeling that a lot is happening around you, but it's hard to know if any of it is actually useful. The swirl is ongoing, but is anything getting clearer? Amidst all the sound and fury, is the team, the organization, or the business moving forward? And how would you know? A tremendous amount of energy is being expended, but to exactly what end?
Whatever the particulars, too many people I meet seem to live with a gnawing feeling that their team and indeed, their organizations as a whole, could and should run more smoothly, more purposefully, and more effectively. They long for a sense of direction and flow—like a broad, deep river flowing steadily toward the ocean, gaining momentum and power. They sense the potential, and many even have a vision of what's possible—a vision that inspires and motivates them. But they are unable to actualize it amidst the daily swirl. They have an aspiration to be part of a great company, populated with engaged, accountable, committed people doing meaningful work to serve the company's customers and other stakeholders. But they don't know exactly what changes they need to make to achieve this end. They may even have a sense of what needs to be done, but the task feels too daunting. Despite their positive aspiration, the gap between “here” and “there” is an uncomfortable chasm of confusion, and too often, at the bottom of that chasm lies a rusty wreckage of false starts. Elegant strategic plans. Expensive consultants. Inspiring off-sites. Complicated re-orgs. Their daily experience is not the buoyant current carrying them forward, it's the Swirl.
The Swirl is an absorbing state of organizational inertia. It draws our perspective in on itself, narrowing our vision. Our very consciousness runs aground in the muck of the everyday. There is always another problem to solve, pain point to acknowledge, issue to fix, turf battle to win, drama to ameliorate, or political challenge to overcome. And in the midst of it all, we lose track of the future. We forget that we're all on a journey together. Questions like “Where are we going?” and “How do we move forward together?” fade into the background as the endless demands of the everyday stifle our momentum like heavy weeds entangling the rudder of a boat.
I've been an organizational consultant for several decades, and have guided hundreds of organizations, large and small, as they have navigated the journey of growth. And what I've observed is that the Swirl isn't just an expression of organizational dysfunction. This all-too-common experience is a symptom of a much greater challenge. In fact, it might be described as the defining challenge facing organizations today. It's not just a sign that something's wrong with the way things are; it's a wake-up call that signals greater potentials ahead. It represents a critical inflection point in growth that most companies will encounter at a certain stage of their journeys—and that many are finding themselves in the midst of right now. There are a number of factors, both internal and external, that come together to create this frustrating experience. I'll explore these in more depth in the pages ahead, but it comes down to a few key issues.
Internally, it happens when the company reaches a point at which one leader or small top team, however good they may be, can no longer simply direct the company's operations and guide its growth. This may be a result of the company's size or the complexity of the business model; it may also be because the culture of the organization has started to chafe against traditional hierarchy and bureaucracy. Senior leaders and teams no longer have the bandwidth to be in the salient details of the business. They have become remote managers, dependent on others for key insights into business and operations. They are too far away from where the value is actually created.
Externally, it happens because the world around the company, the technologies available, and the markets in which it is operating are changing faster than the company is able to respond. In today's business world, that experience is heightened by circumstances like the Covid-19 pandemic, which has overturned the way we work, leaving organizations large and small frantically paddling, trying to figure out how to operate with a remote workforce while at the same time reinventing business models to meet new rules and more challenging market conditions. And there's no going back to business as usual. The questions we're asking now—How do we align a team and work interdependently when we're not in the same space? How do we make our business models more resilient? How do we win customers' loyalty so they'll stick with us during tough times?—will all continue to be relevant. And the underlying challenge for so many organizations today is this: How do we move from a hierarchical structure with one leader or executive team at the top to a more networked or team-based structure in which leadership is distributed throughout the organization? I call this the shift from directive leadership to distributed leadership.
I'm certainly not the first to broadly identify this as the critical organizational challenge of our time. Many distinguished business thinkers and leaders have addressed it, and many innovative solutions have been and continue to be proposed, developed, and adopted. Some focus on changing the way leaders lead; others focus on shifting corporate culture to be more inclusive and equitable. Some involve radical shifts in organizational structure to eliminate hierarchy or bureaucracy; others rely on the implementation of operational processes and practices that create more agility and flexibility. I've come to believe that all these approaches have a role to play if an organization is to truly free itself from the Swirl and meet the challenges of the moment.
In 2007, with a group of talented business leaders, I founded Growth River, with the intention of bringing together everything I've learned and sharing it with teams and organizations that want to unleash higher performance. I call it the Growth River Operating System. It's based in my own experience and practice, but it also draws on and attempts to connect some of the best thinking in organizational development and business theory—including Lean, Agile, Theory of Constraints, and Operational Excellence (OpEx). I've also been influenced by other disciplines—complexity theory, evolutionary biology, systems theory, psychology, ontology, and integral philosophy. If that's starting to sound too high-minded, let me assure you that all my thinking and approach has been forged in the crucible of creating growth and delivering value. This is a rational, systematic, analytical, and results-driven approach that includes a comprehensive leadership and management toolbox. And front and center in this approach are people: messy, inspiring, unpredictable, creative, surprising human beings. After all, what is a business without people, for better and for worse?
Because people are front and center in this approach, the “social system” of an organization will get special attention in these pages. It's an essential aspect of the Growth River approach, culminating in the Seven Crucial Conversations. After all, the Swirl is an expression of a dysfunctional social system. Growth and high performance are the product of a social system intentionally created. The road to such a transformation must ultimately pass through individuals and teams, and the productive and purposeful conversations they engage in. Change driven at this level of the organization has the potential to reach all the way down to the ground, and take root.
This is not a theoretical supposition. My experience has shown me that there is a way out of the Swirl. There is a flow to the development of a team and the growth of a business. There is a steady current that can guide us from unproductive chaos to high performance, and that can carry a company from bogged-down and bureaucratic to agile and collaborative. And you don't have to figure it all out for yourself—you can chart your course by principles that are tested and proven.
That doesn't mean you'll always be able to see the way ahead, however—by its very nature this is a transformational journey, a form of fundamental change that reorganizes the whole system of roles and relationships that the organization is built around. How that might look and how it might feel is difficult if not impossible to imagine when you are on the front side of it.
I can't tell you that the journey will be easy. Transformational journeys aren't like that—at least not when they involve human beings. They offer too much to be proffered for so little. This journey will involve real work—reflective moments, honest conversations, hard-won insights, and difficult choices. It will include making important distinctions about team, business, and organizational life. And it will require courageous leadership.
If you're holding this book in your hands, I will consider you a leader, whether your job title confers that role officially or not. Anyone can be a leader on this transformational journey. Wherever you sit in your organization's system of roles, you have the opportunity to use the language, tools, and ideas in this book to create greater alignment and growth among your team. Whether that team is a small functional team responsible for a specific task or an executive team steering the company, its transformation will inspire and catalyze higher potentials in other teams. As teams become high performing, the organization becomes high performing. And as the organization becomes high performing, so, too, do its business models.
So, are you ready to break free of the Swirl? If you're failing, do you want to understand why, so you can change course? If you're succeeding, do you want to know how and be able to accelerate that success? If you're in a fast-changing industry, do you want to get ahead of the trends? If your old ways of doing things no longer work, are you open to trying something new? If you're moving fast, wouldn't you like to be sure you're headed in the right direction? If you're feeling stuck, are you ready to break free? There's never been a better moment to launch your team, your organization, and your business on the river of growth and transformation.
PART 1Framing the Conversation
Organization. Business. Growth. Transformation. If you've picked up this book, there's a very good chance that those words mean something to you. But what exactly do they mean? Have you ever stopped to think deeply about what those terms represent? And do they mean the same thing to you as they do to the other people you're working with? If you want to embark on a transformational journey together—to engage in crucial conversations that will carry you forward—it's essential to be aligned around the core concepts, frameworks, and ideas that will shape that journey.
