Fraymed Leadership

Have you ever watched the first 8 minutes of Saving Private Ryan? It gives us a down and dirty view of war and the battlefield. I love to read Civil War history. The books I read all have pretty dioramas with the blue bars and red bars to depict troops and their direction. In trying to denote how the battles progressed, the diorama simplifies the overall battle activity. I had a consultant friend who visited me after several months of a management initiative I was leading and observed that I was not pushing hard enough or making progress. After peeling myself from the ceiling, I contemplated our different perspectives. I was on the beach and he was talking about the overall strategy. I was frayed from battle. A year later we could see the visual and tangible difference we made, but it was easy to lose heart at times along the way. This is part of the reason for the title of my blog, Fraymed Leadership. We are frayed from the battle but we have to keep framing the current environment and keep our eyes on the big picture. It takes a real balancing act to be sure.
In driving positive change, which is why we are in leadership and management roles, we must have a clear idea of where you are headed and be able to frame the current situation. In other words, define the outcomes you are looking for. This is the planning phase. Once you have a plan (don't get excited, it is just a plan, nothing is perfect the first time out) then you must work on how you will achieve your end outcomes.
There are a few key principles that I have come to trust in while framing the current situation and driving positive change:
1) Listen and watch the current environment. You have to be involved and do a deep dive with all participants to understand the true context.
2) Summarize your findings to the key thought leaders for validation of what you have heard and observed
3) Act as soon as possible by engineering and designing a new paradigm.
4) Communicate at least 7 times why, when and how you are acting
5) Listen and watch the impact of your change to begin preparing tweaks and or revisions to the original plan.
This may sound like the simple diorama I mentioned before, but it is real world tested on driving change in a chaotic environment. Leaders need to be flexible and act, but they can still follow some simple guidelines, even when frayed from the normal stress of the battle.