When leaders operate with purpose, and stakeholders agree on a plan with clearly defined addressable markets, priority products / services, rationalized target client lists and marketing programs that directly support the plan, decisions can be made with speed AND confidence. Absence of a clearly defined plan or initiatives without stakeholder alignment often resemble "fire, ready, aim" or "random acts of marketing" approaches with are risky. In today's competitive landscape where innovation and differentiation are key, it's important to move fast. Planning doesn't have to be "analysis paralysis". Planning, done right, enables speed!
I think practice sessions can enable speed because it can create "muscle memory" that can be critical for certain initiatives -- enables speed because you can act without having to think about it. But practice sessions need to also be with purpose.
The leader controls when they send, not when it arrives. A decision timed correctly for the boardroom may reach middle management when the operational context has already shifted. Reception has its own timing, and it runs independently of the moment of sending. The window the leader is watching is not the window their organisation is in when the message lands.
Timing is not just a decision, it is a design problem. When does it need to land, and for whom, to be received as intended?
Your observations point to the need for practiced communication skills and consensus building. Do you believe each organization is unique in its Reception ability? Is this a skill set to adopt or culturally dependent?
Both, and I'd add a third. Reception is partly cultural, some organisations are better wired to hear things, shaped by history and by who holds authority; partly a skill set that managers can develop.
But it's also structural. The channels a message travels through determine what the organisation can actually receive and when. A leader can have strong skills and an open culture and still find that a decision took three months to reach the people whose behaviour it was supposed to change. The structure was the bottleneck, not the intent.
The question I find more useful than "how receptive is this organisation" is: where does a message slow down, and at which layer?
Sometimes the right guidance is, “Don’t just do something, stand there!”
In addition to focusing on the the right quality of information instead of quantity (good advice), the sequence of events and actions is often even more important.
If you’re trying to find a root cause and fix a problem, it’s easy to try to change everything you think might be wrong. But you have to change one thing at a time and see whether that worked or not.
If you’re working with a customer or a competitor, it becomes a chess game. Once you make a move, you often have to wait for the other side to make their move no matter how slow they are. It can be crucial to resist the temptation to pick up the phone or send an email when the right answer is to wait.
When leaders operate with purpose, and stakeholders agree on a plan with clearly defined addressable markets, priority products / services, rationalized target client lists and marketing programs that directly support the plan, decisions can be made with speed AND confidence. Absence of a clearly defined plan or initiatives without stakeholder alignment often resemble "fire, ready, aim" or "random acts of marketing" approaches with are risky. In today's competitive landscape where innovation and differentiation are key, it's important to move fast. Planning doesn't have to be "analysis paralysis". Planning, done right, enables speed!
Yes. Do you find practice sessions with your team enables speed in the same way, Teresa?
I think practice sessions can enable speed because it can create "muscle memory" that can be critical for certain initiatives -- enables speed because you can act without having to think about it. But practice sessions need to also be with purpose.
The leader controls when they send, not when it arrives. A decision timed correctly for the boardroom may reach middle management when the operational context has already shifted. Reception has its own timing, and it runs independently of the moment of sending. The window the leader is watching is not the window their organisation is in when the message lands.
Timing is not just a decision, it is a design problem. When does it need to land, and for whom, to be received as intended?
Your observations point to the need for practiced communication skills and consensus building. Do you believe each organization is unique in its Reception ability? Is this a skill set to adopt or culturally dependent?
Both, and I'd add a third. Reception is partly cultural, some organisations are better wired to hear things, shaped by history and by who holds authority; partly a skill set that managers can develop.
But it's also structural. The channels a message travels through determine what the organisation can actually receive and when. A leader can have strong skills and an open culture and still find that a decision took three months to reach the people whose behaviour it was supposed to change. The structure was the bottleneck, not the intent.
The question I find more useful than "how receptive is this organisation" is: where does a message slow down, and at which layer?
Sometimes the right guidance is, “Don’t just do something, stand there!”
In addition to focusing on the the right quality of information instead of quantity (good advice), the sequence of events and actions is often even more important.
If you’re trying to find a root cause and fix a problem, it’s easy to try to change everything you think might be wrong. But you have to change one thing at a time and see whether that worked or not.
If you’re working with a customer or a competitor, it becomes a chess game. Once you make a move, you often have to wait for the other side to make their move no matter how slow they are. It can be crucial to resist the temptation to pick up the phone or send an email when the right answer is to wait.
អរគុណ រីករាយនិងអាន