Energize Your Enterprise!

by J. Douglas Bate

The economists have been telling us for several months now that the recession of 2008-2009 is winding down. That should be great news for everyone in business or nonprofit organizations. It signals the end of budget cuts, layoff threats, pressure to do more with less, infighting on policies, and bad news from customers and funding sources. Happy days are here again, right?

So why did the recent Conference Board survey reveal that only 45% of workers are satisfied with their jobs? And these are people who are lucky enough to have jobs. Perhaps the end of the recession is more theoretical than real. Perhaps there is a negative hangover of a constant stream of bad news over the past year. Perhaps there is a cynicism that has developed about the strength of your enterprise and its prospects for the future.

Whatever the source of the malaise, it is time to address it. It is time to make a break with the recession and create plans for a vibrant, growth-oriented future. It is time to energize your enterprise!

Lift Your Sights and Think BEYOND
The best way to get an organization energized is to shift its perspective. Most people spend their days working and thinking WITHIN. They operate WITHIN a tight budget, they talk mainly to people WITHIN the company, they explore opportunities WITHIN the current marketplace or service realm, and they focus WITHIN a one or two year time window. The world will look completely different to them if they have an opportunity to shift their perspective from WITHIN to BEYOND. Ask them to think about questions that are BEYOND their current responsibilities and constraints. How would they operate to significantly improve or grow the enterprise if their budgets were doubled or tripled? What trends are taking place now that could have a major impact on the enterprise in five years? If they could partner with another organization to significantly improve your product or service offering, who would they partner with? These are important questions that go BEYOND the current strategy of the enterprise and reveal possibilities for growth, enhancement, and improvement. Just the opportunity to discuss these issues will create a series of significant improvements in the organization:

People will appreciate being asked for their opinions about strategic issues and feel valued for their contributions.
Focusing on possibilities for the future will help put the challenges of the past year in perspective, a bump in the road rather than a dead end street.
Exploring future possibilities without having to commit to any action today is energizing, as it engages the imagination instead of the analytical brain.
The act of creating new future possibilities and scenarios will be a bonding experience for those involved, deepening relationships across functions.
The discussion will create a shared language and symbols that will align the organization as it considers its growth opportunities for the future.

Create a Future Forum
To energize your enterprise, create some time to explore the future together. Putting aside a day, perhaps a retreat day at an offsite location, is ideal. Invite everyone to participate but don’t force attendance, except for the senior leadership team. It is helpful to have an outside facilitator, so it doesn’t appear that any one group or department is taking charge of the future. But an unbiased internal facilitator can work very well also. The process used in the session should be customized to fit the mission and personality of the organization. However, listed below are some generic activity areas that will work well in most organizations:

Opening/Introduction – Start with a fun way for people to introduce themselves, something that goes beyond, “I’m Fred, from Accounting.” One of my favorites is to ask people to share with the group their favorite vacation spots. Be creative and make it fun, because that is the tone you want to set for the day. Set up the meeting by putting people at ease, letting them know that there is no right or wrong answer, that anything is possible five years from now, and that everything discussed and recorded will contribute to the evolving strategy of the organization. Make it clear that senior leaders are there to listen and not judge what they hear, making everyone’s contribution of equal value.

Values Exploration – Every organization operates on a set of values, whether they are articulated or not. What values/beliefs in your organization tend to drive decision-making? What behaviors does the organization celebrate? What is it really trying to achieve? Why do people want to work there? Spend some time exploring these values together. What values seem to generate the most emotion with people? If you can find that, you will know the source of energy for the organization. Any future changes should look to protect and enhance that energy source because that is what makes employees committed, not just compliant.

Future Exploration – While we seem to read every day about dire predictions of the future, the fact is that the future has not yet been created. It is a movie that has not yet been filmed. So proactive decisions made today CAN affect the future; it can be created in a way that is favorable to your organization. Spend some time exploring trends for the future – at least five years out. For example,Baby Boomers will retire, replaced by Generations X and Y with very different habits, perspectives, and needs. Technology will continue to grow in importance. Energy, sustainability, and global markets will likely have both positive and negative impacts. What do these trends mean for your organization? What are the most critical trends? And, most importantly, which ones can you leverage to make your future enterprise stronger?

Capture the Ideal Future – Combine your organization’s strongest values with the trends that will have the greatest impact on your future. What could it look like if you put these two things together? What could you be doing differently in five years that would significantly increase your impact? How could your organization evolve to meet the everchanging needs of the future? What could the next “era” of your enterprise look like? Break the group up into smaller teams to identify what an ideal future could look like. This is not yet a strategy or a plan so there is no right or wrong – only possibilities. I like to have people draw something that depicts this ideal future. What would it look like when your enterprise has evolved to play a more significant role in the world of the future? How could you be improving or expanding your mission in five years?

Look for Your Strategic Frontier – Ask all of the subgroups to present their views of an ideal future to the larger group. How do they compare? Is there a great deal of variety to these future scenarios? Or is most everyone aligned on what it could look like? Take some time to discuss the future possibilities. Look for common threads running across many of them. See if you can identify a short list of “strategic frontiers” for your organization to consider. A strategic frontier is an area of potential growth for your enterprise that is currently BEYOND the way you operate today. It may be a new customer base, a new technology, and new geographic focus, a new marketing opportunity, or even a new partnership – anything that offers new growth potential. The output of this day will be a short list of strategic frontiers for your organization to consider for the future. Give each of the frontiers a name, such as mobile technology, alternative energy, partnerships, or enhanced customer experience. A strategic frontier is not yet a plan, it’s more like a dream. It is an intriguing future growth possibility that willneed to be researched, ideated, and evaluated before it can become a plan. But if senior leaders agree to consider this strategic frontier for growth, it may become a reality in five years. Conducting a creative session that focuses the entire organization on future possibilities for growth is a very energizing activity. Use it to announce that the economic nightmare of the past year is history and that the focus can now turn to future growth and fulfillment of your organization’s destiny. That will energize your enterprise!

Doug Bate is a founding partner of The Visterra Group, a consulting company focused on strategy innovation for both corporate and non-profit clients. He is co-author, with Bob Johnston, of The Power of Strategy Innovation, published by the American Management Association. Doug can be reached at (978) 689-4349 or jdbate1@gmail.com.

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