Operational Excellence help or hinder on making Culture tangible

A few weeks ago, I had the pleasure of attending a session with the famous Olympian Gold medal swimmer from the Netherlands. Who is currently leading Team NL to the next Olympic games in Japan. A session I reflect back on with lots of inspiration on how to manage through uncertainty, whilst enabling an high performance culture. Here my reflections of the conversation.   It starts with an Ambition Slogan, for the Olympic team translated into "Inspire a generation" what people do on the playing field and show off field, is what truly matters to become a champion when the games are not on. In this I see a clear parallel with Business, inspiration from common goal an higher purpose to align the minds.   The postponement of the Olympics, is a big disruption, a great program impacting a team that would have had a peak performance, and aligned all efforts to that specific moment in time. Acknowledge that tailor made solutions are needed for each different situation, i.e. with a year of delay this means that team set-up would or will be changed. Although people qualified to go to the Olympics it might mean that they are over the top, or get injured, or new talent is jumping to take a seat as they will be the best of best next year, different life choices etc.. Acknowledgment off and address these elements upfront, to keep the team motivated. Its start with the core values (together and respect), athletes are more then a gold medal, this requires to be honest and provide upfront with feedback on the situation.   We further discussed the job of the Chef the Mission or any leader, is to create a high-performance culture. One of the Olympic learnings came from the US and Australia. Between the best coaches of all different teams, they started to sharing knowledge from different sports / disciplines / ways of working/ universities to drive a different outcome, i.e. training SMART, next to Hard and take the required rest to recharge. The philosophy is simple, if you are already a top performer and reached a performance plateau, how can you break through? Not by doing more of the same, but by trying new things out from others that have reached a plateau of performance as well.   A key aspect of creating a high performing culture is Working hard every day try, to push each other, great sportsmanship, but pushing performance up. Great example provided was on Kieran and Dorian, the Dutch windsurfers, with only 1 ticket, whilst being best friends, they kept pushing each other up in performance knowing that only one would go, that is true sportsmanship, winning together.   A personal reflection was on the Olympics in Beijing, Swim fast in old fashion way, due to the change in technology i.e. the technology of suits, which Pieter didn't maximise he got 5th in Beijing. Here it was made clear that previous performance didn't count, its not about the best swimmer, but on all aspects around it, the best team, the best selected materials, although he set the best personal time ever, learning is that we need to operate within the circumstances provided, be flexible, learn on new techniques and get the best out of that situation.  We talked about the culture of working hard every day try to push each other , the great sportsmanship on pushing performance up (referencing Kieran and Dorian). I just finished watching the series on Netflix on "The Last dance" of Michael Jordan, it shows how hard some of the conversations need to be to get to best outcome. the question raises on how do we protect the culture of openness to drive these open upfront discussions enabling acceleration? we came to the conclusion that, in short referencing the last dance: Trust is key, building on personal strength, a common Goal, and respect each others specialism, refencing the role of Dennis Rodman in the Bulls team. A great example of what it takes to look at the complete person. Always be thank full to the team, being part of the team, as you as a leader are just part of the team, the gold medal is a team result!   In closure, lets avoid the negative attention, Be in the moment and Focus on the Ambition, Be open to learn and Share with others new insights. This is the key to increase performance and achieve Dynamic Value, a learning made possible through Sportsmanship!   

The Challenge Reality of today is that approximately 80% of work is executed by external companies. Therefore 80% of your information sits outside of your company. Our ability to innovate becomes more and more depended on our integration skills with internal as external partners. Innovation can only happen when we focus on there where the information sits. This links to our control frameworks and the impact on the Empowerment equation. Empowerment is based on putting decisions there where the information sits. Meaning that most innovation can only be realised outside of your own direct control. To realise innovation, we become more and more depend on our ability to work across organisational boundaries. Like many, I work in a tremendously complex matrix organisation. Recognising that we operate in tremendous complex organisations, matrixes, Joint Ventures, with all kinds of legislative boundaries as anti-competition laws, IP rights, internal power struggles etc.... My experience is that we are predominately hierarchal organised, focussed and drive conversations up and down instead of purpose driven, across organisations and value chains. Therefore the key challenge to address, is Why do we differentiate Internal vs External partnering, if we know that our future depends on our ability to innovate? A Solution The solution sits in how we align our behaviours towards dealing with internal as external stakeholders. In my view it would help if we Stop differentiating Internal vs External partnering. The behaviours of collaboration, and innovation is based on driving an outcome on mutual trust amongst Channel and Network members. We should start wit recognising the value of doing business doesn't differ internally as externally. As an example: a non functioning IT solution, delivered internally is not better then a non functioning IT solution delivered from an external company. Why would we show a different behaviour Internally vs Externally. Innovative networks will not come from internal partnering but how we collectively show up, driving a different culture and behaviour across the network nodes. Empower those that have the information and therefore going beyond organisational boundaries is a key element for success. To unlock this value, organisations require other behavioural imperatives: like a Collaboration mindset, the Courage to Empower, Trust beyond own control and the ability to drive innovation where the information sits. Most likely this requires a different recruiting approach not solely on the technical capability but more focussed on the above mentioned behavioural imperatives. Concepts as best resources to task, become more fluid without differentiating internal vs. external capability, driving simplification on behaviours and a more inclusive culture. The application of above will drive new and agile ways of working that go beyond organisational boundaries and across excelling networks. A food for thought piece, looking forward to hear alternative views.

This week I joined the Gattorna alignment thought leadership session for the third time. A get together of handpicked individuals. A great session with deepening explanations on the Gattona trademarked framework. Openly sharing learnings and best practices in light of the latest trends and updates to the concept frameworks established by Gattorna alignment. My interest and thinking in the area of alignment has been triggered by John Gattorna and his conceptual frameworks, since I got in contact early 2007. From there I started to put these in practice, building up empirical evidence and learnings on the frameworks. Truly leveraging on it in my own journey, whilst climbing the corporate ladder in Shell. John is a great inspiration on the frameworks of Dynamic Alignment and Debb on the associated analytics and insights, that go hand in hand. I'm confident that sharing the insights will helps us all to become true advocates of the alignment model. As an individual with deep interest of my own, I however do think that we need to go beyond the supply chain angle and build further on the value chain as earlier lectured at MIT. From where we can enhance the thinking with all the latest insights. This would position the thinking at the board level and truly drive the required changes we need ! A final note on the customer alignment, it does not limited itself to the external world outside of the organisation, but when applied within the organisation it unlocks a wealth of insights and value. As most customers sit internally within our own organisations. getting this right will allow us to serve the external customers even better… Looking forward to comments, thanks to John and Debb to spark my interest in the concepts of dynamic alignment TM. Your frameworks are game changers and we as business community have a lot to give back to enhance the frameworks even further. @network in practise. A big thank you to both of you and those contributing! Recommended read: Gattorna, John; Dynamic Supply Chains : How to design, build and manage people-centric value networks, 3rd Edition