With YM3 CEO Anna Yerondais, I recently conducted a culture and performance workshop on behalf of YM3. My involvement with YM3 is as a Director.
YM3 is an independent advisory firm that helps leaders realise their organisation’s potential.
We are experienced mentors, CEOs, business founders and board directors. We run or have run businesses, member associations, peak bodies, not-for-profit organisations and sit on boards in Australia and overseas.
We are fuelled by a passion for great leadership and backed by more than 100 years of combined experience.
The Directors of YM3 pictured above are Cris Massis , Nello Marino Anna Graham nee Yerondais and myself.
Culture
“Culture” is an interesting subject and structuring the event relied on a comprehensive questionnaire distributed to all participants. The frankness and depth of the respondent’s feedback provided important data informing us to understand the current status and areas for the business to build upon. Having a robust culture where there is honesty as well as clear understanding of an associations or healthcare businesses objectives is a challenge for any venture. The other leading point of discussion is around how a good culture, well led and with a clear plan can implement the plan and keep all participants engaged for the journey. Spending the day with the group was a great privilege and seeking to draw out participants a challenge at times.
Performance
Our afternoon was spent exploring the aspect of “performance” and how to move from “good to great”. I explored with the group some measures that I had read from a timeless book called “Good to great” by Jim Collins et al. It is worth exploring to gain insights from companies that had made the transition from being good to being great based on detailed measures of stock market values, growth, longevity etc. To give more insight, I will highlight some of the measures explored, namely :
Level Five Leadership
Such Leaders are Self effacing, quiet, reserved, even shy.
They exhibit a paradoxical blend of personal humility and professional will and a compelling modesty. Good to great leaders did not speak about themselves
First who, then what
Get the right people on the bus and in the right seats and the wrong people off. Then figure out where to drive it.
Confront the brutal facts (yet never lose faith)
You must maintain unwavering faith that you can and will prevail in the end regardless of the difficulties AND at the same time have the discipline to confront the brutal facts of your current reality, whatever they might be
The hedgehog concept
Hedgehogs see what is essential and ignore the rest. Understand what you can and cannot be the best at. What are you deeply passionate about. What you can be the best in the world at.
Culture of discipline
All Companies have a culture, some companies have discipline, but few companies have a culture of discipline. When you have disciplined people, you don’t need hierarchy and when you have disciplined thought you don’t need bureaucracy
Technology accelerators
Highly relevant with AI. Think differently about the role of tech. Never use tech as the primary means of igniting a transformation
The flywheel and the doom loop
Good to great transformations never happened in one fell swoop. There was no defining action, no one killer innovation, no miracle moment. Rather, the process resembled relentlessly pushing a giant heavy flywheel in one direction, turn by turn, building momentum until a point of breakthrough and beyond.
How do these elements apply to you and your enterprise?
The above elements were considered to be common to all great companies. That said we need to take them in context to ensure they are useful in the environments we all work in. They may provide a framework for you to consider how your enterprise shapes up against them!
As experienced at the workshop, working with committed teams of people is always satisfying and this event was no less so.
YM3 is keen to build on this workshop and explore other ways to engage with associations and companies in an effort to build on their existing strengths and assist them to move from being good to great.
For more information visit our website www.ym3.com.au
