My earlier blog was on understanding the stakeholder expectations, a prerequisite to create value for each of them through the shared purpose, as is the primary objective of any business.
Today, I am continuing with the next topic of creating a common understanding of the shared purpose, an inspiring one of course, and the current reality as the steppingstones for evolving a strategy.
This week I was awed again, while touring the New York City, and was intrigued with the thought of what drove and drives people of Manhattan, in a liberal democratic society. I wondered how good the common understanding of both the shared purpose and the current reality must have been, and is, to the people of New York, as I admired the New York skyline from the Edge Outdoor Skydeck, completed recently in 2020, after the first successful skyscraper was built in 1901.
Such amazing outcomes can only be achieved with a common understanding of the shared purpose and the current reality, since this naturally creates winning strategies with synergy for exponential growth.
You may argue that the 120-year-old New York skyline may be driven and may have to be driven with a common understanding, while a similar skyline was established in Shanghai in about 30 years. You are absolutely right with the timing, but I believe, even in the Shanghai success journey, common understanding would have been, and will always be, the key, however, the way of achieving this common understanding may be different than that of New York.
Even in companies a common understanding is a must for exponential growth with synergy. We use our doHow® assessments, typically taking about 4 hours, based on our different models for achieving this objective in 3 stages, after creating an anonymous assessment with some basic information.
Once the anonymous assessment is created, the facilitator, gets an email with the login credentials.
The email provides validation codes for 3 assessment stages – Individual, Team and Consensus.
The user needs to enter the individual validation code provided by the facilitator followed by choosing the options that best describe current reality.
Once all the key players in a company, as many as needed for inclusiveness, have submitted their choices anonymously, ahead of the workshop as a preparatory activity, the facilitator uses the summary as the basis for the next assessment stage, the team assessment.
The second stage is a team assessment, with a facilitator, for about two hours in small groups of 3-4 key players using the individual assessment results as an important information for seeking the necessary evidence, debating/discussing, and making the choices in the online assessment with the team validation key.
In our experience it is quite normal for the choices to be different, since during the 2 hours extremely focused intense discussions take place as each person experiences different perspectives along with evidence.
The third stage is a consensus assessment for about one hour, similar to the stage 2, with the facilitator entering the consensus choices using the consensus validation key.
This final assessment is a common understanding of all the key players, which naturally creates winning strategies with synergy for exponential growth. Our experience shows that the organisations with a common understanding demonstrate outstanding teamwork and are more successful.
You may find this process to be very democratic, which may be perceived as inefficient in organisations.
We believe establishing the common understanding must be democratic and must be done in consensus, so that the decision making, and execution can become extremely lean, quick and efficient without any passive barriers, a common occurrence in most of the companies.
Happy reading!