I have been harping about the incoming emergence that is set to make the world spin-literally with the reopening set for fall or early winter.

​Like preparedness for disasters and emergencies, how are you bracing up for the revival? 

Baby boomers are retiring and creating new businesses
Women workers are quitting their jobs and designing their careers 
The stock market is at all-time high!
Vaccine sharing is on the offing
Borders are slowly opening


On-purpose organizations should see themselves honestly in this rubric. This is not a sprint but a marathon. The closer you are to the ground, the better your responses will be. 


The Survivor-they will never prepare and invest in this great emergence because their main prerogative is to keep the house in order, first. 

The Wait-and-See-they have the cards on their chest and are wary of doing anything different than what they're currently operationally and strategically impelled to do.

The Provocateur-they saw the signs and realized that their current strategies and mentalities are  no longer viable for the future that's coming soon. They want to do something new now in a more intuitive and sustaining manner.

Are you the survivor, the wait-and-see, or the provocateur?

Do you feel like you're on a roller-coaster ride, navigating both smooth and rough waters simultaneously? 

Are you fed up with the constant barrage of the need for change but don't know how to start? Are you trying to wait until the pandemic is over before doing some long-term work in your organization?

It is your best self-interest to ensure that your organization remains competitive and growing in the years to come. Avoiding  atrophy is a challenge even in the most stable and secure organizations I know. 

If at night, you can't sleep because of missed opportunities, then there are reasons to do what's necessary not what's comfortable. 

Don't wait for the green signal. Take the next best step towards your greater impact. 

Employee engagement as based on research is defined as "asking for the employee to go the extra mile. " This is different from all the motivation, commitment, loyalty, and other positive feelings associated with the organizational affiliation of employees.

When it's about asking employees to go the extra mile, what does it really mean? 

The ugly side of this 'engagement' as some critics say, could be just a fad again, is the fact that how much more can we ask employees to go beyond and above their current performance.

Is this something that can only lead to more burnout, frustration, anxiety, and general negative disposition in the workplace?

Engagement linked to clear strategic objectives for the organization is a sound approach. However, going the extra mile when ill-defined, ill-conceived, and inconsistently measured can lead down a path of irreversible damage for the organization.

Don't let your HR tell you what employee engagement is. Everyone in the organization should decide what's it's all about and whether there are clear metrics attached to organizational success objectives that you can leverage to make it purposeful in your own work. 

What's the name of your game? What business are you in?

Let's start with McDonald's. You might think that they're there for flipping burgers and selling $1 coffee. Think again. They hold the best real estate everywhere they go, all over the world.

If you're on-purpose organization is about saving the world, think again. There's no such thing as saving the world in general terms and hope that it sticks. The more precise you are about you're raison d'etre, the more power you have to bring your mission out into the world.

Focus on what you are built up to do, not what you are tempted to do. 

Focus on external impacts for your main customers/clients. You exist to give value, no less than that proposition.

What differentiates with you from other organizations doing the same things are you values, ethics, and culture. 

These three things permeate all throughout the organization, creating tremendous impact on your bottom lines and your impact achievement. 

Name your game and be ultra-excellent in carrying out your mission, that no one can ignore you!
​

When everything is urgent, nothing is urgent.

When everything is a priority, nothing is a priority. 

Change efforts go by the wayside if there's not enough urgency within the organization
to ensure that it will be given an undivided attention and resources it needs. Moving the strategic priorities into implementation requires consistent and constant pressure from management that understands strategic management.

85% of strategic plans do not get implemented. When the rubber hits the road, the tendency is to focus on the day-t0-day mundane issues, relegating the higher objectives into the backburner.  This stop-and-go scenario will delay your progress and unconsciously reward inventing obstacles. 

Managers and leaders- stop treating all crisis as equal. You should know how to treat priorities as real priorities, or your employees will not believe another memo with an urgent stamp.

It's not what they hear, it's what they see in action that gets believed. 

In strategy, the conventional wisdom is to start from your current state/situation/position.

This is faulty and utterly difficult. Our status quo thinking and action propels us to look at what's in our current view. We rarely, in matters of management, look beyond, proactively because as Drucker said, we are constantly bogged down by "the tyranny of the mundane."

The leaders' and managers' job is not to solve problems but to look for opportunities. The future while fraught with uncertainty and high level of contradictions also provide a giant opportunity for innovation and applied creativity. Where to look is a good starting question.

We always look at the leading brands and organizations that are killing it even in the worst of times.  But, their trajectories and strengths are different. They also have 'failure money' to experiment without risking their mortgages and future pension.

You have to start with your good practice. You have to start with backward thinking and then create the strategies linking the present situation to your desired states. Some call it the zero moment, when the future states are achieved in the present. Before you even reach this stage, you would be already on to your next-level challenge for your organization. 

How much of your time these days is devoted to focusing on future prospects and opportunities, and how much time minding the daily business of keeping the lights on?

​

In times of crisis, calamity, and/or disaster, we turn to the people that we trust to get advice, feedback, or correct information.

The Internet and the public space have churned in enormous amount of the same information regurgitated in many forms and at various levels.

After the first few weeks of the pandemic, none of them is useful anymore.

The world had moved on and the people have coped well despite the initial fear and chaos.

We don't need a crystal ball or sooth sayers. We need independent thinkers. 

Now, it is imperative to  reimagine organizations that can progress past-COVID19, in a new dispensation that does not respect past records of success.

There are two types of organizations responding well to post-recovery:

One type of organization refuses to get behind the public path to recovery and have chosen to enact their own norms and policies that demonstrate clear strategic awareness of their organizational capabilities and understanding of the dynamics around them. They have made 'lemonades out of the lemons' and unafraid to keep on reinventing themselves to get the right challenge they need. 

Another type of organization is preparing themselves to have multiple capabilities on various types of implementation and service delivery. At the granular level, it means that staff will be competent whatever the next 6 to 12 months will be. There is no more postponement or cancellation of programming, but all will be migrated to virtual delivery. The knee-jerk reaction is over.

Going above the noise of recovery is a challenge in itself. This means that leaders should have the clarity of intent and objectives with the latest information on what's allowable and not. The rest hinges on the boldness of their imagination.