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Creating Agility Super Heroes?
By Tom O'Shea, CMC, Organizational Agility Practice Leader

MAY THE FORCE BE WITH YOU!

Or since it was recently STAR WARS DAY ... "May the Fourth be with you!"

Anyone living and alert in the past couple of decades will undoubtably recognize the exhortation ...may the "force" be with you!  The STAR WARS phenomenon has dominated the big screen as well as the follow-on merchandising bonanza for many, many years.  John Lucas and Steven Spielberg have been the "masters of the universe" in creating powerful images, animation and memorable characters for years on end!

The notion of SUPER HEROES is captivating, especially so for our young people who have grown up (and even those still in process) with full color, 3D animated and virtual reality ... like my two grandsons who are obsessed with the super hero identity. Just like your kids, grandkids, nieces or nephews - my two MUST dress up as super heroes every single day - even as they swap out the actual character.  My 3 year old grandson was even recently captured in full super hero costume whispering to his 3 month old baby sister ... "Don't worry, I will protect you"!

This past week, I was able to spend a full week opening up a new, extraordinary client with one of my super-hero partners,  Mike Richardson - based in the greater San Diego wine country (nice).  Our client is a major player in the interactive entertainment industry and routinely designs, programs and packages incredible super-hero epic experiences!  We worked with some of their emerging leaders  doing two day Team Agility workshops in their southern and northern California operating centers.    

By Mike Richardson, Team Agility Practice Leader
 
This month's Harvard Business Review captures the agility challenge for CEOs, Executives and their teams these days - What Great CEOs Do Differently (May-June 2017), resulting from a 10 year study called the CEO Genome Project, identifying the specific attributes that differentiate high-performing CEOs.
"Our most important discovery was that successful chief executives tend to demonstrate four specific behaviors that prove critical to their performance. We also found that when boards focus on those behaviors in their selection and development processes, they significantly increase their chances of hiring the right CEO. And our research and experience suggest that when leaders who aspire to the CEO's office-87% of executives, according to a 2014 survey from Korn Ferry-deliberately develop those behaviors, they dramatically raise the odds that they'll become high-performing chief executives.  The behaviors we're about to describe sound deceptively simple. But the key is to practice them with maniacal consistency, which our work reveals is a great challenge for many leaders."
1.  Deciding with Speed & Conviction [=Agile Decision Making].   "High-performing CEOs do not necessarily stand out for making great decisions all the time; rather, they stand out for being more decisive. They make decisions earlier, faster, and with greater conviction. They do so consistently-even amid ambiguity, with incomplete information, and in unfamiliar domains. In our data, people who were described as "decisive" were 12 times more likely to be high-performing CEOs".

Preemptive Action -- Drone Mindsetâ„¢ 
by Nick Horney, Ph.D., Leadership Agility Practice Leader

One of my earlier blogs addressed the concept of VUCA Masters and how taking preemptive action can be the difference between life and death for Navy SEALs or the survival of a company challenged by a very turbulent business environment.  Navy SEALs have applied technology to enable them to anticipate change and initiate action through the use of UAVs (Unmanned Aerial Vehicles) more commonly known as drones. Drones are used in situations to help those on the ground anticipate change in locations that are over the horizon or around the corner.  How can companies create a culture that reflects a Drone Mindsetâ„¢ -- one that encourages employees to anticipate change based on trends and patterns in their work environment?  First, let's take a quick look at the basics of applying drone technology.

In order to take flight, drones require a controller, something the pilot uses to launch, land, and navigate. Controllers can take many forms, from gamepad-like controllers to smartphones and tablets. Regardless of how they look, controllers need to communicate with the drone, and typically do that using radio waves. To communicate with their aircraft, many drone controllers use Wi-Fi, which can be transmitted on a 2.4 gigahertz spectrum, and is something that smartphones and tablets can tap into without any accessories.
 

The Poetry of Organizational Change
By Ben Baran, Ph.D. , Agility Analytics Practice Leader

"Successful organizational change," he said, "requires analysis, diagnosis and dissatisfaction with the status quo."

"It also requires a process for getting the change started, and it requires an ideal vision for the future. 

"The first part-the diagnosis-is analytical. It's about collecting evidence.

"But creating an ideal vision? No amount of evidence will help you. 

"Creating an ideal vision-that's the land of poets."

Being a professor myself, it's a rare treat to get to sit in on another professor's lecture. It's an even better treat when that other professor is someone as knowledgeable about his subject matter and as skilled in his delivery as  Frank Barrett

Frank is a professor in the Graduate School of Business and Public Policy at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, Calif. He's had a long and distinguished career there, punctuated by a number of visiting professorships, including service as a visiting scholar at Harvard Business School from 2008 to 2010. His 2012 book  Yes to the Mess  explores the lessons we can draw from jazz and improvisation as they apply to leadership in turbulent environments.

Agility Consulting Affiliate Corner: 
Chad Brown

We welcome Chad Brown ( Chad@CBCHelps.com ) to the global team of Agility Consulting Affiliates.  Chad is based in Central Florida and has over six years of consulting experience in a diverse range of industries across Argentina, Germany, China, the United States and more. Chad's graduate education includes an M.B.A. and an additional Master's degree in Mental Health Counseling.  Chad Brown Counseling and Consulting (CBC Helps) was founded in August 2015, and is guided by the motto "CBC Helps Discover Purpose & Develop Potential".

Within consulting, Chad's expertise is centered around Millennial employee development, delivered through individual coaching, management consulting, group development experiences, and organizational strategy consulting.  Chad's career counseling practice is designed to serve high school and college students, young and experienced professionals, as well as entrepreneurs and startups.

Chad shared his reasons for becoming an Agility Consulting Affiliate in a recent interview.  Read Chad's interview here

Creating Agility in a VUCA World!




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MAY 2017
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