by Jim Solomon and Bruce LaRue, Ph.D.

We’ve all seen our world change before our very eyes since the outbreak of the global pandemic. As a result, the “usual” way your organization operates has probably changed more than once. 

Strong leadership is more important now than ever – we need Integrator Leaders.

During the toughest times, leaders must get the pulse of their organization and its people.  This allows for adjustments or corrections as you move forward in uncharted waters. It’s not a time to push this off because of demands. It’s actually more important than ever – it’s important to your customers, to your organization, and to your people.

In our research during our work with hundreds of leaders in private, government, military, and non-profit sectors over the past many years, but specifically during this pandemic, the most successful leaders periodically perform an organization checkup or what we call the “Mini-Town Hall © – Scan”. This is used to evaluate the current state of your operation.

The Mini-Town Hall is a process we designed to help our clients engage with their team in an interactive, action-learning process that rapidly brings to light the state of the organization.

This process gets everyone into the canopy, where they can see their activities in the context of the whole operation – whether your team is working on-site or as a distributed or virtual workforce. It is an opportunity for Integrator Leaders to listen to their team about what’s working and what’s not, engaging the team in creating the solutions to the challenges they face, while potentially revealing insights unknown prior to this process.

Be prepared as a leader to gain uncanny insight into how individuals and whole teams are thinking and how they see your organization. This allows you to understand precisely where your guidance and intervention is needed, which you implement on a just-enough, just-in-time basis. Your intent is always to help the team stand on its own, requiring less direction from you over time.

The process allows all participants to have the chance to engage and provide input. The number of participants who can engage, especially when combined with virtual collaboration tools, appears limitless.

This process may reveal “operational intelligence” to give you the competitive edge or allow you to

simply survive.

Setting the Stage  To begin the session, you’ll want to have the entire group together in the same room or virtual space. If a large group, best to break into smaller workgroups after your introduction when they begin to engage in the actual process.

Provide attendees advanced notice and ask that they come ready to engage and participate actively in the discussion. Be sure to set the ground rules in advance. Let them know that this is not a complaint session. Rather, it is their opportunity to engage as a team and provide you with specific suggestions as to how the operation can be improved, and what they need from you as a Leader to be successful. Let the team know you expect them to be forward-looking and constructive, and to bring alternatives and suggestions, not just problems.

The Mini-Town Hall Scan is like shining a spotlight on all the key functions and processes of your operation. We ask what is working, what is not, what can we do differently, and what do we need from each other? Answers to these questions help to maintain a critical barometer on the vital signs of the operation, helping you sustain a high level of performance over time.

Assuming everything in a given area checks out, move on with the Scan by moving the spotlight, as it were, to a new area. When your spotlight reveals a particular problem, challenge, or process that requires more focused attention, note it for action at a later time. This keeps the team moving without getting stuck in “analysis paralysis”.

Once you have provided an overview, your guidance, and instructions, leave the room/virtual space for a while to give them time and room to speak openly before re-engaging with them as an entire team.  Ask that each person write down their own answer to the following questions first and then discuss them in small groups:

• What is working well?
• What is not working well?
• What can we do differently?
• What do we need from each other?

What Is Working Well?  The reason we ask this question is twofold: first, we want to start out on a positive note and provide some recognition for the team’s successes and things they are most proud of. Second, we want to reinforce and build upon those things that are already working well.

Quite frequently, top-down-driven change disrupts the very things that are working well. This may not be intentional, but if someone who is two or three levels (or two or three thousand miles) removed from the operation is designing a change, there are bound to be unintended consequences. Often upper echelons rarely know as much about a job as the person doing it. We want to identify, reinforce, and build upon those aspects of the operation that are already functioning well.

What Is Not Working Well?  The primary ground rule here is that we all agree to be constructive and forward-looking in our remarks. We are not here to name names or throw others under the bus. Instead, ask the team to reflect upon the operation as a whole—from the canopy view, the processes now in place, the level and quality of communication within the team, and between your team and other functional departments with whom they must coordinate their activities. We want the team to see their operation from the canopy view and objectively observe their operation. Rather than simply following processes, we are asking them to step back to observe and evaluate the processes themselves. The key is to get them off the jungle floor to see their operation from above, as an integrated whole.

Said another way, ask your team to imagine that they are a pro sports team watching the video of their own performance in yesterday’s game. No matter how good the game plan is, the best teams routinely pause to critique their own performance, so they can constantly improve. As one client put it, “You don’t have to be sick to get better.” Ask your people to be candid and constructive; we cannot fix something if we don’t identify it as a problem.  Ask that they think of the questions in terms of their own team first, then widen their aperture to think about what is not working in relation to those with whom the team must coordinate to get the ball down the field and through the end zone. Often, one part of the organization may be operating at optimal capacity, but once the ball is handed off to another part of the organization, it is dropped, held too long, or fumbled.

This is because too often these other parts of the organization may be operating based on a different set of key priorities, metrics, and measures. This misalignment is very common in highly complex organizations with many specialized functions and divisions, each containing specialized knowledge workers. The point is that if we fail to coordinate with these other parts of the organization, we cannot achieve optimal outcomes—regardless of how well we do our part. A key role of the Integrator Leader is to help the team recognize that we cannot produce integrated solutions for our customers when we are fragmented internally.

What Should We Do Differently Moving Forward?  This question asks the team to come up with proactive, constructive ideas as to what can be done differently, not a time for a complaint session. Knowledge workers must define the tasks necessary to accomplish the mission. Make it very clear that you expect them to always come to the table with ideas and alternatives—not just problems. Get them to focus on what they can control and influence first. While they can raise problems that are outside their control, their time should be spent on those issues and problems within their sphere of influence.

While you may not necessarily get full-blown, detailed solutions to the problems identified, when they leave this meeting, they should be very clear about where they will put their crowbar. That is, they should understand the areas they need to focus on to create maximum leverage and impact in moving the organization forward—and take consistent action in this new direction. This is very important; often we complain about the past or the present state without thinking about what we can do moving forward. Remember the Zen saying: the obstacle is the path. This is also the philosophy of most successful leaders. The secret is in how you frame the problem—help your team transform their challenges into opportunities.

What Do We Need from Each Other?  The most complex challenges we face today cannot be solved by any single individual or functional group—and this includes you as an Integrator Leader. If we want to create integrated solutions, we need to first know what we need from each other to be successful. This includes asking your team what they need from you as their leader. Let the team know that, while you will hold them accountable for the outcomes they achieve, you exist ultimately to help them succeed. Remind your team that no one is an island unto themselves; we are all in this together.

If we do not have efficient flows of information and knowledge within the team and across the critical functions of the organization, the outcome we achieve will be less than optimal, if not disastrous. If an initiative goes sideways, we do not want to provide employees or management with a convenient excuse to say, “It’s not our fault, we did our job.” To eliminate this problem and any ex-post-facto excuses about why things didn’t work, we must build effective channels of cross functional communication, coordination, and integration into our change effort up front.

Asked another way, seeing the operation through the eyes of our peers, what do we need from each other to successfully fulfill our mission? Cross-training within a team and between interdependent departments and divisions goes a long way toward furthering this objective. Walking a mile in another’s shoes is still one of our best antidotes to organizational misalignment. This creates a form of organizational empathy that helps us focus on shared goals and objectives. Frankly, we need to see the big picture and what the end zone looks like, then zoom out and ask ourselves what we need from each other to move the ball down the field, through the end zone, and to replicate this process in a flexible and nimble fashion moving forward.

Take Action  Once gaps, problems, or challenges have been identified, determine specific action steps as well as timelines for outcomes and deliverables. The beauty of this exercise, simple as it is, is that the team has taken part in the process; it’s not top-down-driven. This demonstrates both the value you place in their involvement and it holds each accountable to “own” their organization.  

It is important that participants leave the Scan with a focused and clear path of action. There should be no doubt in their mind when they leave this meeting what they will begin working on. Before you conclude the session, conduct a short debriefing by asking everyone to discuss the following three questions:

• What worked well in this meeting?
• What worked least well in this meeting?
• What can we do differently in future meetings to make them more productive and engaging?

Capture all information for follow up and follow through.

Visible Follow-Up and Follow Through  After the Mini-Town Hall Scan concludes, post the actions visible in your office, on your team’s common-drive, or virtual bulletin board so that everyone can see that you are thinking about their comments and taking them seriously.

Determine needs for allocating resources, defining outcome-based success criteria, key milestones, and completion dates.  Including all relevant stakeholders at the appropriate times will ensure that you receive valuable input while addressing the concerns of those who could otherwise resist.

Repeat Scans periodically to capture the pulse of your organization, to follow through with identified actions, and to determine the need for any mid-course corrections.

“Leadership is about leading change” – and there is no doubt that during these times, leaders will be put to the test to keep their organization moving forward with an over-abundance of need for change.  

(Source: Seeing What isn’t There – A Leader’s Guide to Creating Change in a Complex World by Bruce LaRue & Jim Solomon. Atlanta: Deeds Publishing, 2019.)

Integrator Leaders possess the unique ability to see what isn’t there, channeling the collective energy of others to make their vision a reality. Simply stated, leadership is about leading change. Rather than engaging in futile attempts to manage, adapt to, or resist change, Integrator Leaders help their teams to build a future yet to be born.

Learn more on how to become an Integrator Leader from our team at Chambers Bay Institute.  www.chambersbayinstitute.com.