I am really enjoying doing some work with a large premium car company at the moment - helping them enact their ambitious strategy for the future. As part of this, I got to hear one of their Board give an impressive presentation about the challenges facing the company. He made the very powerful & succinct point (known to all of us engaged in helping organisations handle complexity) that not long ago, managers had about 20% uncertainty in their future to handle whereas now it is more likely 80% uncertainty.
The challenge facing leaders is how to prepare and support their teams and organisations face this future. It seemed to him - and to me - that the only way in which this can be possibly done is by ensuring that every member of an organisation is optimally aligned to the company's strategy, amply engaged in wanting to make this strategy happen and plentifully empowered to take action in support of the overall plans. Only in this way will the company be sufficiently agile and 'intelligent' enough to shape the future (not just succumb to it).
Somebody once defined intelligence as knowing what to do when you don't know what to do (I will dig out the author later - promise!). On this basis we need organisations to have both the systems and the people enabled to be supremely intelligent.
How are you doing this in your business?
How is your organisation just that little better prepared for an uncertain future than it was yesterday or last year?
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