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The 10 Cardinal Sins of Leadership
What Thought Leaders Must Never Do to Succeed in High-Risk Environments
Casey J. Bedgood
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eBook - ePub
The 10 Cardinal Sins of Leadership
What Thought Leaders Must Never Do to Succeed in High-Risk Environments
Casey J. Bedgood
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About This Book
Why do some leaders succeed and others fail? Is there a magic ingredient that the leaders must consider in their career journey to ensure the joy ride does not turn into a nightmare? What is the key to maximizing leaders' success in ways that are sustainable long term?
The purpose of this book is to provide a simple road map for leaders, aspiring leaders, students, and anyone interested in the art of leadership to succeed in high-risk environments. Often, leaders don't know what they don't know. One main culprit is the lack of assessing, measuring, analyzing, and addressing risk. Simply put, we don't know what we don't measure. What is not known can and will eventually harm leaders, organizations, and their customers.
Change is the new normal and only constant. As change grows, so does risk. Risk can be a friend or foe to thought leaders. It all depends on perspective, insight, and knowledge. Ignorance is never bliss, and leaders must leverage knowledge to mitigate risks at every turn.
In The 10 Cardinal Sins of Leadership: What Thought Leaders Must Never Do to Succeed in High-Risk Environments, readers will learn:
- How to identify, measure, analyze, and address various types of risk
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- How to determine if risk is a friend or a foe
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- Strategic planning concepts that will allow leaders to magnify, plan for, leverage, and marginalize risks long term
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- Methods to ensure that inclusion efforts do not become overly exclusive, thus excluding key stakeholders and creating new levels of organizational risk
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- Techniques for looking back at organizational yesteryears to create a high-performing journey map for the road ahead
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- The value of perspective â how we view things determines how we respond or wait to be disrupted unknowingly
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Chapter 1 Planning: The Cardinal Sin of Not Having a Plan
DOI: 10.4324/9781003267966-1
Three Arrows Thought Leaders Must Have in Their Quiver to Succeed
Leadership & Its Challenges
Leadership, formally defined, is the âcapacity to lead.â(1) In layman's terms, leadership is getting others to do what you desire without force. Are all leaders truly leaders? The short answer is not necessarily. Leadership credibility is not and should not be measured based on a person's title, salary, number of direct reports or years in a certain position. Peter Drucker may have defined leadership best by saying, âLeaders are those that have followers.â Without followers, leaders are irrelevant and lead with title only, which is never a winning strategy.
So why is leadership so important? In recent years, change has become the new norm; the only constant seems to be increasing pace and impact. In healthcare, for example, the last few years have been riddled with historical changes that have altered the industry's trajectory forever. Pre-COVID-19, the industry experienced record number of financial challenges, evidenced by progressively declining revenues and rising costs.
Moreover, the healthcare industry has been and continues to be mired with record consolidation.(2) Across the US, hospitals and health systems have combined at record pace via mergers, acquisitions, and other strategic combinations. The million-dollar question is why? In short, financial, market, and other regulatory pressures have forced healthcare leaders to find innovative channels or economies of scale to buffer the pressures previously mentioned.
Another and equally important change has been record-level top leadership disruption in healthcare. For nearly the last decade, hospital CEO circles have experienced the highest levels of consistent turnover in decades.(3) This trend has not shown any sign of slowing down in the near future. You may be wondering, what drivers have and continue to contribute to this disruption? The simple answer is there are several drivers, such as natural attrition due to retirements, and market forces such as financial downturns, that have forced underperforming leaders out of their roles and organizational combinations, just to name a few.
So why does this matter in today's market? Simply put, leaders must quickly evolve into effective thought leaders. Years ago, a conversation among a group of top leaders ensued about the topic of thought leadership. This occurred before thought leadership was among standard vernacular in leadership circles. One leader espoused that a thought leader was one who was paid to think.
By definition, âA Thought Leader can be recognized as an authority in a specific field, whose expertise is sought and often rewarded, who can be an expert, a historical figure, or a âwise personâ with worldly impact.â(4) Practically, these leaders will possess expertise relevant to their field, and the ability to influence others and outcomes that impact their ecosystem. Their ecosystem includes their organization, industry, and others cross functionally (i.e., outside of the particular industry).
Recently, a thought leader engaged a group of top organizational leaders in healthcare. The topics of discussion revolved around the organization's pandemic response, post pandemic organizational operating structure, industry changes, and many others. In short, the team was conducting a series of impact, risk, and planning sessions to find their way out of the storm and into a long-awaited safe haven. The conversation led to a few small studies or organizational assessments.
Surprisingly, the thought leader discovered that the team of top leaders were missing critical elements. Only 20% of the group had a formalized strategic planning process. Also, only 20% of the leaders had a formal change-plan, and none had an organizational knowledge plan. It's important to note that these leaders represented very large business units that served many hundreds of thousands of healthcare customers annually. Without these businesses, care to many critically ill and injured customers would be delayed or unavailable. Thus, suffering or worse would grow unimaginably.
The first thought of the thought leader was, âHow did these leaders and their businesses survive the pandemic and other industry changes over the last few years without these plans?â In reality, the business model was greatly flawed and several key business units were struggling to stay afloat. One bright spot was discovered, related to the 20% group. Those leaders who had strategy and change plans outperformed their peers by 50%. This simply means they met 50% more goals tied to service, quality, and value. Consequently, they fared better during the storm, were more stable, and had a better chance at survival in long term.
The study led to the creation of an operational survival guide of sorts. In short, the enterprise realized its lifeboat needed to be centered around three plans: strategy, change, and knowledge. Let's take a closer look at what the team developed.
The Three Arrows in the Quiver
Strategic Plan- A strategic plan is simply a high-level organizational road map consisting of at least four parts. The purpose of this plan is for top leaders to map out the organization's current market position, where it needs to go, and what attributes are and will be needed for long-term success. The first part of the strategy plan is assessment.
Top leaders must assess the enterprise's market environment from an external lens. The focal points here are market drivers that have, are, and will affect the organization. Also, any gaps that the organization should proactively plan for or address. A micro example would be a community health needs assessment. This information will provide insight for leaders as to what the customer communities around the organization perceive in terms of needs, gaps, and assistance.
The assessment should also consist of an internal review. Leaders must review the organization's performance tied to the basics: service, cost, revenue, quality, and overall value as a starter. Ideally, leaders should review several years, worth of data for favorable or unfavorable trends and patterns. The goal is to determine what is working well versus what needs improvement.
Once the assessment is complete, part two of the strategic plan is crafted. This can be a complicated process, depending upon organizational size, scope, and complexity. Here, attributes such as organizational goals, vision statements, play books, budgets, and other operational aspects of the business are crafted. The goal is to link gaps, goals, and budgets.
The premise is simple. Leaders should exhaustively assess for operational gaps. Then, enterprise goals are set to help fill the identified gaps. Third, budgets are crafted and set to provide resourcing to help meet the organization's goals. The key here is to ensure a linear process is followed. If any of the steps occurs asynchronously, then the organization is likely to not meet goals. Thus, disruption will likely be the next stop along the journey.
Part three and four of the strategy plan are straightforward. These include implementing the strategic plan and reassessing its effectiveness. The implementation phase must be well thought out, organized, and executed precisely. Once implemented, leaders should regularly reassess the plan to ensure its effectiveness. Traditionally, strategy plans were reassessed yearly in healthcare. But, in today's disruptive environment, leaders should reassess their plans more frequently. The thought leader's team decided reassessment would occur, at minimum, monthly, for their survival guide to work effectively.
Change Plan-A change plan is simply a high-level road map to help leaders manage organizational change. The change plan begins at minimum with a few considerations:
- Why are we changing?
- What is success?
- Are there any barriers that would prevent the change from being successful?
- What are the risks to the organization by implementing or not implementing the desired change?
- What's the probability of success?
Leaders should also consider risk-assessing each change before a definitive decision is made. The team used a three-tier risk assessment structure for their change plan. Tier-one risk represented change that was a threat to life, safety, or health. Tier-two change was deemed as critical to mission. Tier-three change represented change that was not a risk to life, safety, health, or the organization's mission. Once assessed, the team categorized each change initiative by its risk, with high-risk change taking priority over lower risk. This helped the organization use its scarce resources wisely and effectively. As with the strategy plan, the leaders reassessed the change plan at least monthly, and made adjustments as needed.
Knowledge Plan-Organizational knowledge simply represents the people who do the work, and the knowledge required to successfully complete tasks so the organization is successful, in long term. The goal is to determine what knowledge exists, current knowledge gaps, and what knowledge will be needed in the future to remain viable. The knowledge plan should include tactics to ensure knowledge is transferred from one person to another, across business units, and outside of the organization. As with the strategy plan, the knowledge plan begins with an assessment.
The assessment should include, at minimum, three tiers. Tier one includes a review of top organizational leaders. There are several considerations at this level. If top leaders vacate their positions, is someone readily available, competent, and trained to fill those roles immediately? If not, a knowledge gap exists. The goal here is to avoid an organizational strategic crisis.
The second knowledge tier relates to divisional leaders. Think of vice presidents or assistant vice presidents in healthcare, who are in charge of divisions comprising several departments. Tier three relates to front-line leaders and workers. This is really where most of the organization's knowledge resides, as this tier is closest to the customer.
Once leaders outline their organization's knowledge structure, they should consider creating a knowledge menu of sorts. In short, the menu constitutes those knowledge focus areas that will determine if the organization survives, can compete, and can win in the current or future market environment. Common menu themes include, but are not limited to: succession planning, cross training, depth in roles, quick guides for completing work, paired work assignments, and the like. The goal here is for leaders to match their knowledge plan menu to the organization's current gaps and future needs. As with the other plans, the leaders decided to set and review various knowledge KPIs (key performance indicators) at least monthly. If unfavorable or unexpected trends or patterns emerged, corrections followed quickly.
Lessons Learned
As the team added the needed arrows to its quiver, there were a few pearls gleaned from the experience that are worth noting. One is that thought leaders should never procrastinate. During the assessment, the thought leader learned that several top leaders were waiting on direction from superiors before crafting their strategy and change plans. The real questions to consider are: Why wait? Can you really afford to wait to plan when the market is constantly changing? What's the collateral damage if your organization is not properly prepared for current and future changes? The realization was that waiting is a form of waste that is detrimental to operational success. Thus, leaders should have a contingency plan in place that can be adjusted if needed.
In addition, the leaders learned that the change and knowledge plans should be folded into the strategic planning process. The key to success was to look forward several years for the strategy plan. In contrast, the focus for the change plan was shorter, with a rolling 12-month view. The knowledge plan was similar to the other plans, but had both shorter and longer foci related to assessment and planning.
Finally, the team learned that each plan should be measured very frequently for success. As with any plan, the million-dollar question to answer is, âWhat is success?â The team ensured each plan had measurable KPIs that were reviewed for each plan at minimum monthly. Strategically, the leaders viewed success as goal attainment and improvements tied to service, financials, quality, and overall value. For the change plan, at minimum, the leaders tracked each significant organizational change for successful implementation, as to if it was on time and on budget. For the knowledge plan, the team ensured improvements in basic KPIs such as succession planning, turnover, and cross training were achieved and improved upon.
Summary
The reality is that change is the new norm, the only constant, and will continue for the foreseeable future. If change is planned for properly, then leaders and their organizations will have a better chance for success. If planning and foresight are lacki...