How Higher Ambition Principles Stabilized Operations Leaders Through Crisis
By Magnus Finnström, Julian McCarthy, Steve Sichak, and Ian Simington, Executive Fellows, The Higher Ambition Leadership Alliance
Humanity, authenticity, and trust as foundational leadership attributes
How were some organizations able to pivot more quickly and manage more effectively through the dramatic supply chain and operational hurdles of the pandemic?
Our ongoing working sessions with Operations Leaders, extending over more than a year, revealed examples of bold and courageous decision-making in the face of deep uncertainty. A common pattern of success emerged, whereby leaders who adopted a ‘Higher Ambition’ approach to operations leadership – an approach encompassing clarity of vision, a sense of shared purpose, and harnessing of widespread commitment in their pursuit of rapid-cycle learning and performance – enabled their organizations to adapt, learn and thrive through a rapidly evolving crisis more effectively and quickly than would otherwise be possible.
Operations Leaders who invested in alignment and trust with frontline employees and suppliers prior to the COVID crisis were able to draw on the ‘bank of goodwill’ when the crisis struck. This accelerated and strengthened buy-in and alignment on the need for rapid readjustment of operations policies and protocols.
What these Operations Leaders have in common includes a recognition of the power of shared purpose to unleash high performance and deliver superior economic and social value—Higher Ambition principles.
5 Higher Ambition Principles to Impact Operations
Here are some of the key practices and behaviors these Operations Leaders said were pivotal in making a positive difference for their organizations:
1. Visibly reinforce, demonstrate and develop purposeful leadership
Clarify, reaffirm, and role model the organization’s higher purpose and core values through engaged, authentic leadership, while also developing a strong pipeline of operational leaders equipped to lead in a volatile future:
Translate purpose and core values for meaning, relevance, and shared commitment in the crisis, with reinforcement through visible leadership examples, behaviors, and role modeling.
Provide honest leadership perspective on the state of the business and urgency of action, with emphasis on both candor about the challenges ahead and a rational basis for hope.
Invest extra effort in senior leadership alignment and consistent, authentic messaging. This can include reinforcement of higher purpose, core values, the need for a long view, and rational, bounded optimism.
Invest considerable effort in developing the next generation of operations associates and leaders: incorporate Higher Ambition principles in leadership development; invest in reskilling and upskilling for operations associates; formulate career development paths for operations personnel suited to a new world of flexibility and agility enabled by technology including robotics, automation, artificial intelligence, data, and analytics.
2. Create an organizational context that supports rapid learning
Cast aside traditional internal barriers, supporting and enabling distributed leadership and rapid response teams to drive problem-solving and build organizational capability:
Appoint an operations stabilization team, staffed with experienced change leaders, sponsored directly by senior leadership. Focus the team on crisis response balanced with the need to maintain and build capabilities for the longer term.
Support and empower Operations Leaders to engage those with relevant knowledge in problem-solving, regardless of organizational boundaries
Deploy, empower, and support a network of rapid-response teams addressing crucial operational issues, such as personnel safety, preserving production capacity, managing supply risks, and monitoring facilities status, inventory, and health of the end-to-end supply chain.
Clarify/streamline problem-solving and decision-making, with emphasis on empowering and entrusting rapid-response leaders to act swiftly and work around internal processes where needed. This will typically require leveraging and developing continuous improvement methodologies and skills, including rapid-cycle experimentation and learning, and timely abandonment of trials that fail to deliver impact.
Provide decision-making support and architecture for rapid-response leaders, enabling psychological safety, permission to run experiments and engage knowledgeable contributors across conventional organizational boundaries, readily accessible networks for collaboration, and real-time learning.
3. Place high priority on human well-being and inclusion
Invest to support the safety and well-being of employees and their families, while ensuring inclusiveness in the workplace:
Demonstrate compassion, understanding, and concern for employees and their families who will be experiencing anxiety, stress, and fatigue during periods of change and uncertainty.
Institute policies to help and protect employees at all levels at the workplace through safe work practices, in addition to providing counsel and support.
Reserve layoffs as a last resort through the creative use of alternative policies, such as redeployment, reduced workweek, temporary support for special needs, etc.
Integrate diversity and inclusion into operations workforce planning and development, with an explicit focus on bringing a diverse array of skills to the problem solving and innovation required for flexible operations.
4. Engage key stakeholders in the supply chain ecosystem
Invest in building trust-based understanding and relationships with key stakeholders through the supply chain, industry, and multi-sector collaboration and mutual support:
Open channels and opportunities for inter-company collaboration (including competitors or companies in other industries as necessary) encompassing exchange of staff, parts, mutual assistance, or other forms of collaboration. Illustrations include ventilator production in automotive plants and safety mask production in apparel factories.
Establish critical public/private links to reduce constraints and open up opportunities. For instance, relieve regulatory barriers, access government aid, or identify alternative applications of production capacity.
Establish procedures and infrastructure for enhanced, trust-based transparency in the end-to-end supply chain, such as increased visibility and dialog about customer demand, capacity, supply risk.
5. Communicate intensively through multiple channels
Leverage multi-channel media to elevate the intensity of engagement across organizational boundaries and at all organizational levels:
Engage directly with frontline team members (‘top floor to shop floor’), ensuring regular and frequent updates. Bring compassion and appreciation to these communications and use each conversation as an opportunity to reaffirm core values.
Ensure honesty, transparency, to provide for two-way dialog, with emphasis on integrity and building trust.
Reinforce values, making them real with examples and recognize and celebrate values-driven behaviors.
Reframing the Operations Leadership Role Has Implications Well Beyond the Current Crisis
In combination, these ‘Higher Ambition’ practices adopted by Operations Leaders in the heat of crisis represent a reframed approach to operations leadership that has ongoing relevance in an increasingly volatile and uncertain world.
By targeting operational resilience as a strategic priority, creating the context for Operations Leaders to lead expansively, and unleashing human potential to engage, learn and execute, companies can energize and strengthen their supply chain ecosystem. Ultimately, this approach enables a company to leverage its operations capability as a formidable source of competitive advantage and resilience under uncertainty.
