If you’ve seen any of my posts before, you’ll know I regularly undertake Strategy Check-Ins with businesses – a short sharp review to help diagnose gaps, potential misalignments and areas to address in your business or operating model.
But did you know that as well as helping you upfront as you’re defining and designing what you’re going to do, Check-Ins are valuable interventions during your delivery as well?
They’ve been pulling out all the stops over the last 6 months to deliver against their change plans, and wanted to take a quick step back to ensure that they were on course to deliver their target outcomes later this year successfully. They had asked Hedgehog to undertake the review because they wanted an objective and independent assessment – assurance where things were positive, but challenge where things needed to be addressed.
I really enjoy these Check-Ins. There’s a lot of ground to cover in a very short amount of time – in this case just 2 weeks – but with the potential to make a big impact.
On these short assignments, it’s vital we get to the key areas of discussion quickly … talking to the team individually, asking targeted, but open, coaching-style questions to understand not just what’s gone on, but how they are feeling and any “worry beads” they have. Piecing together the full picture across the business of the progress that’s been made, things that have changed, and any areas to address to land the change successfully. And then sharing that back with the CEO and the team to check understanding, alignment across the team and get onto the ‘so what?’ and ‘what are you going to do now as a result?’
It’s also the combination of mine and Rod’s experience and skills that work really well together in these Check-Ins – Rod’s experience of leading businesses and working with the Board, and my skills in setting and delivering strategy and change. Combined, they tease out the key points to focus on for the next stage of delivery and the discussion with the Board – challenge where things need to be addressed, as well as underlining the positives and strengths to recognise and build on!
But what I like the most about these Check-Ins, is the lightbulbs you see switching on for people and the real difference you can make. In this case, providing the CEO with the impetus to progress actions now, to avoid potential headaches in landing the change into the operations further down the road.
For me, this is more than just a review of ‘how’s it going?’
Looking back at how things have gone and where you are against your plans are an important part of your ongoing management of change activity. However on their own, and in the words of investment product adverts, ’past performance is not a guarantee of future results.’
As an analogy for your change journey, take the example of the plane taking you to your holiday destination. You know you want to get from A to B, but while you’re up in the air, other things happen, things ahead of you might change and your flight path might not end up being the one you started with….
As well as looking back at progress made against your plans, I believe it’s key that you also look forward.
Standing back from day to day delivery to look up and out and get clear on where you might need to adjust your flight path, where you need to put more (or less) focus and equally importantly, that your landing plan is going to get you down and in the state you want, is absolutely vital.
So you can reset (as needed) to go again, and to ensure you deliver your target results successfully.
The focus of a Hedgehog Check-in is to help you to generate the best results you can by giving you the opportunity to …
If you want to have a chat about how I can help you with a check-in on your delivery please get in touch at alyson@hedgehogstrategy.com.