Leadership Job To Be Done
SCIO Decision Intelligence Framework
Operational leaders have tremendous agency to engage the organization's capabilities to deliver value from assets because they fully control the available resources and activities.
Regardless of role or rank, most people, including leaders, are doing their best given two circumstances: 1) what they’re asked to do and 2) what they’re given to do it with. A few people won’t be influenced; others want to watch the world burn — we don’t cater to either minority. We cater to people who want to make a meaningful and positive difference in their organization.
What is the job to be done (JTBD) for organizational leaders? If we’re to distill what they’re asked to do into its simplest form (without losing any of the complexity that still exists), what would that be?
The leader’s JTBD is to manage, lead, and govern the organization on its odyssey to operational excellence results.
Leaders are asked to take the organization from mediocre performance to performance excellence. The mediocrity word choice is not a slight. Mediocrity is not terrible, but it is not great. Unless they are pacesetters by operational benchmarking standards, most organizations fit into this category. Plenty of inefficiency and ineffectiveness leading to value leakage exists, should you choose to see it. And even pacesetters are committed to improving and innovating their business results.
Of course the odyssey from Point A to Point B is never a straight line. The journey is fraught with challenges like Hercules’ twelve labours in Greek mythology or Osysseus’ decade-long journey home to Ithaca in Homer’s The Odyssey. Here be dragons in dangerous or unexplored territory. We can’t win every battle, but we must win the war. Our operational leaders are the conquering heroes in this epic.
Leaders face four main responsibilities in this job to be done:
The leader's first responsibility is to ask the right questions of the organization. When leaders ask questions, the organization will inevitably seek answers. It’s the adage that what interests my boss fascinates the heck out of me. But here’s a helpful logic at play. Questions generate answers, revealing risks and opportunities which become problems solved, decisions made, and actions taken to deliver results. Inquiring minds want to know what’s happening (and not) in the organization; curiosity is the leadership attribute. The key is understanding the best questions to ask to seek value delivery in the context of the organization’s strategic objectives and maturity.
The leader's second responsibility is to deploy the organization’s vast and scarce resources to higher-value activities. We work within constrained environments; our resources are not infinite. In many organizations, our resources feel scarce; we don’t have enough to change what and how we do things to earn a better result. Yet, our available resources are also vast. We have many people, big budgets, and underutilized technology. Our operational benchmarks tell us so because our service cost exceeds our pacesetter peers. We must carve out capacity with our resources and create more value with less. This requires good strategy and sometimes a ruthless reallocation of those vast and scarce resources.
The leader’s third responsibility is to decide which activities to undertake (or not). Every activity is a result of a decision at some point. Not all activities are of equal value; some deliver more value than others. What are the important decisions, and how should they best be made at every opportunity? Leaders seeking operational excellence drive quality decision-making at the lowest organizational levels in line with authority.
The leader’s fourth responsibility is to assure stakeholders the organization says what it does, does what it says, and proves it. Operational governance features performance management, management review, audit and assurance activities, continuous improvement and innovation. This feedback loop is an important accountability mechanism for the executive team, board of directors, and external stakeholders, including ownership.
The Decision Intelligence Framework is a necessary element that empowers leaders’ considerable agency to manage, lead, and govern by engaging the organization's full potential capability on its odyssey to operational excellence results.
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